Locke on primary and secondary qualities.

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Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
1-1-1979
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Marcia Ann McKelligan
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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McKelligan, Marcia Ann, "Locke on primary and secondary qualities." (1979). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 -
February 2014. 2117.
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lOCKE ON PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES
A Dissertation Presented
By
MARCIA ANN MCKELLIGAN
Submitted to the Graduate School of the
University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
September 1979
Philosophy
Marcia Ann McKelligan 1979
All Rights Reserved
LOCKE ON PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES
A Dissertation Presented
By
MARCIA ANN MCKELLIGAN
Approved as to style and content by:
Fred Feldman, Chairperson of Committee
Bruce Aune Member
,
Vere C. Chappell", Member
Department of Philosophy
iii
,
To my parents
Catherine V.
and
John E. McKelligan
IV
.
ABSTRACT
Locke on Primary and Secondary Qualities
(September, 1979)
Marcia Ann McKelligan, A.B., Mount Holyoke College
M.A. Ph.D., University of Massachusetts
,
Directed by: Professor Fred Feldman
The dissertation is an attempt to discover whether
Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities
is a justified and useful one. It is a search for a primary-
secondary quality distinction which is suggested by Locke,
yields results in accord with Locke's and has defensible
implications about the nature and properties of physical
Ob ects
j
Chapter I briefly examines the history of the distinc-
tion and argues that it is possible to isolate in the
Lockean text five separate versions of the distinction.
Chapter II examines various versions of the view that
the primary qualities of macroscopic objects are essential
to them while their secondary qualities are not. It
argues that the chief problem with these views lies in the
difficulty of establishing that none of the secondary
qualities is essential to the physical objects that have
it. The suggestion is made that at least some of the tra-
ditional secondary qualities are in fact essential to
physical objects.
V
chapter III examines two sets of proposals. First,
it examines versions of a primary-secondary quality dis-
tinction which identify the primary qualities as the
real properties of physical objects and the secondary
qualities as those which are instantiated only by mental
entities. It is argued that this view is impossible to
defend in a non-question—begging way. The second pro-
posal examined is the view that sense-data associated
with the primary qualities resemble physical objects
in some way that the sense-data associated with the secon-
dary qualities do not. It is argued that this view is
largely incoherent.
Chapter IV discusses the suggestion that objects can
gain and lose secondary qualities without undergoing any
physical alteration while primary quality changes require
physical alteration of objects. This view is dismissed
on the grounds that it makes tacit assumptions about the
nature of secondary qualities which, if made explicit,
would constitute part of one of the other versions of the
primary-secondary quality distinction.
Chapter V discusses various proposals that the
secondary qualities are dispositions. These proposals
suggest either that primary qualities are non-dispositional
or that they are dispositions of a different sort from the
secondary qualities. Here it is argued that it is difficult
VI
to find a good argument to show that secondary qualities
dispositions that does not tend to show that primary
qualities, also, are dispositions. Further, it is argued,
if the properties of physical objects are considered
dispositions, it becomes difficult to distinguish among
them in a suitably Lockean way.
Chapter VI examines a set of proposals loosely con-
nected with the notion of property dependency. The most
meritorious of these is the view that the primary qualities
of objects are those which are physically essential to
their microconstituents and that the secondary qualities
of objects are those of their properties their microcon-
stituents either completely lack or possess only contin-
gently. It is argued that this view comes closest to
meeting the standards which inform the dissertation's
search.
Chapter VII summarizes the preceding chapters and
points out some items of philosophical interest concerning
the view endorsed in Chapter VI.
Vll
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter I 1
Chapter II 26
Chapter III 54
Chapter IV 109
Chapter V 119
Chapter VI 166
Chapter VII 184
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 190
viii