Several philosophers have argued that "temporal becoming" is mind-dependent, a claim they see as analogous to the traditional one about the mind-dependence of secondary qualities. They have tended to assume that the classical secondary qualities are mind-dependent, and also that the close analogue for time of directly experienced secondary qualities is an irreducibly indexical nowness. In an earlier article it was argued that we should reject the second assumption. Here it is shown why there (...) is indeed a genuine problem of the ontological status of directly experienced temporality and spatiality, a problem analogous to the traditional one about secondary qualities. (shrink)

There is a strong pull to the idea that there is some metaphysically interesting distinction between the fully real, objective, observer-independent qualities of things as they are in themselves, and the less-than-fully-real, subjective, observer-dependent qualities of things as they are for us. Call this (putative) distinction the primary/secondary quality distinction. The distinction between primary and secondary qualities is philosophically interesting because it is (a) often quite attractive to draw such a distinction, and (b) incredibly hard (...) to spell it out in any kind of satisfying and sensible way. I attempt such a spelling-out after first trying to pin down in more detail what we want from the primary/secondary quality distinction, and saying a bit about why that is such a hard thingto get. (shrink)

J.L. Mackie insists that ordinary evaluative thought presents itself as a matter of sensitivity to aspects of the world. And this phenomenological thesis seems correct. When one or another variety of philosophical non-cognitivism claims to capture the truth about what the experience of value is like, or (in a familiar surrogate for phenomenology) about what we mean by our evaluative language, the claim is never based on careful attention to the lived character of evaluative thought or discourse. The idea is, (...) rather, that the very concept of the cognitive or factual rules out the possibility of an undiluted representation of how things are, enjoying, nevertheless, the internal relation to 'attitudes' or the will that would be needed to count as evaluative. On this view the phenomenology of value would involve a mere incoherence, if it were as Mackie says--a possibility that then tends (naturally enough) not to be so much as entertained. But, as Mackie sees, there is no satisfactory justification for supposing that the factual is, by definition, attitudinatively and motivationally neutral. This clears away the only obstacle to accepting his phenomenological claim; and the upshot is that non-cognitivism must offer to correct the phenomenology of value, rather than give an account of it. -/- In Machie's view the correction is called for. In this paper I want to suggest that he attributes an unmerited plausibility to this thesis, by giving a false picture of what one is committed to if one resists it. (shrink)

The Dangerous Book for Boys Abstract: Seventeenth and eighteenth century discussions of the senses are often thought to contain a profound truth: some perceptible properties are secondary qualities, dispositions to produce certain sorts of experiences in perceivers. In particular, colors are secondary qualities: for example, an object is green iff it is disposed to look green to standard perceivers in standard conditions. After rebutting Boghossian and Velleman’s argument that a certain kind of secondary quality theory (...) is viciously circular, we discuss three main lines of argument for the secondary quality theory. The first is inspired by an intuitively compelling picture of perception articulated by Reid; the second is that the secondary quality theory is a conceptual truth; the third line of argument is presented in Johnston’s influential paper ‘How to speak of the colors’. We conclude that all these arguments fail, and that the secondary quality theory is unmotivated. Keywords: color, secondary quality, disposition, vision, perception.. (shrink)

Thomas Reid famously claimed that our perceptual experiences reveal what primary qualities are in themselves, while providing us with only an obscure notion of secondary qualities. I maintain that this claim is largely correct and that, consequently, any adequate theory of perception must explain the fact that perceptual experiences provide significantly less insight into the nature of secondary qualities than into the nature of primary qualities. I maintain that neither naïve realism nor the standard (...) Russellian variety of the content view can provide a satisfying explanation; instead, in order to provide a satisfying explanation, we must posit that perceptual experiences represent properties via Fregean modes of presentation. Further, I maintain that we must depart from the standard Fregean variety of the content view in two important respects. First, the relevant modes of presentation must be characterized without appealing to causal relations between perceptual experiences and perceived properties; and second, we must posit that primary and secondary qualities are represented via modes of presentation of different kinds. The resulting view is that primary qualities are represented via perceptual modes of presentation analogous to highly detailed descriptions, while secondary qualities are represented via perceptual modes of presentation analogous to impoverished descriptions. (shrink)

The properties of secondary qualities have recently become an object of interest again in analytic philosophy; it is generally assumed that secondary qualities - in the mind at least - tend to be irreducible to the physical: taste, smell, color perception, the aural, & the tactile all seem to be more subjectively perceived than most other qualities. This is shown to present such topics as realism vs anti-realism, description, & truth-value with a series of problems, (...) which are then discussed. The standard literature (S. A. Kripke, D. M. Armstrong, & C. McGinn) is reviewed; it is concluded that, at least for color perception, a dispositional analysis is somewhat satisfactory; secondary qualities are ubiquitous. 7 References. A. Cohen-Siegel. (shrink)

Secondary qualities have peculiarities which are thought to threaten physicalism. It is argued that these peculiarities are only to be expected in a physicalist universe in virtue of the essential characteristics of a representing device. Any device representing the world such as a camera will have depictional qualities. Secondary qualities are a subset of these.

