3933
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Primary qualities (such as shape, solidity, mass) are held to really exist, unlike secondary qualities [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
Sensible qualities are by philosophers divided into primary and secondary; the former are extension, figure, solidity, gravity, motion and rest, which exist really in bodies.
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From:
George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.169)
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A reaction:
A crucial distinction, which anti-realists such as Berkeley end up denying. I think it is a good distinction, and philosophers should fight to preserve it.
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3935
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The apparent size of an object varies with its distance away, so that can't be a property of the object [Berkeley]
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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?
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From:
George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.171)
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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).
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3957
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Immediate objects of perception, which some treat as appearances, I treat as the real things themselves [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
Those immediate objects of perception, which, according to you, are only appearances of things, I take to be the real things themselves.
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From:
George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.237)
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A reaction:
If that is a judgement, which it seems to be, it is a strange one. Realists offer a much better explanation of perceptions.
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