Greg Detre
Thursday, 04 October, 2001
Lucy Allais/Dr Tasioulas
Grayling (ed) *Philosophy: A guide through the subject*, chapters on 'Empiricism' and 'Rationalism'
Bennett *Locke, Berkeley, Hume*
Personal identity: Williams, Problems of the Self
Causation:
Primary and secondary qualities: Mackie
Berkeley??? (Dancy???)
? Locke on PQ/SQ
? Locke on personal identity (Williams)
Berkeley
Hume on causation
? Hume on induction
? Hume theory of mind
Locke�s world is composed of insensate, indivisible and minute particles, or corpuscles, with the properties of extension and motion. These are arranged into macroscopic structures, which we recognise as objects. We can be said to �see� something when we form an image in our minds which resembles its cause. This is known as the representative theory of perception, in that our ideas are immediate and represent and intermediate between us and the real material world. This material world would continue to exist, even if all humans and minds were to vanish from the world.
Secondary qualities do not exist in the objects, insofar as the objects can be described entirely in terms of their primary qualities. However, by virtue of their composition the objects have dispositions to cause certain ideas in us, and it results from the primary qualities of an object to give rise to our ideas of its secondary qualities, like colour. For instance, in the case of a mirror, we would say that its reflectivity is not a primary quality, that is to say, it is a structure composed wholly of corpuscles with the primary qualities of position, size, motion etc. Yet the particular arrangement of its surface corpuscles give rise to a disposition to cause us to see our reflections in the mirror. Like colour and the other secondary properties, the reflectivity does not reside in so much as arise out of the object.
Locke is a realist then: objects in the world exist wholly independently of us, and any other perceiving minds, being there to perceive them. They have only primary qualities. Their secondary qualities are dispositions, inherent in their particular instantiation of primary qualities, which when perceived, have secondary qualities attached in the idea formed by the perceiving mind. If there were no perceiving minds, the dispositions in the object would never give rise to secondary qualities. However, given that there are perceving minds, secondary qualities could be said to reside in the object in its dispositions, even while it is not being actively perceived at a given time.
'We must here take notice, what the word I is
applied to' (LOCKE). How, according to Locke, is one to tell whether an
utterance of 'I' is applied to a man or a person?
'Essences being thus distinguished into nominal
and real, we may further observe, that in the species of simple ideas and
modes, they are always the same: but in substances, always quite different'
(LOCKE). Discuss.
'Knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but
the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy
of any of our ideas' (LOCKE). 'All the objects of human reason or enquiry may
naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, relations of ideas, and matters of
fact' (HUME). Does Locke make room for knowledge of matters of fact?
Which are the Lockean primary and secondary qualities???
The Aristotelian primary/secondary distinction was on the basis of whether or not 2 senses could give us information about the same property, usually touch and vision. But don�t taste and smell combine to tell us about the chemical properties of an object??? Should our resulting idea of an item of food then be considered a primary quality???
Is Berkeley right to maintain that the doctrine
that physical objects can exist unperceived depends on the doctrine of abstract
ideas?
'The connexion of ideas does not imply the
relation of cause and effect, but only of a mark or sign with the thing
signified' (BERKELEY). Why does Berkeley believe that, and what is the
importance of the thesis for his account of reality?
'God, whom no extemal being can affect ....
perceives nothing by sense as we do' (BERKELEY). How then can Berkeley hold
that unthinking beings are necessarily perceived by the infinite mind of God?
Don�t all pure forms of monism really come down to the same thing???
Why do I dislike the argument from �but isn�t extreme heat a pain�???
can we not say that there is a disposition in heat to cause pain when perceived, so that the pain is a secondary quality in the way that Locke (see Dancy above) describes it, that is, a necessary result of the way the object (here, heat) is, but
Doesn�t his follow-up argument that great heat and ensuing great pain appear as but one uniform sensation rests on his earlier fallacy that perception is immediate, with no processing or reasoning involved??? Also, he states without proof that just because the sensation of heat and pain appears �simple and uniform� that it is �uncompounded�.
Why can�t you imagine sensible pain without any extraneous qualities???
How important is the imagination in Hume's philosophy?
'The central defect of Hume's discussion of
causation is that. from beginning to end we do not know what "necessary connexion" means.' Do you agree?
Does Hume have an
adequate explanation of our belief in the external world?