Review Essay: Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Historical and Ongoing Debate, edited by Laurence Nolan (OUP) (original) (raw)

Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception

The understanding of the primary-secondary quality distinction has shifted focus from the mechanical philosophers’ proposal of primary qualities as explanatorily fundamental to current theorists’ proposal of secondary qualities as metaphysically perceiver dependent. The chapter critically examines this shift and current arguments to uphold the primary-secondary quality distinction on the basis of the perceiver dependence of color; one focus of the discussion is the role of qualia in these arguments. It then describes and criticizes reasons for characterizing color, smell, taste, sound, and warmth and color as secondary qualities on the basis of our commonsense divisions among sensory modalities; Grice’s proposal for distinguishing among the sensory modalities is focal here. The general conclusion is that reasons for drawing the primary-secondary quality distinction are unconvincing.

Colour as a Secondary Quality1

Mind, 1989

The Galilean Intuition Does modern science imply, contrary to the testimony of our eyes, that grass is not green? Galileo thought it did: Hence I think that these tastes, odors, colors, etc., on the side of the object in which they seem to exist, are nothing else than mere names, but hold their residence solely in the sensitive body; so that if the animal were removed, every such quality would be abolished and annihilated. Nevertheless, as soon as we have imposed names on them, particular and different from those of the other primary and real accidents, we induce ourselves to believe that they also exist just as truly and really as the latter.2 [S]ince in fact we apply color predicates to physical objects and never to sensations, ideas, experiences, etc., the account of their semantics recommended by the Principle of Charity is one that makes them truly applicable to tomatoes and lemons rather than to sense experiences thereof.3

Color as a secondary quality

1989

Mathematical expressibility, perceptual relativity, and secondary qualities

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 1991

DURING THE seventeenth century, several apparently very disparate reasons were advanced for believing that there is an important distinction between primary and secondary qualities. The most prominent were (1) the overall explanatory success of a physical science which refers only to primary qualities (2) the mathematical expressibility of primary but not secondary qualities, and (3) the immunity of primary but not secondary qualities to perceptual relativity arguments. The first of these would find sympathy today; questions about which types of qualities are real are often taken to be decided by the scientific theory that provides the best explanation for all of the relevant phenomena. But the second and third of these reasons may seem odd. Why should perceptual relativity or mathematical expressibility mark an important distinction among qualities? I shall argue that mathematical expressibility and immunity from perceptual relativity indeed provide strong evidence for the reality of physical qualities. Furthermore, I shall contend that immunity from perceptual relativity and mathematical expressibility are intimately connected; what explains the plausibility of the perceptual relativity arguments also accounts for the power of the arguments t¥om mathematical expressibility.

A Non-modal Conception of Secondary Properties

2010

There seems to be a distinction bet:ween primary and secondary properties; some philosophers defend the view rhat properties like colours and values are secondary, while others criticize ie The distinction is usually introduced in terms of essence; roughly, secondary properties essentially involve mental states, while prirnary properties do noL In part because this does not seem very illuminating, philosophers have produced different reductive analyses in modal terms, metaphysic al' episternic. Here 1 will argue, firstly, that some weU-known examples fail, and also that there are deep reasoos why such approaches should do so. Secondly, 1 wiJI argue that it 1s acceptable to remaio satisfied ;vith the nonreductive account in terrns of essence. To that end, I will indicare how such an explication could be put ro use to support the claim that properties like colours and values are secondary. In a series of recent writings, Kit Fine has argued that essence cannor be reductively analy...

Colour Physicalism, Naïve Realism, and the Argument from Structure

Minds and Machines

Colours appear to instantiate a number of structural properties: for instance, they stand in distinctive relations of similarity and difference, and admit of a fundamental distinction into unique and binary. Accounting for these structural properties is often taken to present a serious problem for physicalist theories of colour. This paper argues that a prominent attempt by Byrne and Hilbert (e.g. 2003) to account for the structural properties of the colours, consistent with the claim that colours are types of surface spectral reflectance, is unsuccessful. Instead, it is suggested that a better account of the structural properties of the colours is provided by a form of non-reductive physicalism about colour: a naïve realist theory of colour, according to which colours are superficial mind-independent properties.

Kant and Helmholtz on Primary and Secondary Qualities

Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Historical and Ongoing Debate, ed. Lawrence Nolan , Oxford University Press, 304-338., 2011

This chapter finds two versions of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities in Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Locke. Although agreeing that primary qualities are physically basic properties of extended particles (including size, shape, position, and motion), these authors differed on whether secondary qualities such as color exist only in the mind as sensations or belong to bodies as powers to cause sensations. Kant was initially a metaphysical realist about primary qualities as spatialized forces (vs. bare extended particles), before placing space among the appearances in his critical period. Space becomes the subjective form in which transcendently real forces and relations appear. Kant viewed color as a subjective sensation in the mind, whereas Helmholtz treated color as a power to cause sensations. Helmholtz was initially a realist about primary qualities as spatialized masses and forces, but he later adopted the epistemically modest view of space as the subjective form in which forces and relations appear.

Primary and Secondary Qualities: A Proposed Modification of the Lockean Account

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1977

We intuitively feel that there is a difference between sensible qualities such as size, shape and solidity on the one hand, and color, taste, smell and sound on the other. The former seem to be more fundamental than the latter, and the latter more "subjective" than the former. I view the theory of primary and secondary qualities as an attempt to articulate the nature of this intuitively felt difference. Thus, I agree with Jonathan Bennett that the primary/secondary quality distinction is an ontological one, which need not be tied to representationalism or to any other epistemological theory.' In setting out the distinction I shall start from Locke's account of it, because of its insightfulness, historical importance, and familiarity. However, my purpose is not primarily exegetical but philosophical. Accordingly, I shall keep my remarks on alternative interpretations of Locke's seminal but frequently ambiguous account to a minimum and confine them largely to the footnotes, so as to develop uninterruptedly what I take to be his "best" line of thought. Further, I shall propose, in section 2, a significant modification of Locke's characterization of the secondary qualities. In section 3, I shall show that my proposed modification of Locke's account helps us to understand two puzzling claims that he makes about secondary qualities;' and in section 4, I shall draw out its implications for the contrast between primary and secondary qualities. Throughout the paper, I shall assume the correctness of an (Chisholmian) adverbial analysis of sense experience, as opposed to the sense-datum analysis that Locke accepted. I shall not defend this assumption here, though I believe that its clarificatory power with respect to the present topic is an important argument in its favor. 1. Secondary Qualities as Dispositional Properties. Locke defines primary qualities as those which any physical object must possess no matter what state it is in or what changes it undergoes. He says that these include size, shape, solidity, mobility (motion or rest), and number. He illustrates his claim that these qualities are "utterly Georges Dicker, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York College at Brockport, received his Ph. D. from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in 1969. He is the author of Dewey's Theory of Knowing, and his articles and reviews have appeared in The Monist, the Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society, The Journal of Value Inquiry, and orher journals. In 1975-1976 he held an NEH Fellowship in Residence for College Teachers at Brown University. He is completing a book in perceptual epistemology and has an article, "Is There a Problem About Perception and Knowledge.?" forthcoming in the American Philosophical Quarterly.

The Character of Color Terms: A Materialist View

This paper investigates the character of predicates like: (A) lx(x is red), and (B) lxy(x appears red to y), where x stands for a visible object and y for a perceiving subject (the reference to a time may be neglected).

Review Essay: Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Historical and Ongoing Debate, edited by Laurence Nolan (OUP) (original) (raw)

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