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Primary and Secondary Qualities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Keith Campbell
Keith Campbell*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Extract

The philosophy of primary and secondary qualities is in a state of some confusion. There is no agreement as to the basis upon which the two classes of quality may be distinguished—a host of features, as diverse as perceptible by more than one sense and belonging to the definition of matter, are offered as the mark of the primary. There is not even agreement on which qualities belong to which group. Shape, size and solidity are generally held to be primary, while colours, smells, and the like (I) are favoured secondary candidates. But for large numbers of qualities, for example being acidic, malleable, rust-proof—or, among perceptible qualities, glistening and vibrating—we are offered no effective guidance.

Inevitably, in such a situation, we are without clear answers to the questions; Why should any distinction be made between primaries and secondaries? Must all qualities be the one or the other? To the solution of which problems does the distinction serve as a preliminary step? What special relationship is there between primary qualities and scientific theory, or between secondary qualities and peculiarities in perception?

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , December 1972 , pp. 219 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1972

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References

1 J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Bk. II, Ch. 8.

2 Universality and essentiality, though plausible features of the qualities on Locke’s list, turned out to be unsuitable also as criteria for fundamental status among primaries. In this Locke was unlucky and Nature unkind.

3 This formula makes an interaction pattern both necessary and sufficient for primacy. The sufficiency is argued for in the text. What of necessity? This raises the problem of whether there can be idle real qualities, existing but inefficacious, primary but without interaction pattern. Can there be such? In this paper-objectivity is used to define primacy, and interaction serves to identify it. So, abstractly, the possibility of idleness is left open. Since we must, of necessity, remain ignorant of any idle quality, interaction will be a satisfactory touchstone of primacy whichever way we decide the idle question of idleness. The further question, whether the possession of a quality can consist in the display of a distinctive interaction pattern, or is something deeper in virtue of which there is such a pattern, is one on which I can form no opinion. It is, as we say, ‘purely metaphysical.’ In other words, it is too hard.

4 For the notion that primary qualities have a monopoly in the ‘executive order of nature’ see Stout, G. F. ‘Primary and Secondary Qualities’ PAS IV (1903-04)Google Scholar and D. C. Williams The Principles of Empirical Realism, Chap. 12.

5 The case for colour is set out at length in Keith Campbell, ‘Colours’ in W. Brown and C. D. Rollins (eds) Contemporary Philosophy in Australia.

6 To avoid circularity here one must distinguish the class of solids as a given class and then identify individual solids as members of that class. Otherwise solids are bodies which exclude other solids. But this is a detail not relevant to matters presently in hand.

7 It is in principle possible that there should be objectively real qualities whose only effects are in producing experiences in perceivers. Such semi-idle qualities (Cf. Footnote 3) would not be identified as primary by our criterion. They would count as secondary in that they gave their bearers no distinctive powers in the processes of inanimate nature, yet it would not be correct to call them (merely) features of how things seem. The existence of semi-idle qualities would invalidate any exhaustive division of qualities into primary and secondary along the lines proposed in this paper. But to take the possibility of semi-idle qualities seriously is to seriously suppose human perception can occur in a magical way (see next paragraph). So I discount this possibility with a good conscience, and hold that primary qualities fill the ‘nature N’ blank here.

8 Armstrong, D. M. ‘The Secondary Qualities’ AJP 46 (1968), pp. 225-241.Google Scholar The position is there presented as a doctrine concerning (what are commonly called) secondaries, but this is only a difference in terminology.