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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A Guide To Locke's Essay Simple Ideas and Modes Although simple ideas carry with them a presupposition of real existence, Locke held, the names of simple ideas signify both the real and the nominal essences of the qualities they represent. [Essay III iv 2-3] Like the simple ideas themselves, which are involuntarily received in perception, the names of simple ideas have non-arbitrary content.

We find it difficult (and, usually, unnecessary) to classify them into sorts, and when we do so-as, for example, with colors or sounds-it is typically by reference to their perceptual origins rather than any supposed ideational similarity.

[Essay III iv 16-17] Similarly, because each simple idea is a uniform perception, easily retained and intended to conform only to itself as an archetype, our names for simple ideas are rarely vulnerable to imperfection; the more simple the idea, the less likely we are to misuse the word that expresses it. [Essay III ix 18-19] One consequence of all this is that the names of simple ideas are indefinable.

At peril of an infinite regress, the provision of verbal definitions must ground out on some indefinable terms, and since simple ideas have no component parts that could be assembled under the direction of an appropriate definition, their names are perfectly suited to that role. Scholastic efforts to offer definition of such simple ideas as motion or light, Locke argued, are ludicrous precisely because they so patently fail to produce any new idea in the minds of those who hear them.

Imagine the comparable folly of trying to provide auditory definitions of visual ideas, or vice versa. [Essay III iv 4-11] The names of mixed modes, on the other hand, are general terms that signify abstract ideas governing species of human actions. These names clearly are definable, since it is always possible in principle to offer a comprehensive list of those simple ideas which, assembled together by the mind, would constitute the appropriate complex idea.

That's why we don't need to witness an act of sacrilege or experience the resurrection of the dead in order to understand what kind of events those terms would signify. [Essay III v 1-5] Thus, Locke supposed that the initial formation of the abstract idea (and the stipulation of the name associated with this mixed mode) can be freely performed without any possibility of error.