system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What is it with John Locke and "monsters"?

Just finished the Essay. And was puzzled by so much space he dedicates to defend "monsters", humans and animals born deformed both mentally and physically. He also, maybe somewhat relatedly, discusses that if you switched the minds of a human and a parrot, well which one of them would then get the status as human. (He gives the title to the human with a parrot mind. And the parrot with the human mind is just a very smart parrot.)

It seems like a really big issue to him, the classification of non-standard humans. He doesn't just deal with it in one section. The theme seems to haunt him and keeps returning. And it is a bit out of place, since the book is supposed to be about epistemology and not a lot about "monsters" :)

I was just wondering if anybody knows what was up with that?
gpt
In the section on identity, Locke purposefully makes the distinction between "men" and "people." The latter are the only beings that are worthy of moral consideration.

Why did he do this? To justify treating Africans as chattel (for Locke, they are not people so no ethical responsibility attaches to them). Locke owned stock in slave trading himself and helped to draft the Carolina slavery constitution.

Edit: See Charles Mills' *The Racial Contract* or Charles Johnson's "Philosophy, Modernity, & Racism."