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LOCKE ON MORALITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2011

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Extract

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke makes an extravagant claim: Morality is as capable of demonstration as Mathematics. In the sixth Conversation between the seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke and the student of language Terence Moore, Moore points out that Locke's own arguments on the nature of language demonstrate that morality in a strong sense is not demonstrable. The Conversation then turns to Locke's real concern – ways in which words used in moral judgements might be made less ‘uncertain, vague, ambivalent’.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2011

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