Berkeley and Hume on Qualities

one of the most basic philosophical questions is the relation between mind and world how exactly does my mind relate to the world i hope to know things about the world i hope to understand it i hope to be able to act in the world in a way that makes sense is reasonable and will let me succeed at achieving my goals but it's hard to do that if i don't know how the thoughts the desires the intentions the plans i make the other aspects of my mental life correspond to the world so the question of the relationship between mind and world is really fundamental i want to know to what extent they correspond and various things that i think i want to know whether they're reflecting things that are really going on in the world or whether they're things that i am contributing that i am maybe hoping for or fantasizing or in some other way getting wrong about reality it's going to affect the way i act it's going to affect the way i think what i take to be a belief what i take to be knowledge i'm going to get into a lot of trouble conceivably if i've got a lot of things going on in my mind that correspond to nothing in the world descartes and locke draw a fundamental distinction that's supposed to help us understand this question the distinction between primary qualities of objects and secondary qualities the primary qualities are really in the things themselves they're inseparable from the things in themselves they're constant whereas the secondary qualities are a matter of how those things affect us they're being contributed by the mind so our ideas of secondary qualities things like colors and tastes and textures those are not really in the world those are being contributed by the mind but things like extension solidity mass movement those are really in the world those are primary qualities of the things themselves so to some extent our minds are getting the world right descartes and lock think they are matching characteristics of the world descartes and locke are what we had called today scientific realists science is revealing the real essences of things the true nature of things and the qualities that are identified by science as going on in the world those are the real qualities of objects but everything else is something that our mind is contributing it's a question of how those things are affecting our perceptual and cognitive faculties they're not really in the world that kind of distinction between the qualities that are really in the things themselves and described by science and the things that are not really in the things themselves but contributed by the mind came under surprising and sustained attack it was begun by bishop barkley responding to locke continued by david hume and then spawns an entire idealist tradition that has dominated much of the philosophical world for the last couple of centuries so it's sort of surprising that that took place given that our ordinary attitude i think is very much in line with a primary secondary quality distinction but today i want to talk about barkley and hume and their attack on that distinction their conception of qualities they're going to say there is no place for the kind of distinction that descartes and locke are drawing no way for us to say those qualities are really in the objects themselves in fact in their view everything is going to end up being something like a secondary quality everything really turns out to depend on the mind well bishop george barkley himself was the dean of dairy he was irish lived in northern ireland specifically he was a philosopher of the 18th century as you can see here and he was a very notable character important in the history of philosophy for starting that entire tradition within western philosophy here you see him pictured with a group of people referred to as his entourage barkley held that idealism the thesis that everything in the world is mind-dependent that the entire world as we understand is really a projection or construction of the mind that's the best defense of common sense against skepticism he thinks in particular that descartes locks ideas of objects make no sense and attacks the concept of a primary quality he correspondingly attacks the concept of a substance of a material object in general in the end he says there are only ideas the entire world is a construction of the mind the world has to be understood as fundamentally mental or spiritual well how does this constitute a defense against skepticism you might think of it as a surrender to the skeptic after all barkley seems to be saying well gosh mind everything is really mine so nothing corresponds to the world wow why aren't we skeptics as a result he doesn't think that's what he's doing instead he thinks what's happening is that the danger of skepticism is the gap between mind and world i've got a set of ideas about things i think certain things are true about the world and if there's a gap between the way i think and what's really going on the world then there is the danger that a lot of my thinking diverges and a lot of my beliefs diverge from the way the world really is that's what gives skepticism its power we think about scenarios where i'm wrong about this or that or maybe everything is in descartes evil deceiver scenario well how does he propose to get rid of that notice descartes and locke are saying let's use science to help address that some things yes we're going to have to surrender to the skeptics there really are no colors there really are no textures but there really is such a thing as mass there really is extension in space there really