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Single Idea 22422

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

Full Idea

The inseparability thesis about perception says that for any actual and possible sense the content of experiences delivered by that sense must be both of secondary qualities and of primary qualities.

Gist of Idea

Maybe all possible sense experience must involve both secondary and primary qualities

Source

Colin McGinn (Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals [1983], 6)

Book Ref

McGinn,Colin: 'The Subjective View' [OUP 1983], p.81

A Reaction

That would mean that all possible experience must have a mode of presentation, and also must be 'of' something independent of experience. So a yellow after-image would not count as an 'experience'?

The 19 ideas from 'Subjective View: sec qualities and indexicals'

22413 Being red simply consists in looking red [McGinn]
22415 Relativity means differing secondary perceptions are not real disagreements [McGinn]
22416 Phenomenalism is correct for secondary qualities, so scepticism is there impossible [McGinn]
22412 Lockean secondary qualities (unlike primaries) produce particular sensory experiences [McGinn]
22414 You don't need to know how a square thing looks or feels to understand squareness [McGinn]
18410 Indexical thought is in relation to my self-consciousness [McGinn]
22417 Indexicals do not figure in theories of physics, because they are not explanatory causes [McGinn]
22418 I can know indexical truths a priori, unlike their non-indexical paraphrases [McGinn]
22420 The indexical perspective is subjective, incorrigible and constant [McGinn]
22423 Touch doesn't provide direct experience of primary qualities, because touch feels temperature [McGinn]
22426 We can perceive objectively, because primary qualities are not mind-created [McGinn]
18402 Indexical concepts are indispensable, as we need them for the power to act [McGinn]
22421 Could there be a mind which lacked secondary quality perception? [McGinn]
22424 Secondary qualities contain information; their variety would be superfluous otherwise [McGinn]
22425 The utility theory says secondary qualities give information useful to human beings [McGinn]
22422 Maybe all possible sense experience must involve both secondary and primary qualities [McGinn]
22427 To explain object qualities, primary qualities must be more than mere sources of experience [McGinn]
22428 You understood being red if you know the experience involved; not so with thngs being square [McGinn]
7629 We see objects 'directly' by representing them [McGinn]