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Single Idea 3934
[filed under theme 12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / e. Primary/secondary critique
]
Full Idea
A mite must be supposed to see his own foot as a body of some considerable dimension, though they appear to you scarcely discernible.
Clarification
A mite is a small insect
Gist of Idea
A mite would see its own foot as large, though we would see it as tiny
Source
George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.170)
Book Ref
Berkeley,George: 'The Principles of Human Knowledge etc.', ed/tr. Warnock,G.J. [Fontana 1962], p.170
A Reaction
Berkeley is confused. Hot is secondary, but temperature is primary. Bigness is secondary, size primay. Midgets and tall people don't disagree over the size of a table.
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]
|
6727
|
Figure and extension seem just as dependent on the observer as heat and cold
[Berkeley]
|
6728
|
Motion is in the mind, since swifter ideas produce an appearance of slower motion
[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]
|