is solidity and motion and so forth barkley and hume both are going to say i don't think that will do it science will not give us a way of drawing that distinction the best way of getting rid of the gap between mind and world is to push the world up into the mind okay if the world is mental through and through if all we've got are ideas there's no problem about how our ideas match the world the world consists of our ideas that's it so there's a sense in which it does get rid of skepticism it gets rid of the gap between mind and the world because the world is entirely mental it is itself a projection or construction of mind so there is no gap there's no place for the skeptic to get a foothold and drive a wedge and say maybe we're wrong about this what do you mean we're wrong about our own ideas our ideas are our ideas that is the world that's all there is there isn't any longer any gap well that's an unusual strategy but let's go back to what descartes and lock have in mind and see why barclay thinks it doesn't work a primary quality is in the object itself it's constant it's the thing that we find even in the most minute part of the object so things like extension figure motion rest solidity impenetrability number these are things that are there in the wheat berry they're also there in the flower the secondary qualities can differ they are the powers of the object to affect us they are often not in its minute parts so the color of the object once we pound it may become quite different the way it sounds may be quite different drop a pound of flour on the floor it's going to sound differently from a pound of wheat berries being dropped on the floor and in general the secondary qualities are going to change between the large parts of the object and the small parts of the object sometimes we will perceive them that way sometimes not they are dependent on the mind dependent on our own perceptual and cognitive faculties well that's the distinction that's the way it's supposed to go but barclay says actually we have no basis for thinking that any of our ideas correspond to some mind independent reality the whole idea here is supposed to be that some ideas like the idea of mass or the idea of velocity the idea of motion the idea of taking up some space those really correspond to the world but things like color and texture and taste don't barkley says actually i don't see how there's a basis for thinking that any of them do even the primary ones there are several reasons he gives for this one of the arguments is that we can't judge their resemblance to reality locke and descartes say the primary qualities are adequate they correspond to the way the world really is barkley says how would you know our perceptions of heights of weight of width and so on he says moreover are not constant they vary while the objects remain unchanged so that's the second argument first argument is there's no way to judge this resemblance we can't have access we basically can't get outside of our heads to judge whether our ideas are matching the world the second one is you say the test is whether they're constant and invariable and inseparable actually primary qualities are just as inseparable just as variable so let's look at those arguments in turn here is the first argument about resemblance barkley says an idea can be like nothing but an idea a color or figure can be like nothing but another color another figure if we look but ever so little into our thoughts we shall find it impossible for us to conceive a likeness except only between our ideas so the whole thought of locke and descartes of a primary quality is it's an idea that matches the world but what do you mean match the world what do you mean there's a resemblance between this that it's adequate in the sense that it matches or corresponds to what's in the world exactly how would we know is partly barkley's issue and partly the issue is what would that even mean an idea is an idea it's something in my mind and it's supposed to be something that corresponds to or matches precisely or resembles something that's really in the world well i don't understand what this sense of resemblance could be so i don't know what it would mean for an idea to resemble something that's not an idea but also even if that made sense i wouldn't know how on earth to get outside the realm of my ideas to be able to compare it to a thing unaffected by my ideas so in a way he's giving us a version of that argument from comparison saying i am always perceiving a thing as processed by my faculties i am always perceiving the thing by virtue of an idea what's before my mind is always an idea i can't compare the idea to something that is not an idea i can compare ideas to ideas that i can do but i can't compare ideas to something else so not only do i deny he's saying that there is any way for there to be a resemblance here but even if there were how could i know it i'd never be able to get at the thing itself to compare so i think what really is going on here is something that relates to locke's conception when we were talking about lock on ideas i pointed out that the way he characterizes them is actually somewhat puzzling he says that an idea is whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks it's whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking it's what his mind is applied about while thinking well i tried to reconstruct that in terms of first order cognitive abilities but barkley is taking locke's words very literally and very directly he's saying it's what i'm thinking about it is what is before my mind when i'm