Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

by Simon Blackburn

It is due to what Locke elsewhere calls the ‘arbitrary will and good pleasure’ of God, ‘the wise architect’ who ‘annexes’ particular modifications of consciousness to particular physical events. In Descartes’s terms, Locke thinks we have no ‘clear and distinct’ idea of just what kinds of system God might choose as suitable places for him to superadd consciousness. It would just be a brute fact that the universe is organized so that some kinds of system do, and others do not, possess consciousness at all. And it is just a brute fact that their consciousnesses change and acquire definite properties at the time that their physical selves change and acquire particular properties. The contrast is between a rational and intelligible connection, such as we find in the a priori discipline of mathematics, and the fact that certain ‘motions’ just do produce the sensations in us that they do. This is the brute fact, the consequence of God’s good pleasure.