Secondary Qualities as Dispositions (original) (raw)

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.

Locke on Primary and Secondary Qualities

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 1997

In this paper, I argue that Book II, Chapter viii of Locke's Essay is a unified, self-consistent whole, and that the appearance of inconsistency is due largely to anachronistic misreadings and misunderstandings. The key to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is that the former are, while the latter are not, real properties, i.e., properties that exist in bodies independently of being perceived. Once the distinction is properly understood, it becomes clear that Locke's arguments for it are simple, valid and (in one case) persuasive as well.

Locke’s Distinction Between Primary and Secondary Qualities as Partly Correlated with Kant’s Account of The Thing in Itself

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities

In this research, I propose intertwined arguments regarding John Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Firstly, I will show how Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities causes several problems of perception. Secondly, I demonstrate how such problems affect how we might see this distinction in a way that partially supports Kant’s concept of the thing in itself. To begin, I provide a brief history of the topic before delving into Locke’s description of empiricism and interpreting his writing on primary and secondary qualities. Next, I discuss the problem of primary qualities, considering the interpretation of solidity and Locke’s resemblance thesis. The analysis in the last section demonstrates how inconsistency with the respect to ideas of power and sensation lead us to believe that Locke’s account generates Kant’s account of the thing in itself.

Locke's Life-World: The Teleological Role of Secondary Qualities

Is snow white even if no one sees it? Seventeenth-century philosophers, and John Locke in particular, are famous for distinguishing between mind-dependent secondary qualities, such as colours or sounds, and mind-independent primary qualities, such as motion or shape. In view of this distinction, it is tempting to answer that snow isn't really white; it only seems so to certain cognising subjects, while in fact it is an array of moving particles. This way of distinguishing between these qualities has raised many questions about the exact criteria of the distinction. Since the distinction is mainly discussed as a hallmark of the so-called scientific revolution or mechanistic philosophy, the focus is mostly on the question whether secondary qualities are subjective and can be reduced to primary qualities. 1 Whereas the whiteness of snow just seems to be in the eye of the beholder, the causal work is done by the moving particles. This focus depicts secondary qualities mainly as leading us into an erroneous understanding of the world and thus as something to be overcome through a scientific stance. But what if these qualities actually have a positive role? What if it turns out that seeing snow as white and feeling it as cold is vital for us?

Some remarks on Reid on Primary and Secondary Qualities

John Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities of objects has meet resistance. In this paper I bypass the traditional critiques of the distinction and instead concentrate on two specific counterexamples to the distinction: Killer yellow and the puzzle of multiple dispositions. One can accommodate these puzzles, I argue, by adopting Thomas Reid’s version of the primary/secondary quality distinction, where the distinction is founded upon conceptual grounds. The primary/secondary quality distinction is epistemic rather than metaphysical. A consequence of Reid’s primary/ secondary quality distinction is that one must deny the original version of Molyneux’s question, while one must affirm an amended version of it. I show that these two answers to Molyneux’s question are not at odds with current empirical research. Keywords: John Locke, Thomas Reid, primary/secondary quality distinction, killer yellow, puzzle of multiple dispositions, Molyneux’s question

Mechanism, resemblance and secondary qualities: From Descartes to Locke

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2008

Locke’s argument for the primary-secondary quality distinction is compared with Descartes’s argument (in the Principles of Philosophy) for the distinction between mechanical modifications and sensible qualities. I argue that following Descartes, Locke’s argument for the primary-secondary quality distinction is an essentially a priori argument, based on our conception of substance and the constraints on bodily interaction that this conception sets.

Primary and Secondary Qualities

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.