thinking well if that's right then i can never think about the triangle for example directly i never think about the paper directly always what's before the mind is my idea of the paper so my thoughts are really about the idea now that's what worried us before about lock's definition but barkley is going to push that in a certain direction he's going to say look if what's before my mind when i'm thinking is always an idea and then you ask me to judge resemblance what am i doing what's before the mind here let's say it's these two hands i'm asked to judge whether this is similar to that okay i can know how to do that because they're hands but what am i doing when i do it i've got two ideas two perceptions in my mind and i'm comparing those so i'm doing it by comparing the ideas now you say don't compare the two hands to one another don't compare the two ideas of the hands you have to one another instead compare the idea of this hand to the hand as it is in itself without using an idea but wait whatever is before my mind what i think is an idea according to lock i never get at the thing itself without an idea in the way without an idea in between so i can't do it a i don't know what it even means since i have no experience of these things in themselves to say what that kind of resemblance would even be but even if it makes sense i can't get out of the realm of ideas to do it every time i employ my mind in thinking i've got an idea so at best i could compare my idea of the thing to the idea of the idea of the thing maybe i could do that but to compare the idea to the thing impossible no way for me to do it here is a little diagram that might indicate the general kind of thing that lock seems to have in mind and what drives barkley crazy about within my mind i have a certain thought of a triangle let's say since that's my favorite example throughout this course that thought has a certain content hey that's a triangle it's using the content of my idea of a triangle and that represents that individual object well okay that's supposed to be the picture indeed often that's described as the representative theory of perception i represent the triangle in my mind but wait a minute barkley says i don't quite understand what's happening here let's take a look at how this is supposed to develop i've got an object i'm perceiving here like this triangle and i within my mind do that by having a thought there's a relation of perception i perceive the triangle so in some way the triangle is causing me to have this perception and it's got a certain content it's related to my idea or concept of a triangle and that concept applies to that triangle i'm leaving out a lot of things here about the word that might go along and relations of meaning and reference and all of that but the point emerges with something very simple because notice what's going on how am i able to think about this triangle i think about it by virtue of the fact of having an idea now i say whenever i'm thinking that's what's before the mind the idea so think of the mind as something like a screen and what's playing on the screen are my ideas ah now the question that lock and descartes are trying to solve is this question of the relationship between my idea and the thing right i want to know whether there is in particular the kind of resemblance that will allow me to say this idea is adequate to the thing it's a good representation of the thing i want there to be a relation of representation here and so i need to judge the adequacy of this to use lock's term and i'm going to do that barclay says in terms of resemblance but now notice what's going on i have to judge the resemblance between my idea and the thing but everything that is within my mind here that i have access to is an idea so how do i get the thing itself i've got to compare now this that idea to this this thing but how on earth do i do that you want me to think about that thing in itself well i do that by virtue of having this idea if you want me to think about the idea okay i guess i can have an idea of an idea but notice that's not going to help me i still don't get at this relation i now have to think about this relation you say well think about the idea of that well now i get something else here i can have ideas about my ideas about my ideas but you get the point i never get outside of my own mind to the thing itself so i can't judge the resemblance so first of all i have no experience of this kind of relationship between an idea and a thing and remember barkley like locke is an empiricist he's saying if i have an idea it's coming from some impression some perception or experience but i don't have an experience of this all the mental experiencing i'm having of comparing is within my own mind of ideas to ideas or ideas of one thing to ideas of another thing and then where could i do this the moment you ask me this question and make me think about it i'm forming more ideas and so i never get at the thing itself i can't get out of it now that's part of what's driving barkley crazy but part of it is and this is beautiful in a way he frames this in terms of a dilemma for locke he says look i i don't understand in this kind of picture can i think about the triangle can i perceive the triangle he says i ask whether these supposed originals or external things of which our ideas or the pictures or representations be themselves perceivable or no if they are then they're ideas and we've gained our point but if you say they're not i appeal to anyone whether it be sense to assert that a color is like something that's invisible hard