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    Locke’s Composition Principle and the Argument for God’s Immateriality
    Journal of Modern Philosophy 4 (1): 4. 2022.
    Locke’s argument for God’s immateriality in _Essay_ IV x is usually interpreted as involving a principle that in some way prohibits the causation of thought by matter. I reject these causal readings in favor of one that involves a principle which says a thinking being cannot be composed out of unthinking parts. This Composition Principle, as I call it, is crucial to understanding how Locke’s theistic argument can succeed in the face of his skepticism about the substance of matter and the cause o…Read more
  •  24
    Locke on primary and secondary qualities
    In Jessica Gordon-Roth & Shelley Weinberg (eds.), The Lockean Mind, Routledge. pp. 321-329. 2021.
    Locke establishes the primary-secondary quality distinction in two steps. First, he identifies the primary qualities by means of a separability argument that involves transdictive inference about the properties of the minute, imperceptible parts of matter. Second, he identifies the secondary qualities by means of a dispensability argument that relies on the principle that bodies normally act by ‘impulse.’ I suggest this principle is also justified through transdictive inference. This allows us t…Read more