MindPapers: 3.7d. Primary and Secondary Qualities

Armstrong, David M. (1987). Smart and the secondary qualities. In Philip Pettit, Richard Sylvan & J. Norman (eds.), Metaphysics And Morality. Blackwell. (Cited by 26 | Google | Edit)

Averill, Edward W. (1982). The primary-secondary quality distinction. Philosophical Review 91 (July):343-362. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)

Beck, Lewis White (1946). Secondary quality. Journal of Philosophy 43 (October):599-609. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Bennett, Jonathan (1965). Substance, reality, and primary qualities. American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (January):1-17. (Cited by 19 | Google | Edit)

Blackburn, Simon W. (1993). Circles, finks, smells and biconditionals. Philosophical Perspectives 7:259-279. (Cited by 18 | Google | More links | Edit)

Brittan Jr, Gordon G. (1969). Measurability, commonsensibility, and primary qualities. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 47 (1):15 – 24. (Google | Edit)

Brooks, D. H. M. (1992). Secondary qualities and representation. Analysis 52 (3):174-179. (Cited by 1 | Google | Edit)

Charlesworth, Maurice (1987). Hacker on secondary qualities. Mind 76 (July):386-391. (Google | More links | Edit)

Cummins, Phillip D. (1963). Perceptual relativity and ideas in the mind. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 24 (December):202-214. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Dicker, Georges (1977). Primary and secondary qualities: A proposed modification of the Lockean account. Southern Journal of Philosophy 15:457-471. (Google | Edit)

Egan, Andy (2006). Secondary qualities and self-location. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (1):97-119. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Colors aren't as real as shapes. Shapes are full−fledged qualities of things in themselves, independent of how they're perceived and by whom. Colors aren't. Colors are merely qualities of things as they are for us, and the colors of things depend on who is perceiving them. When we take the fully objective view of the world, things keep their shapes, but the colors fall away, revealed as the mere artifacts of our own subjective, parochial perspective on the world that they are

Frohlich, Fanchon (1959). Primary qualities in physical explanation. Mind 68 (April):209-217. (Google | Edit)

Gibson, James J. (1969). Are there sensory qualities of objects? Synthese 19 (April):408-409. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)

Kneale, William C. (1951). Sensation and the physical world. Philosophical Quarterly 1 (January):109-126. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)

Kulvicki, John (2005). Perceptual content, information, and the primary/secondary quality distinction. Philosophical Studies 122 (2):103-131. (Cited by 4 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Our perceptual systems make information about the world available to our cognitive faculties. We come to think about the colors and shapes of objects because we are built somehow to register the instantiation of these properties around us. Just how we register the presence of properties and come to think about them is one of the central problems with understanding perceptual cognition. Another problem in the philosophy of perception concerns the nature of the properties whose presence we register. Among the perceptible properties are colors and shapes, for example, and there is a long philosophical tradition of drawing and refusing to draw metaphysical distinctions between them. This paper makes a claim about the information-theoretic approach to perceptual cognition in order to argue for a fundamentally epistemological distinction between colors and shapes. What makes shapes and colors seem so different to us is how we carry information about their presence around us. In particular, we can come to know more about the shapes on the basis of perceiving them than we can come to know about the colors. One interesting feature of how this distinction is drawn is that it partially vindicates Locke’s claim that our ideas of primary qualities like shapes resemble them in ways our ideas of colors do not

Levin, Janet (1987). Physicalism and the subjectivity of secondary qualities. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 65 (December):400-411. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Lewis, Douglas (1970). Some problems of perceptions. Philosophy of Science 37 (March):100-113. (Google | Edit)

Lovejoy, Arthur O. (1913). Secondary qualities and subjectivity. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 10 (8):214-218. (Google | More links | Edit)

McGinn, Colin (1983). The Subjective View: Secondary Qualities And Indexical Thoughts. Clarendon Press. (Cited by 100 | Google | Edit)

McKitrick, Jennifer (2002). Reid's foundation for the primary/secondary quality distinction. Philosophical Quarterly 52 (209):478-494. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

McNaughton, David (1984). McGinn on experience of primary and secondary qualities. Analysis 44 (2):78-80. (Google | Edit)