McDowell, responding to Mackie’s argument from queerness, defended realism about values by analogy to secondary qualities. A certain tension between two inter- pretations of McDowell’s response is highlighted. According to one, realism about val- ues would indeed be vindicated, but at the cost of failing to provide an appropriate response to Mackie’s argument; whereas according to the other, McDowell does pro- vide an adequate response, but evaluative realism is jeopardized.

This book investigates the subjective and objective representations of the world, developing analogies between secondary qualities and indexical thoughts and arguing that subjective representations are ineliminable. Throughout, McGinn brings together historical and contemporary discussions to illuminate old problems in a novel way.

The notion of a secondary property is usefully construed this way: sensory-perceptual experiences that present apparent instantiations of such a quality have intentional content—presentational content—that is systematically non-veridical, because the experientially presented quality is never actually instantiated; but judgments that naively seem to attribute instantiations of this very quality really have different content—judgmental content—that is often veridical. Color-presenting experiences and color-attributing judgments, for instance, are plausibly regarded as conforming to such a dual-content secondary-quality account. In this paper we (...) address the comparative theoretical advantages and disadvantages of two alternative versions of compatibilism about agentive freedom. Illusionist compatibilism is a dual-content secondary-quality view asserting that free-agency experience has presentational content that is libertarian and systematically non-veridical, whereas free-agency attributing judgments have non-libertarian, compatibilist, content. Uniform compatibilism instead asserts that free-agency experience and free-agency attributing judgments have uniform, compatibilist, content. We argue that uniform compatibilism fully accommodates the directly introspectable features of free-agency phenomenology, and is more plausible than illusionist compatibilism. (shrink)

The first half of this review article on Locke on primary and secondary qualities leads up to a fairly straightforward reading of what Locke says about the distinction in Essay II.viii, one that, in its general outlines, represents a sympathetic understanding of Locke’s discussion. The second half of the paper turns to consider a few of the ways in which interpreting Locke on primary and secondary qualities has proven more complicated. Here we take up what is (...) sometimes called the Berkeleyan interpretation of Locke, the understanding of Locke’s resemblance thesis, and Locke’s views of qualities and their relationship to powers. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Book II, Chapter viii of Locke' Essay is a unified, self-consistent whole, and that the appearance of inconsistency is due largely to anachronistic misreadings and misunderstandings. The key to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is that the former are, while the latter are not, real properties, i.e., properties that exist in bodies independently of being perceived. Once the distinction is properly understood, it becomes clear that Locke's arguments for it are (...) simple, valid and (in one case) persuasive as well. (shrink)

The Dangerous Book for Boys Abstract: Seventeenth and eighteenth century discussions of the senses are often thought to contain a profound truth: some perceptible properties are secondary qualities, dispositions to produce certain sorts of experiences in perceivers. In particular, colors are secondary qualities: for example, an object is green iff it is disposed to look green to standard perceivers in standard conditions. After rebutting Boghossian and Velleman’s argument that a certain kind of secondary quality theory (...) is viciously circular, we discuss three main lines of argument for the secondary quality theory. The first is inspired by an intuitively compelling picture of perception articulated by Reid; the second is that the secondary quality theory is a conceptual truth; the third line of argument is presented in Johnston’s influential paper ‘How to speak of the colors’. We conclude that all these arguments fail, and that the secondary quality theory is unmotivated. Keywords: color, secondary quality, disposition, vision, perception.. (shrink)

In this paper I will defend the view that, according to Locke, secondary qualities are dispositions to produce sensations in us. Although this view is widely attributed to Locke, this interpretation needs defending for two reasons. First, commentators often assume that secondary qualities are dispositional properties because Locke calls them “powers” to produce sensations. However, primary qualities are also powers, so the powers locution is insufficient grounds for justifying the dispositionalist interpretation. Second, if secondary (...) qualities are dispositional properties then objects would retain secondary qualities while not being observed, but Locke says that colors “vanish” in the dark. Some commentators use this as evidence that Locke rejects the dispositionalist view of secondary qualities, and even those that are sympathetic to the traditional interpretation find these comments to be problematic. By contrast, I argue that even in these supposedly damning passages Locke shows an unwavering commitment to the view that the powers to produce sensations in us, i.e., the secondary qualities, remain in objects even when they are not being perceived. Thus the arguments against the traditional interpretation are unpersuasive, and we should conclude that Locke does indeed hold that secondary qualities are dispositions to cause sensations in us. (shrink)

