ABSTRACT

For Locke, a system of particles, suitably arranged, can give rise to a set of higher-level features, including the power of thought. These ‘emergent’ features—none of which can be found in any of the system’s lower-level parts—nonetheless depend on that system. This chapter explores the relevance of Priestley’s dynamic realism to Locke’s functionalist position illuminating its historical significance. In the seventeenth century, the world was conceived as a huge machine. The working of machinery such as one cogwheel engaging with another was taken as the paradigmatic picture of the world. In a machine, an action is transmitted from one part to another by contact. Priestley’s dynamic realism provides an example of a view in which dispositional features are intrinsic in that power—as a real potency—is ‘absolutely essential to the very nature and being of matter’.