A random philosophical troika

An odd philosophical troika of philosophers in early modern Britain comes to mind today for no good reason. Locke, Berkeley, Hume. I saw a random post in Quora asking for a brief summary of the significant contributions of each "the" three major philosophers. No more specific context. I have no idea how one would pick THE troika the querent had in mind, But this is one troika if great significance.

To summarize their “significant contributions” is a considerable task — or three different tasks, EACH considerable. But it does seem that together the three of them tell a tragic story.

In essence we can say this (ignoring the politics of Locke or of Hume, and the vision theory of Berkeley):

Locke: Accepted a dualist picture of the world in which minds, conceived of as properties of souls, are intangible beings that must come to grips with a material world around them. His contribution was to think through this material world in Newtonian terms — what he called the primary qualities (masses in motion) were more real that the secondary qualities (colors, odors, etc.) From this, too, came a split between what we know immediately and what we infer. An epistemological dualism. We have “ideas” that are odorous and colorful, we make inferences about the Newtonian world with masses moving about.

Berkeley: Denied the coherence of the Lockean view of the world. We do not need to postulate any reality other than minds and their ideas. Thus: matter disappears from the picture. An epistemological monism.

Hume: Denied the coherence of either the idea of matter or the idea of mind. The ideas or impressions group themselves, and “I” am an illusion that results from the groupings. Such “laws” as the groupings follow are rather arbitrary, but we fall into habits and customs as a consequence of their repetition. An epistemological nihilism.

TLDR? Okay, here is a traditional recap.

Locke: Mind matters and matter minds.

Berkeley: No matter

Hume: [Shrugging] Never mind

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