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Single Idea 3935

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

Full Idea

As we approach to or recede from an object, the visible extension varies, being at one distance ten or a hundred times greater than at another; doth it not follow that it is not really inherent in the object?

Clarification

'Visible extension' is the apparent size. 'Small cows distant, big cows close'.

Gist of Idea

The apparent size of an object varies with its distance away, so that can't be a property of the object

Source

George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.171)

Book Ref

Berkeley,George: 'The Principles of Human Knowledge etc.', ed/tr. Warnock,G.J. [Fontana 1962], p.171

A Reaction

Berkeley is confused, because he is too literally empirical. Qualities are not self-evidently primary or secondary, but are judged so after comparisons (e.g. with testimony, or with the other senses).

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]