Locke on Qualities

Locke's Alternative to Innate Ideas

- Tabula rasa

- Nothing is in the understanding which was not previously encountered in sense-experience.

- Empiricist axiom = There is nothing in the intellect that was not previously in the senses.

- "Experience: In that, all our Knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our Observation employ'd either about external, sensible Objects; or about the internal Operations of our Minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that, which supplies our Understandings with all the material of thinking. These two are the Fountains of Knowledge, from when all the Ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring."

- Idea = "...stands for whatsoever is the Object of the Understanding, when a man thinks" Or: 'Whatsoever the Mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of Perception, Thought or Understanding'

- Rejects the view that we directly and immediately perceive external objects

- What we perceive according to indirect realism is just an intermediary between objects and perceiver

"The Veil of Perception" (Bennett)

Primary and Secondary Qualities

- Primary qualities = properties a material object possesses independently of us (resemblance)

- Secondary qualities = powers in bodies to produce ideas in us like color, taste, smell and so on that are caused by the interaction of our particular perceptual apparatus with the primary qualities of the object (non-resemblance)

- "From whence I think it is easier to draw this Observation, That the Ideas of primary Qualities of Bodies, are Resemblances of them, and their Patterns do really exist in the Bodies themselves; but the Ideas, produced in us by these Secondary Qualities, have no resemblance of them at all."

- Quality = a power that a body has to produce ideas in us.

- Causal theory = about what in the object causes certain ideas in the mind

Primary Qualities

- Primary qualities = resemblances between the properties of ideas and the properties of 'external' objects

- Solidity, Extension, Figure, Motion, or Rest, and Number', and adds 'Bulk' and 'Texture'

Properties

- 'Inseparable' from body

- Intrinsic to the body

- Non-relational (a body could in principle possess them even in the absense of any other body)

- Necessary in virtue of being in space/extended (e.g. modes of extension --- shape, size).

Typically, the 'scientific' properties of an object --- those used ni classical physical science to explain the way the world works

Secondary Qualities

- Dependent on the object and the subject --- a product of the interaction of the two, e.g., colour, smell, temperature.

- 'Powers to produce various Sensations in us' and 'nothing but' such powers

- Secondary qualities 'are no more really in [bodies] than Sickness or Pain is... Take away the Sensation of them ...and [they] are reduced to their Causes'.

- In the mind-independent body, just not in there as it is perceived to be.

- E.g., x is red=x possesses the power (disposition), by virtue of the primary qualities of its microstructural parts, to produce in us (or, more properly, to produce in a normal human percipient in standard conditions of vision) an idea of sensation of red. (Lowe)

Scientific Method as Empiricist Method

Robert Boyle

- Primary/secondary qualities as a "commonplace" distinction --- from Descartes and Galileo to Newton

- "I agree... that there is one catholic of universal matter common to all bodies, by which I mean a substance extended, divisible and impenetrable [and sometimes in motion]."

- Requirement to explain how all the richness of the world we perceive ("the variety of natural bodies" emerges from this austere picture of moving atoms interacting in space (i.e., from the one to the many)

- "Primary affections of bodies" = "Each of the primitive fragments or masses of matter must have two attributes --- its own magnitude, or rather size, and its own figure, or shape."

- "To distinguish them from those less simple qualities (as colours, tastes and odours) that belong to bodies upon their [the primary qualities'] account".

Locke's Anxiety over Natural Science

- Remember: the Essay is meant as a critical prolegomena to science --- a way of testing its concepts by introspecting within the mind to see what the mind is suited to knowing about the world. It is meant as an initial critique to make science possible and ensure it remains compatible with the human mind.

- "I have in what just goes before been engaged in physical inquiries a little further than perhaps I intended. But [without this digression] it were impossible to discourse intelligibly of [ideas]: --- I hope I shall be pardoned this little excursion into natural philosophy."

Locke as Corpuscularian

- Theory of perception as mechanical process by which atoms impact on the senses and cause ideas.

- Atoms possess the basic primary qualities (they have a shape, a size and motion).

- Provides model for production of secondary qualities:

Locke as Agnostic

- Elsewhere claims not to know how secondary qualities are produced.

- We still cannot discover any "undoubted Rules" concerning their production or connection, nor "conceive how any size, figure, or motion of any Particles, can possibly produce in us the Idea of any Colour, Taste, or Sound".

- Dogmatic affirmation of atoms and agnostic scepticism about them.

Further Ambiguities

- How can Locke know how secondary qualities work mind-independently if their ideas don't resemble these operations?

- Can secondary qualities be caused by primary qualities, if ideas of secondary qualities cannot be reduced to or explained by primary qualities?

- How can Locke be sure which quality belongs in which category?

- What does it mean for a primary quality to "resemble" its cause?

- What underlies and unifies primay qualities in an object? Is there more to an object than its qualities? Does it have an imperceptible substance supporting them?