If the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, then it appears that miracles are metaphysically impossible. Yet Locke accepts both essentialism, which takes the laws to be metaphysically necessary, and the possibility of miracles. I argue that the apparent conflict here can be resolved if the laws are by themselves insufficient for guaranteeing the outcome of a particular event. This suggests that, on Locke's view, the laws of nature entail how an object would behave absent divine intervention. While other views of laws also make miracles counterfactually dependent on God's will, I show how this view is consistent with the essentialist commitment to the view that the laws are metaphysically necessary. Further, I argue that Locke's view is a relatively attractive version of essentialism, in part, because it allows for the possibility of miracles.

The aim of this chapter is to explain why Locke thinks religious belief requires evidence and, on his view, what evidence there is for religious belief. I will explain and defend Locke's view that revelation can provide evidence for religious beliefs so long as there is evidence that God revealed it. Further, I will show how he takes the historical evidence of the miracles of Jesus as justification for belief in Christianity.Locke insists, perhaps more so than anyone else, that religious belief requires evidence.Although this view is not unique to Locke, his articulation of this point has been especially influential and has even been called 'the single most important source' of this view (Plantinga 2000: p. 72). Yet some contemporary religious epistemologists have singled out Locke for criticism precisely for insisting that religious belief requires evidence (e.g., Wolterstorff 1996; Plantinga 2000). It will be worthwhile, then, to reconsider why Locke thinks religious belief requires evidence and, on his view, what evidence there is for religious belief.There are two kinds of evidence that Locke appeals to in support of religious belief: natural theology and revelation. Natural theology is the attempt to use reason and observation (independent of any revelation) to justify religious beliefs. Locke thinks that natural theology can prove the existence of God (4.10) and determine God's commands (2.28.8). I will take these points for granted. Instead, the focus here will be on Locke's justification for belief in revealed religion. On Locke's view, it is revelation that provides evidence for most religious belief, though, as I will explain, he does appeal to natural theology in support of revelation.The evidence for religious belief also comes in degrees. If the evidence entails the truth of a belief, then Locke will consider it certain 'knowledge.' For Locke, though, belief in revealed religion always falls short of certainty. In such a case, Locke insists that 'the mind, if it will to be evidence in support of religious belief. So, on his view, if God revealed that p then he would provide us with evidence that he has done so. In that case, as Locke says, faith in revealed religion would be 'nothing else but an Assent founded on the highest Reason' (4.16.14). *

The standard objection to Locke’s epistemology is that his conception of knowledge inevitably leads to skepticism about external objects. One reason for this complaint is that Locke defines knowledge as the perception of a relation between ideas, but perceiving relations between ideas does not seem like the kind of thing that can give us knowledge that tables and chairs exist. Thus Locke’s general definition of knowledge seems to be woefully inadequate for explaining knowledge of external objects. However, this interpretation and subsequent criticism ignore a special category of knowledge Locke calls ‘real knowledge’, which is Locke’s own account of how we can have knowledge of the real world. Rather than evaluating whether Locke’s definition of knowledge in general can get us knowledge of external objects, we should instead focus our attention on whether Locke’s account of real knowledge can explain how we have knowledge of external objects.

In this paper I will defend the view that, according to Locke, secondary qualities are dispositions to produce sensations in us. Although this view is widely attributed to Locke, this interpretation needs defending for two reasons. First, commentators often assume that secondary qualities are dispositional properties because Locke calls them “powers” to produce sensations. However, primary qualities are also powers, so the powers locution is insufficient grounds for justifying the dispositionalist interpretation. Second, if secondary qualities are dispositional properties, then objects would retain secondary qualities while not being observed, but Locke says that colors “vanish” in the dark. Some commentators use this as evidence that Locke rejects the dispositionalist view of secondary qualities, and even those that are sympathetic to the traditional interpretation find these comments to be problematic. By contrast, I argue that even in these supposedly damning passages Locke shows an unwavering commitment to the view that the powers to produce sensations in us, i.e., the secondary qualities, remain in objects even when they are not being perceived. Thus, the arguments against the traditional interpretation are unpersuasive, and we should conclude that Locke does indeed hold that secondary qualities are dispositions to cause sensations in us.

This paper is on Descartes’ account of modality and, in particular, his account of the necessity of the laws of nature. He famously argues that the necessity of the “eternal truths” of logic and mathematics depends on God’s will. Here I suggest he has the same view about the necessity of the laws of nature. Further, I argue, this is a plausible theory of laws. For philosophers often talk about something being nomologically or physically necessary because of the laws of nature, but this necessity is thought to be metaphysically contingent. However, they struggle to explain how the laws could be genuinely necessary while being metaphysically contingent. The chief advantage of Descartes view, I argue, is that God’s will can plausibly explain both the necessity of the laws (because God made them necessary) and the contingency of the laws (because God could have done otherwise). So, Descartes’ theistic account of laws provides a plausible explanation, perhaps the best explanation, of the contingent-necessity of laws of nature.