or soft like something that's intangible and so on of the rest so he's basically saying okay i want to ask you a question about this thing i want to ask a question about this triangle the thing itself this external object this original as he puts it and i want to say is that something i can perceive or know locke you've said that ideas are what's before the mind well you also characterize this in representational terms that idea is supposed to represent the thing out there in the mind or out there in the world well can i perceive that thing or not if you say yes i can perceive that thing wait a minute what do i perceive everything before the mind is an idea so if you answer yes i can perceive this you've just put it in the mind and made it into an idea by your own definition of idea so as you say no i can't perceive it only ideas are the things i perceive then it's even worse because now you're saying okay i can't perceive this i can't see it it's invisible and you're saying this idea is like something invisible that doesn't make any sense invisible things don't have three sides and three angles this has three sides and three angles what are you talking about so in short barkley is saying there's something confused about the way that lock is describing this entire scenario what's before the mind is supposedly an idea but the idea is supposed to represent a thing and yet whenever we think about anything we're thinking about an idea well either that triangle that thing is just another idea and it's really mental and mind dependent or it's not but then this whole talk of representation makes no sense so he thinks he's got lock in a real trap what are you going to say about these external objects can i perceive them if yes they're mental by your own definition if not then they can't resemble any of these things that are ideas and either way the theory is sunk so in our diagram we can put it this way do i have a relation of perception between my thought and that actual triangle as external to me if so that object becomes an idea and if not we can't evaluate resemblance there's no way to talk about adequacy or inadequacy the conclusion that barkley draws is that there are no primary qualities extension figure and motion are only ideas existing in the mind an idea can be like nothing but another idea consequently neither they nor their archetypes can exist in an unperceiving substance hence it's plain that the very notion of what's called matter or corporeal substance involves a contradiction so notice here he's arguing there are no primary qualities the moment you postulate some quality that is in the thing itself i'm forced to talk about the idea of that and ideas can be like nothing but another idea so actually they can't exist independently of the mind if i'm to talk about adequacy or representation or any kind of match or resemblance then they have to be mental along with the ideas that i can characterize in this way but then they aren't really substances they aren't really matter they're creatures of the mind and so there is no way to talk about qualities that are really out there in the thing that itself independently the mind there is nothing independent of the mind well that is he thinks what follows from taking seriously locks talk that we think by having ideas before the mind and those ideas are meant to represent things those things end up being mental and if that's true there's no such thing as a primary quality there's no such thing as a material substance let's take a look at the other argument he gives an argument based on variability the whole way of distinguishing primary from secondary qualities he says is supposed to be that the primary qualities are inseparable they are constant but actually they're not people's perceptions vary says the argument from variability and there's no way to decide among them so we should suspend judgment well barclay goes back to that skeptical form of argument and uses it against law and says you say this is a reason for us to think that the secondary qualities aren't really in the world they can vary they can depend on context they can depend on the perceiver and there's no way to decide what would really be in the object so we should suspend judgment about that and in fact deny that they are in the object he says but wait a minute the same thing applies to the primary qualities too they also vary and there's no way to decide among them so you claim that this will allow us to draw the distinction this set of qualities is invariable and inseparable this one is variable and separable barclay says they're all variable they're all separable nothing ends up being a primary quality by that criterion the perceptions we have of primary qualities vary too now why well let's take a look he says at a mites view of the world this is an actual photograph of dust mites on a carpet now to us that carpet might look clean it might look bug-free it might look as if it's a smooth textured carpet to a mite it looks very different it's crawling with other mites it's actually very rough and has a kind of texture that's quite complex it looks like a bowl of spaghetti and so the mites view of that is very different from our own view even though notice here we're not talking just about texture in the sense of being a secondary quality we're talking about the actual shape of the thing the shape looks really different from a mites point of view this is an even more disturbing photograph these are mites on human skin that is what human skin that feels smooth to us looks like to one of these mites looks like a series of