ABSTRACT
This ancient1 thought is a will-o’-the-wisp, generated by confusion and luring its victims into conceptual swamps. But just what is the m atter with it? Attacks on it have tended to rest on more or less controversial doctrines, notably on doctrines about the necessary conditions for significant discourse. It is easy enough to refute Locke’s notion if you help yourself to verificationism, W ittgenstein’s views on criteria and privacy, or to physicalism or functionalism. But the validity of these doctrines might well be thought to be undermined by Locke’s notion itself,2 especially when it is backed up by the attractive fables about sudden subjective spectrum transposition on which its proponents rely. And I suspect that some philosophers whose rejection of the notion is based on their adherence to one or more of these doctrines may still be victims of the muddles from which it arises. As a former victim of these muddles myself I want to try to help other sufferers to be rid of them. For this purpose it is essential to avoid begging the question by presupposing any of the doctrines just mentioned; and in fact I shall not need to defend any of them. T he appeal of Locke’s thesis seems to derive from two strong intuitions, one sound and openly acknow-
ledged, the other mistaken and operating only half-consciously. I hope to make clear that the thesis looks intelligible only so long as its parasitic dependence on this second, confused, intuition goes unrecognised.