Although the importance, both historically and systematically, of the seventeenth century distinction between primary and secondary qualities is commonly recognised, there is no consensus on its exact nature. Apparently, one of the main difficulties in its interpretation is to tell the constitutive from the argumentative elements. In this paper, we focus on the primary-secondary quality distinctions drawn by Boyle and Locke. We criticise, more specifically, MacIntosh’s analysis of them. On the one hand, MacIntosh attributes too many different (...) primary-secondary quality distinctions to Boyle and Locke. On the other hand, he forbears to attribute a particular primary-secondary quality distinction to them, which, at least in the case of Boyle, differs genuinely from his main distinction between the mechanical affections of matter and all of matter’s other qualities. (shrink)

J.L. Mackie insists that ordinary evaluative thought presents itself as a matter of sensitivity to aspects of the world. And this phenomenological thesis seems correct. When one or another variety of philosophical non-cognitivism claims to capture the truth about what the experience of value is like, or (in a familiar surrogate for phenomenology) about what we mean by our evaluative language, the claim is never based on careful attention to the lived character of evaluative thought or discourse. The idea is, (...) rather, that the very concept of the cognitive or factual rules out the possibility of an undiluted representation of how things are, enjoying, nevertheless, the internal relation to 'attitudes' or the will that would be needed to count as evaluative. On this view the phenomenology of value would involve a mere incoherence, if it were as Mackie says--a possibility that then tends (naturally enough) not to be so much as entertained. But, as Mackie sees, there is no satisfactory justification for supposing that the factual is, by definition, attitudinatively and motivationally neutral. This clears away the only obstacle to accepting his phenomenological claim; and the upshot is that non-cognitivism must offer to correct the phenomenology of value, rather than give an account of it. -/- In Machie's view the correction is called for. In this paper I want to suggest that he attributes an unmerited plausibility to this thesis, by giving a false picture of what one is committed to if one resists it. (shrink)

LOCKE WAS RIGHT TO SAY PRIMARY QUALITIES "RESEMBLE" OUR\nIDEAS OF THEM IN A WAY SECONDARY QUALITIES DO NOT, BECAUSE\nHAVING THE APPROPRIATE PRIMARY-QUALITY "IDEA" IS LOGICALLY\nSUFFICIENT IN EACH CASE FOR KNOWING HOW SOMETHING MUST BE\n(INTRINSICALLY) IN ORDER FOR THE "QUALITY" TO INHERE IN IT.\nCOMPARE THE WAY A PERSON IS SAID TO "RESEMBLE" A VERBAL\nDESCRIPTION IN THE EVENT OF "ANSWERING TO" IT.

The aim of this article is to give an account of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities in a way which allows the distinction a useful place in an explanation of scientific enquiry. this is done by modifying certain of locke's criteria for primacy, and by showing that this procedure has certain advantages over keith campbell's account of the distinction. in particular, i argue that primary qualities cannot be specified in a theory-neutral way, and that this (...) has important consequences for an account of scientific observation and the relation between the scientific and everyday images of the world. (shrink)

The paper presents a novel account of nature and genesis of some philosophical problems, which vindicates a new approach to an arguably central and extensive class of such problems: The paper develops the Wittgensteinian notion of ‘philosophical pictures’ with the help of some notions adapted from metaphor research in cognitive linguistics and from work on unintentional analogical reasoning in cognitive psychology. The paper shows that adherence to such pictures systematically leads to the formulation of unwarranted claims, ill-motivated problems, and pointless (...) theories. To do so, the paper proceeds from a case-study on a lastingly influential development in early modern philosophy: the adoption of the doctrine of secondary qualities, and its principal consequences. The findings motivate a new approach to an arguably extensive and important class of philosophical problems: to the problems we raise in the grip of philosophical pictures. (shrink)

In the present paper we shall first focus on Locke’s and Reid’s understanding of primary and secondary qualities, as these two approaches mark the main dividing line in interpreting this distinction. Next, we will consider some modern approaches to the distinction and try to answer the question of whether, from theperspective of what we know about perception of sensory qualities, Locke’s ontological interpretation or Reid’s epistemological approach to the distinction are tenable ideas. Finally, we will concentrate on (...) the relation between language and qualities of objects and, on the basis of some adjectival systems in the world’s languages, see how languages render, or code, certain distinctions and qualities apparently obvious to our cognition. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Crispin Wright’s defence of the claim that the truth about intention is judgement-dependent is unstable because it can serve also to establish that the truth about shape is judgement-dependent, thereby violating his constraint that in developing the distinction between judgement-independent and judgement-dependent subject matters we have to be driven by the assumption that colour and shape will fall on different sides of the divide.