caverns deeply disturbing looks like that person badly needs some hand cream but whatever we want to conclude about that the mites view it is really different from our view even though again we're talking about the shape we're talking about the extension of it we're talking about things that ought to be among the primary qualities but perceptions vary among species yes but even for us filonus one of the characters in the dialogue here says from what you've laid down it follows that both the extension by you perceived and not perceived by the might itself as likewise all those perceived by lesser animals are each of them the true extension of the might's foot after all these are perceptions of a primary quality so they're supposed to be in the things themselves but finally says by that criterion you're led into an absurdity we see this as having a certain kind of now i don't want to say just texture but a certain kind of shape the might views it as having a very different kind of shape what does that tell us if shape is a primary quality that's supposed to be really in the thing but it's it's the shape is perceived by the mic that's in the thing or the shape is perceived by us that's in the thing we've got to say if we really take that to correspond in both cases that they're both in the thing but that's a manifest contradiction well it's not just a question of different species maybe we want to say i don't care how might sees things or how an elephant would see it or a bat would see it i mean maybe we should but suppose you say i let's stay to the human realm the same problem emerges vilona says look think about a human being as we approach an object or recede from it the visible extension varies being at one distance ten or a hundred times greater than another don't let that not therefore follow from hence likewise that it's not really inherent in the object my perceptions vary depending upon well all sorts of things may be dependent on my mood depending upon the time of day how tired i am but also on the basis of my distance from the object so here's an example this is a mountain known as shiprock in northwestern new mexico it was something that was used as a guidepost by people who were on wagon trains across the west headed for california and other destinations you can see it from hundreds of miles away and here it is from hundreds of miles away it looks rather small there and it's hard to tell how far away you are that might be a smaller mountain and you're not that far away or it might be a very large mountain and you're quite far away in any case as you approach shiprock it looks bigger and bigger and by the time you get right up to it you realize this thing is huge that's why you can see it hundreds of miles away and why it was a good guidepost for people seeking to cross the desert well that sort of thing is not just something that happens in wagon trains it's something that happens all the time i see something across the room and it looks very small in fact you might ask me a question about it i might find it hard to answer i could hold up these keys for example and ask you about the shape of the keys and you might say well they look very small but if i bring it toward the camera they look larger and larger and indeed if i bring them closer to my eyes they look bigger and bigger in my visual field that kind of thing is commonplace i see something far away as i'm driving it looks very small far away i might be driving toward dallas i see the dallas skyline but i'm far away and i think man dallas doesn't look that impressive but then when i get up close to it i realize oh this is a big city and it looks much more impressive the same thing can happen when you're flying over something imagine being in an airplane looking down on let's say new york city i've often flown over new york city you look down and from a distance or a very high height it doesn't look that big and the buildings there are barely discernible it looks tiny but on the other hand when you're flying much lower over it things look large and of course if you're there just in a building like at the top of the empire state building looking at it it looks huge so new york city is something that looks gigantic when you're close up it can look small if you're far away you might have had the experience being very in a very tall tower a tall office building or something like that where you look down at the road and people look like ants well that's because they look really small when you're far away on the other hand when you're up close you realize no they're the normal size for people and that sort of phenomenon is every day so yes the sizes of things can vary not only from context to context i mean something might look much smaller if i put it next to something that's really large and in fact often people to take a photograph of something really large will put something next to it or have a person stand next to it or something so you get a sense of scale and so that you can see look i know it looks small in the photograph this thing is really large and that's because all of these things can affect our perception our perception of primary qualities the same thing can happen with respect to something like mass or motion the same motion might feel very fast or very slow depending upon the context in this case not how close we are to it though that can be true too watch an airplane go across the sky the plane is going at hundreds of miles an hour but it looks for our vantage point on the ground as if it's traveling very slowly the same thing can happen if you've ever