John Locke's Primary and Secondary Qualities

hello and welcome to philosophy vibe the website will be discussed and debate different philosophical ideas today we can be following on from the knowledge of the external world debate and looking at John Locke's primary and secondary qualities now if you recall in the last debate we discussed indirect realism yes this was the idea that we only perceive the physical world indirectly there is sense datum between the physical world and our minds and we only directly perceive the sense data correct an advocate of this theory was the philosopher john locke now he argued that reality can be divided into two categories primary and secondary qualities if we take an object let's say an ice cream the primary qualities are the extension the figure the motion the solidity and the number these primary qualities are mind independent they exist in the physical world external to us however the ice cream also has secondary qualities what are the secondary qualities these are things like the color of the ice cream the taste and the smell of the ice cream even the sound of the ice cream these are all secondary qualities and these are mind dependent these are ideas in our minds that we perceive they do not exist in the external object but look explains it as the primary qualities have powers which creates in our minds the secondary qualities we perceive so let's pick up the ice cream again this object's extension and figure exists outside my mind in an external reality but the taste and the color of the object does not exist outside my mind this is a colorless tasteless object but when I see it its extension and figure produce the perception of color into my mind and that is what I see when I take a bite of the ice cream the primary qualities again produce the idea in my mind chocolatey taste so we only perceive the world indirectly there is a physical world but it's the powers of the primary qualities of the objects that make us see it in a very different way a very different way than what it actually is okay so why does Locke take such an indirect realist stance Nach uses a lot of good examples to back up this theory I'll discuss a few now lock asks us to imagine the red and white colors in porphyry if we take away light we cease to perceive the colors the color is dependent on line let's say we now put green lights on the porphyry we now perceive the red and white porphyry as green the color changes it can disappear and look different at different times and at different angles but the porphyry solidity remains the same it is always perceived in the same way so we can see a distinction between how we perceive an object's color to how we perceive its extension look then has good grounds to make a distinction between primary and secondary qualities yeah I see look uses another example of hot and cold water let's imagine one person puts their hand in ice and another person on hot coals then each person puts their hand in a bucket of room-temperature water now the person who had their hand on ice will fill this water as warm but the person who had their hand on coals will fill this water as cold how can the same water be both warm and cool at the same time that is a contradiction rather the hotness or coldness does not exist in the water but is merely a sensation in our minds produced by the powers of the waters primary qualities again we can see good grounds for a distinction yes I understand and one more point I would like to raise go on look uses the example of fire if you touch fire you feel pain right yes well you wouldn't say the pain you feel is in the fire no the pain is in my body exactly the fire may have caused the pain but the pain does not exist in the fire external to our minds rather it is a sensation in us something percieve yeah so why would you say the pain is not in the fire but the color is hmm now can you see how much of reality is just in the mind the pain of the fire is an idea the temperature of the water is just an idea how can the same water have two different sensations how can the same object have two different colors how can the same food taste delicious to one person yet horrible to another this is all just mental ideas its secondary qualities caused by primary qualities okay I see where you're coming from but there is still a very big problem with looks distinction of primary and secondary qualities what's that then well the main basis of the distinction is that secondary qualities can appear different at different times and to different minds whereas the primary qualities remain constantly yes this is not necessarily true primary qualities are also subject to change and inconsistencies just like secondary qualities how if we take a building when we are close to the building it looks very big but if we stand far away the building looks very small so what size is the building what is the correct way we should perceive its extension the building's extension is different at different times we perceive it both tall and small how should the might perceive it what should the building look like yeah I see so if lock is to be consistent he cannot really make a distinction between primary and secondary qualities because if he bases secondary qualities on the fact that we perceive them in different ways then we must apply this to primary qualities as well so there cannot really be a distinction okay so if you're saying there is no distinction between primary and secondary qualities are you saying that all of an object's qualities are mind-independent and in an external reality no that would be naive realism and Locke has shown that a lot of what we perceive is mind dependent however I think Locke is unintentionally shown that even primary qualities maybe mind dependent so what are you arguing well think about it with logs primary and secondary quality distinction it has put a veil of perception over our eyes he is basically saying that we can never perceive the world directly we only perceive our ideas directly if that is the case then how can we argue in favor for an external world causing ideas in our minds if we have not and cannot ever directly perceive this external world if we can never come in contact with the external world but only come into contact with our ideas then why would we need to assume there exists such a thing it would seem we must take the extra leap and perhaps say even primary qualities are mind dependent now all of reality is just ideas in the mind that not even primary qualities exist outside the mind there is no external world reality is just in the mind interesting that is the theory of idealism developed by the philosopher George Berkeley we will look closer at this in the George Burkley on idealism video but for now that's all the time we have thank you for watching we hope you enjoyed the vibe and please check out the website for some other videos

Channel: Philosophy Vibe

Views: 38,380

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Keywords: Philosophy, Vibe, John Locke, John Locke's Primary and Secondary Qualities, Indirect Realism, Direct Realism, Idealism, George Berkeley, Perception, Mind and Body, Metaphysics, Early Modern Philosophy, Locke

Id: mLK4d6avtIM

Length: 8min 5sec (485 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 10 2016