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The Non-Necessity of Qualitative Content

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

C. A. Hooker
C. A. Hooker
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
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Extract

Central to the Empiricist conception of matter and epistemology is the distinction between the primary and secondary properties. This distinction is part of the apparatus needed to formulate and answer the question «What aspects of perceptual information yield true knowledge of reality?” Correlatively, the distinction enables the reconciliation of the commonsense and scientific conceptions of matter in the fundamental Lockean tenet that matter possesses only the primary qualities.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , September 1973 , pp. 447 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1973

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References

1 Armstrong, D. M.Perception and the Physical World (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961) pp. 184 ff.Google Scholar; Sellars, W. “Scientific Realism or Irenic Instrumentalism” in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science II, edited by Cohen, and Wartofsky, , (New York: Humanities Press, 1965) p. 190Google Scholar.

2 There is an alternative reply to this argument, a reply canvassed by Smart, J. J. G. in Philosophy and Scientific Realism, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), pp. 73–75Google Scholar. Armstrong's comments are to be found in op. cit. pp. 189 f. Smart's reply is essentially that there may be as yet undiscovered properties which could do the job of distinguishing matter from empty space. In the light of my remarks above I regard this reply as unnecessary, although not logically faulty.

3 Fleming, N. “The Idea of a Solid” in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 43 (1965) pp. 131–143CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bradley, M. C. “A Note on a Circularity Argument” in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 44 (1966) pp. 91–94Google Scholar.