Millar, Roderick (1983). Valberg's secondary qualities. Philosophy 58 (January):107-109. (Google | Edit)

Miscevic, Nenad (2001). Painting the manifest picture. Acta Analytica 16 (26):75-96. (Google | Edit)

Miscevic, Nenad (1997). Secondary and tertiary qualities: Semantics and response--dependence. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (4):363-379. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Secondary and tertiary qualities are plausibly explained along dispositionalist lines. Concepts of such qualities are response-dependent, denoting properties that are partly mind/brain-dependent. Unfortunately, dispositionalism is hard to square with extant versions of naturalistic theories of representation. In particular the standard naturalistic (indicational) semantics of representational content cannot handle the question from either the subjectivist or the dispositional viewpoint. The paper proposes a remedy: the problem can be solved in a smooth and natural way, provided that we revise and supplement the standard semantics in a rather obvious fashion, by allowing the mind/brain-involving properties to figure within it

Moked, Gabriel (1988). Particles And Ideas: Bishop Berkeley's Corpuscularian Philosophy. Clarendon Press. (Cited by 1 | Google | Edit)

Nadler, Steven M. (1990). Berkeley's ideas and the primary/secondary distinction. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (1):47-61. (Google | Edit)

Narski, Igor (1974). The question of the objective content of sensations. Ajatus 36:44-74. (Google | Edit)

Novitz, David (1975). Primary and secondary qualities: A return to fundamentals. Philosophical Papers 4 (October):89-104. (Google | Edit)

O'Shaughnessy, Brian (1986). Secondary qualities. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 67 (July):153-171. (Google | Edit)

Olding, A. (1968). Armstrong, Smart and the ontological status of secondary qualities. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 46 (1):52 – 64. (Google | Edit)

Pettit, P. (1991). Realism and response-dependence. Mind 100 (4):587-626. (Cited by 56 | Google | More links | Edit)

Railton, Peter A. (1998). Red, bitter, good. In European Review of Philosophy, Volume 3: Response-Dependence. Stanford: CSLI Publications. (Cited by 6 | Google | Edit)

Rickless, Samuel C. (1997). Locke on primary and secondary qualities. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (3):297-319. (Cited by 8 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: In this paper, I argue that Book II, Chapter viii of Locke' Essay is a unified, self-consistent whole, and that the appearance of inconsistency is due largely to anachronistic misreadings and misunderstandings. The key to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is that the former are, while the latter are not, real properties, i.e., properties that exist in bodies independently of being perceived. Once the distinction is properly understood, it becomes clear that Locke's arguments for it are simple, valid and (in one case) persuasive as well

Sandoe, Peter (1988). Secondary qualities--subjective and intrinsic. Theoria 54:200-219. (Cited by 1 | Google | Edit)

Smith, A. D. (1990). Of primary and secondary qualities. Philosophical Review 99 (2):221-254. (Cited by 13 | Google | More links | Edit)

Tully, R. E. (1976). Reduction and secondary qualities. Mind 85 (July):351-370. (Google | More links | Edit)

Valberg, E. (1980). A theory of secondary qualities. Philosophy 55 (October):437-453. (Cited by 1 | Google | Edit)

Vision, Gerald (1982). Primary and secondary qualities: An essay in epistemology. Erkenntnis 17 (March):135-170. (Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: It seems almost a truism to say that colour is a sensation; and yet Young, by honestly recognizing this elementary truth, established the first consistent theory of colour. So far as I know, Thomas Young was the first who, starting from the well-known fact that there are three primary colours, sought for the explanation of this fact, not in the nature of light, but in the constitution of man. (James Clerk Maxwell, p. 267.)It is doubtless scientific to disregard certain aspects when we work; but to urge that therefore such aspects are not fact, and that what we use without them is an independent real thing-this is barbarous metaphysics. (F. H. Bradley, p. 15.)

Williams, C. J. F. (1969). Are primary qualities qualities? Philosophical Quarterly 19 (October):310-323. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Wright, C. (1988). Moral values, projection, and secondary qualities. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 63:1-26. (Cited by 44 | Google | Edit)

3.7a	Color [275]

3.7b	Sound [16]

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