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Single Idea 16924

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

Full Idea

I also count as mere appearances, in addition to [heat, colour, taste], the remaining qualities of bodies which are called primariae, extension, place, and space in general, with all that depends on it (impenetrability or materiality, shape etc.).

Gist of Idea

I count the primary features of things (as well as the secondary ones) as mere appearances

Source

Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 289 n.II)

Book Ref

Kant,Immanuel: 'Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic', ed/tr. Lucas,Peter G. [Manchester UP 1971], p.46

A Reaction

He sides with Berkeley and Hume against Locke and Boyle. He denies being an idealist (Idea 16923), so it seems to me that Kant might be described as a 'phenomenalist'.

Related Idea

Idea 16923 I admit there are bodies outside us [Kant]

The 17 ideas with the same theme [criticism of the primary/secondary distinction]:

12721 Light, heat and colour are apparent qualities, and so are motion, figure and extension [Leibniz]
19358 Colour and pain must express the nature of their stimuli, without exact resemblance [Leibniz]
3934 A mite would see its own foot as large, though we would see it as tiny [Berkeley]
3935 The apparent size of an object varies with its distance away, so that can't be a property of the object [Berkeley]
3937 'Solidity' is either not a sensible quality at all, or it is clearly relative to our senses [Berkeley]
3940 Distance is not directly perceived by sight [Berkeley]
6726 No one can, by abstraction, conceive extension and motion of bodies without sensible qualities [Berkeley]
6728 Motion is in the mind, since swifter ideas produce an appearance of slower motion [Berkeley]
6727 Figure and extension seem just as dependent on the observer as heat and cold [Berkeley]
2239 If secondary qualities (e.g. hardness) are in the mind, so are primary qualities like extension [Hume]
16924 I count the primary features of things (as well as the secondary ones) as mere appearances [Kant]
5679 We can't grasp the separation of quality types, or what a primary-quality world would be like [Dancy,J]
5680 For direct realists the secondary and primary qualities seem equally direct [Dancy,J]
3885 We only conceive of primary qualities as attached to secondary qualities [Scruton]
3910 If primary and secondary qualities are distinct, what has the secondary qualities? [Scruton]
7053 Treating colour as light radiation has the implausible result that tomatoes are not red [Heil]
9308 If subjective and objective begin to merge, then so do primary and secondary qualities [Svendsen]