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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A Guide To Locke's Essay Complex Ideas Although he granted that some groups of simple ideas naturally occur together in our experience, Locke supposed that most of our complex ideas are manufactured in the human mind by the application of its higher powers.

Combining joins several simple ideas together in the formation of a new whole; comparing brings two distinct ideas together without uniting them, giving rise to the idea of a relation between them; and abstracting separates some aspect of an idea from its specific circumstances in order to form a new general idea. Repeated applications of these powers, Locke supposed, give rise to the whole variety of ideas human beings are capable of having.

[Essay II xii 1-2] If we're going to analyze the epistemic origins our complex ideas, it will be helpful to consider the ways in which we gradually build up our supply of them. On Locke's view, complex ideas are of three varieties: Modes are invariably conceived as the features of something else, which are never capable of existing independently. Substances, on the other hand, are understood to be the existing things in which modes inhere.

Relations are nothing more than mental comparisons in some respect among other ideas. [Essay II xii 3-7] Complex ideas of all three sorts are manufactured by the mind from simpler components. Modes A simple mode is a complex idea all of whose component parts are variations or combinations of a single simple idea.

[Essay II xii 4-5] Consider, for example, the simple idea of space: acquired initially from our senses of sight and touch, this idea provides the sole content for a host of related ideas of our own manufacture. The notion of one-dimensional length can be "folded" upon itself to yield those of area in two dimensions and capacity in three; these notions, in turn, can be modified more subtly to provide our ideas of shapes and figures.

Even the notion of place in relation to other bodies within a framework Locke believed to be abstracted from the simple idea of space. [Essay II xiii 2-6] In similar fashion, Locke supposed that the simple idea of unity, repeatedly recombined with itself, provides the entire content for the simple modes of number, including even that of infinity.

[Essay II xvi - xvii] In every such case, the complexity of the simple mode arises only from an iteration of a single simple idea, upon whose content the complex idea therefore relies.