ABSTRACT
This chapter examines John Locke’s mind-body nominalism, which the preceding chapter discussed rather briefly in comparison to the major doctrines of materialism, substance dualism, and property dualism. It deals with the historical background of Locke’s theory of nominal essence and analyzing the textual details of his mind-body nominalism, as well as his use of the term ‘immaterial spirit’. The chapter considers some parallels between Locke’s mind-body nominalism and Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism. In Locke’s nominalism, the principle of individuation thus becomes ‘Existence it self, which determines a Being of any sort to a particular time and place incommunicable to two Beings of the same kind’. Locke’s nominalism of corporeal natural kinds has been much discussed in this light, but his mind-body nominalism has rarely been given due consideration. A statement of a nominal essence serves as a definition which fixes the meaning of a word’.