Democritus is generally understood to have anticipated the seventeenthcentury distinction between primary and secondary qualities. I argue that this is not the case, and that instead for Democritus all sensible qualities are conventional.

Reid defends the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. He does so in spite of accepting Berkeley’s critique of Locke on this issue and rejecting the Cartesian thesis that the distinction is based on reason. Reid contends that we have a clear, direct, and distinct conception of primary qualities but not of secondary qualities. We shall attempt to explain how Reid could defend the distinction while rejecting the resemblance theory of Locke and the rationalistic theory (...) of Descartes. (shrink)

Criticises the reduction of rightness and wrongness to the emotional reaction of an impartial observer to actions.

Sensibility theorists such as John McDowell have argued that once we appreciate certain similarities between moral values and secondary qualities, a new meta-ethical position might emerge, one that avoids the alleged difficulties with moral intuitionism and non-cognitivism. The aim of this paper is to examine the meta-ethical prospects of this secondary-quality analogy. Of particular concern will be the extent to which McDowell’s comparison of values to secondary qualities supports a viewpoint unique from that of the (...) moral intuitionist. Once we disentangle the various metaphysical and epistemological strands of McDowell’s analogy, McDowell’s position might appear closer to moral intuitionism than initially supposed. This discussion will also help clarify the intended meaning of the secondary-quality analogy, as well as its significance for ethics more generally. (shrink)

This paper outlines and defends a novel position in the color realism debate, namely structural realism. This position is novel in that it dissociates the veridicality of color attributions from the claim that physical objects are themselves colored. Thus, it is realist about color in both the semantic and epistemic senses, but not the ontic sense. The generality of this position is demonstrated by applying it to other “secondary qualities,” including heat, musical pitch, and odor. The basic argument (...) proceeds by analogy with the theory of measurement. I argue that perceptual experiences are analogous to numerical structures in that they are suitable for measurement, but only report measured values after they have been linked to states of a measurement device via calibration. Since the calibration of our sensory apparatus varies with context, it is inappropriate to identify specific experiences with specific properties in the world. Rather, it is structural relations between possible experiences which represent relations between possible external properties, and it is at the level of these structural relationships that veridicality is appropriately assessed. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Hume has an insight into the heart of most of “new philosophy” when he claims that according to it, proper sensibles are not Real properties of material substance and Real bodies. I call this tenet “the Proper Sensibles Principle” (PSP). In the second part of the paper, I defend the interpretation - mainly against Don Garrett’s doubts - that the PSP is a rational tenet in Hume’s view and he thus endorses it. Its rationality (...) means that the PSP has a firm foundation in inductive-causal reasoning. (shrink)

Mackie examines the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. It is argued that Locke's distinction supports the claim that he held a representative theory of perception. Mackie discussed Locke's arguments for the distinction. The relation of Locke's account to Molyneaux's problem is considered. Mackie critically compares his reformulation of the primary/secondary distinction with that of Jonathan Bennett.

The secondary qualities are those qualities of objects that bear a certain relation to our sensory powers: roughly, they are those qualities that we can readily detect only through a certain distinctive phenomenal experience. Contrary to what is sometimes supposed, there is nothing about the world itself (independent of our minds) that determines the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Instead, a theory of the secondary qualities must be grounded in facts about (...) how we conceive of these qualities, and ultimately in facts about human perception. (shrink)

Fourteen newly commissioned essays trace the historical development of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, which lies at the intersection of issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of perception. 'Primary and Secondary Qualities' focuses on the age of the Scientific Revolution, the 'locus classicus' of the distinction, but begins with chapters on ancient Greek and Scholastic accounts of qualities in an effort to identify its origins. The remainder of the volume is devoted to philosophical (...) reflections on qualities from the seventeenth century to the present day. Virtualliy every major figure is represented from Gassendi to Kant, and special attention is paid to Locke, Descartes, and Hume. The essays collected here cover a wide range of topics, including the foundation for the distinction, the question of whether it is lmetaphysical or merely epistemic, the status of secondary qualities, the nature of sensoriy representation, the relation between philosophy and science, the status of dispositions, and the semantics of sensible-quality terms"--Publisher's description, p. [4] of dust jacket. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to reconsider the very analogy between secondary qualities and moral values. It is argued that since the subject matter of moral evaluation are events and not objects, the function and the status of moral qualities should be understood only in terms of the olfactory and auditory qualities of events. This implies that the common comparison of moral values with colors is no longer possible.