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Single Idea 15989

[filed under theme 12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / b. Primary/secondary ]

Full Idea

If I am right, colours, tastes, odours and sounds are not, for Locke secondary qualities but ideas; secondary qualities are colourless, tasteless, odourless and soundless textures of bodies.

Gist of Idea

Colours, smells and tastes are ideas; the secondary qualities have no colour, smell or taste

Source

report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 8

Book Ref

Alexander,Peter: 'Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles' [CUP 1985], p.173


A Reaction

This the concise summary of Alexander's reading of Locke, and I find him wholly convincing.


The 19 ideas with the same theme [dividing qualities into different types]:

Which of the contrary features of a body are basic to it? [Aristotle]
Why can't we deduce secondary qualities from primary ones, if they cause them? [Buridan]
Secondary qualities come from temperaments and proportions of primary qualities [Conimbricense]
Colours, smells and tastes are ideas; the secondary qualities have no colour, smell or taste [Locke, by Alexander,P]
Secondary qualities are powers of complex primary qualities to produce sensations in us [Locke]
Hands can report conflicting temperatures, but not conflicting shapes [Locke]
We can't know how primary and secondary qualities connect together [Locke]
We know the shape of a cone from its concept, but we don't know its colour [Kant]
Essentialists mostly accept the primary/secondary qualities distinction [Ellis]
We achieve objectivity by dropping secondary qualities, to focus on structural primary qualities [Nagel]
Modern science depends on the distinction between primary and secondary qualities [Nagel]
Light wavelengths entering the eye are only indirectly related to object colours [Dennett]
Relativity means differing secondary perceptions are not real disagreements [McGinn]
Phenomenalism is correct for secondary qualities, so scepticism is there impossible [McGinn]
Being red simply consists in looking red [McGinn]
Maybe all possible sense experience must involve both secondary and primary qualities [McGinn]
You understood being red if you know the experience involved; not so with thngs being square [McGinn]
Secondary qualities have one sensory mode, but primary qualities can have more [Robinson,H]
Objects only have secondary qualities because they have primary qualities [Heil]