flown a plane i have and when you stop flying a plane and get into your car for example the speed you're going in a car feels so unbelievably slow i had a friend who was a pilot and he was constantly getting speeding tickets and it's not really just because he was the kind of person who speeds a lot and ignores the law it's because when you've been up in an airplane the speeds you get used to are the speeds of going hundreds of miles an hour when you then are on the ground traveling at six feet it feels like you're crawling and so that kind of thing is a phenomenon we're familiar with but wait velocity was a primary quality so is that airplane moving across the sky quickly or not well we're perceiving a primary quality of motion there but the feeling for the pilot and the feeling of us on the ground can't both be right they can't both match the actual velocity and the same thing is true of driving a car when you haven't driven in a while and then when you've been flying an airplane it's the same velocity but one time it feels fast to you another time it feels slow it can't be both fast and slow but again motion velocity is supposed to be a primary quality so it looks like we're immediately led into trouble phyloness concludes in the dialogue this isn't in the object he says is is it not the very same reasoning to conclude that there is no extension or figure in an object because to one eye it shall seem little smooth and round while at the same time it appears to the other great uneven and regular hylus who is defending the locked descarte point of view in the dialogue says uh the very same but does this latter fact ever happen filona says you may at any time make the experiment by looking with one eye bare and with another through a microscope so doubt the examples i've given about mites about speeds of airplanes about other things maybe they don't convince you but philo says hey look at a leaf here's how a leaf looks every day and we can describe not just its secondary qualities it's green and so on but its primary qualities describe its shape describe the the actual um figure that it corresponds to describe it in any way you like and now look through a microscope it looks like that now yes its secondary qualities have changed but the primary qualities have changed too that bottom edge for example looks smooth it's not smooth it's pretty bumpy and the same thing is going to be true of all sorts of primary qualities of the thing your perception will be very different through a microscope you'll be seeing it very up close and your perception of the size of the velocity of the shape all of that is going to be quite different conclusion barkley draws there's no distinction between primary and secondary qualities they're all in the mind alone if we insist on using those terms at all the point is all of those qualities are really secondary qualities and so we should be idealists about all qualities none of them are in the things themselves they are all in the mind alone everything is really a construction or a projection of the mind every single quality we attribute to an object is mind-dependent it is variable it is separable it is the kind of thing that is there in the mind but is not there in the object i want to leave you with a question we've been attacking here with barkley that distinction between the primary and secondary qualities but could we do this in a different way instead of saying all qualities are really primary could we do it in the opposite way saying actually they're all in the object they're all primary qualities now notice we would have to get rid of lock's idea that everything before the mind is really an idea we'd have to say no i can perceive the triangle i don't have to just have an idea before the mind the triangle can really be before my mind i would also have to say that actually these tests of constancy and invariableness maybe those aren't the right tests the right test is something else but even a secondary quality maybe i could push all of those into the thing i can say ah you think the yellow isn't really in the paper what if it is what if we end up saying look being yellow is just reflecting certain wavelengths of light and the paper really does reflect those the wavelengths that really is a quality of the paper itself i think these arguments as framed are quite effective against the way lock sets it all up but maybe the general problem of mind and world here could be addressed in a kind of barclay in spirit but in a different way instead of pushing the world up into the mind maybe we could push the mind in effect down into the world and say actually all of those ideas are about things in the world our thinking is about the things it's not about the ideas the thing can itself be before the mind we can make direct reference to the thing in our thoughts and in our language and maybe we could instead then say actually all those qualities are really in the things themselves they're all primary qualities it's not just a question of affecting us in certain ways being read might be reflecting wavelengths of light of a certain kind same thing with being yellow maybe the same thing is true of all of the other secondary qualities so even if barkley succeeds at denying the distinction maybe we don't have to become idealistic about everything could we instead become realists about all of it and attribute all of this to the things themselves you

Channel: Daniel Bonevac

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Id: lTsCr6OcUfc

Length: 36min 3sec (2163 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021