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Single Idea 7052

[filed under theme 12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / d. Secondary qualities ]

Full Idea

Theories that take colours to be properties of the surfaces of objects have difficulty accounting for a host of phenomena including coloured light emitted by radiant sources and so-called film colours (the colour of the sky, for instance).

Gist of Idea

Colours aren't surface properties, because of radiant sources and the colour of the sky

Source

John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.4)

Book Ref

Heil,John: 'From an Ontological Point of View' [OUP 2005], p.201

A Reaction

Personally I never thought that colours might be actual properties of surfaces, but it is nice to have spelled out a couple of instances that make it very implausible. Neon and sodium lights I take to be examples of the first case.

The 32 ideas with the same theme [qualities seeming to involve the observer]:

1727 Some objects of sensation are unique to one sense, where deception is impossible [Aristotle]
16725 Some knowledge is lost if you lose a sense, and there is no way the knowledge can be replaced [Aristotle]
5949 Epicurus says colours are relative to the eye, not intrinsic to bodies [Epicurus, by Plutarch]
20781 Non-graspable presentations are from what doesn't exist, or are not clear and distinct [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius]
16721 Changes in secondary qualities are caused by changes in primary qualities [Giles of Orleans]
7401 Heat and colour don't exist, so cannot mislead about the external world [Galileo, by Tuck]
5454 Tastes, odours and colours only reside in consciousness, and would disappear with creatures [Galileo]
22593 Our sensation of light may not be the same as what produces the sensation [Descartes]
15962 Boyle's term 'texture' is not something you feel, but is unobservable structures of particles [Boyle, by Alexander,P]
15964 Boyle's secondary qualities are not illusory, or 'in the mind' [Boyle, by Alexander,P]
15973 In my view Locke's 'textures' are groups of corpuscles which are powers (rather than 'having' powers) [Locke, by Alexander,P]
7050 I suspect that Locke did not actually believe colours are 'in the mind' [Locke, by Heil]
15979 Secondary qualities are simply the bare powers of an object [Locke]
19430 We know objects by perceptions, but their qualities don't reveal what it is we are perceiving [Leibniz]
23638 Secondary qualities conjure up, and are confused with, the sensations which produce them [Reid]
5532 Colours and tastes are not qualities of things, but alterations of the subject [Kant]
21447 I can make no sense of the red experience being similar to the quality in the object [Kant]
6498 Armstrong suggests secondary qualities are blurred primary qualities [Armstrong, by Robinson,H]
7440 Secondary qualities are microscopic primary qualities of physical things [Armstrong]
22412 Lockean secondary qualities (unlike primaries) produce particular sensory experiences [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]
6494 If objects are not coloured, and neither are sense-contents, we are left saying that nothing is coloured [Robinson,H]
6499 Shape can be experienced in different ways, but colour and sound only one way [Robinson,H]
6500 If secondary qualities match senses, would new senses create new qualities? [Robinson,H]
4108 Phenol-thio-urea tastes bitter to three-quarters of people, but to the rest it is tasteless, so which is it? [Crane]
7044 Secondary qualities are just primary qualities considered in the light of their effect on us [Heil]
7052 Colours aren't surface properties, because of radiant sources and the colour of the sky [Heil]
15061 Although colour depends on us, we can describe the world that way if it picks out fundamentals [Fine,K]
9118 The colour bands of the spectrum arise from our biology; they do not exist in the physics [Sorensen]
6375 The taste of chocolate is a 'finer-grained' sensation than the taste of sweetness [Polger]