Roczniki Filozoficzne

Volume 52, Issue 1, 2004

Psychologism versus Anti-psychologism
John Locke’s Characterisation of Mental Contents

The paper seeks to give an ontological account of idea as mental content in the philosophy of John Locke. The foundation on which to place and polarise philosophical standpoints with regard to this issue is the 17th-century controversy between J. Locke and N. Malebranche with respect to the genesis of human knowledge. Showing the foundation of this controversy, as expressed in the polemic work of Locke entitled An Examination of P. Malebranche’s Opinion of Seeing All Things in God, I shall outline two possible approaches to our mental contents, namely the psychologistic and anti-psychologistic ones. In this perspective Locke is a representative of the first standpoint, whereas Malebranche of the second. In the psychologistic approach, the content of our conscious acts (or according to 17th-century Cartesian philosophy ideas) is exclusively an internal element of this consciousness. On the contrary – in the case of the anti-psychologistic characteristation, the content of our consciousness is described as ontologically antonomous, i.e. as independent from thr knowing subject. Following the analyses of An Examination, I obtain additional arguments on behalf of the psychologistic interpretation of Locke’s conception of idea (expressed, among others, by J. Yolton and M. Ayers), contrary to the anti-psychologistic approaches (claimed by, among others, T. Reid, R. McRae, and N. Jolley).