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primary qualities our initial question, then, is whether secondary
qualities are to be identified with those dispositions or with the
physical basis of those dispositions. Unfortunately, Reid s atten-
tion is so much focused on other points in his analysis that he
doesn t speak consistently on the matter. In the Inquiry he says,
for example, that color is a certain power or virtue in bodies
(VI, iv [138a; B 87]; cf. II, ix [114a; B 43]), whereas in the Essays
he says that smell in the rose is an unknown quality or modifi-
cation in the rose (II, xvii [314b]; cf. IHM V, i [119b; B 54]). If
green were a disposition in things to cause certain sensations
under certain conditions and not the physical basis of that dis-
position, we would know what it was.
A way to highlight the difference is to consider a counterfac-
tual situation. Just as it was possible for God to attach the dispo-
sition to cause pressure sensations to a different physical basis
from that to which this disposition is in fact attached, so also it
was possible for God to attach the disposition to cause green-
type sensations to a different physical basis. So suppose God had
done so. In that alternative world, would the greenness of objects
have a different physical basis, or would the greenness of objects
no longer have the disposition to cause green-type sensations in
perceivers? Were Reid to choose the former of these alternatives,
that would show that he was thinking of secondary qualities as
identical with certain dispositions no matter what the physical
basis of those dispositions. Were he to choose the latter, that
would show that he was thinking of secondary qualities as certain
physical bases, no matter what the dispositions attached to those
bases.
My own view is that reflection on this counterfactual situation
makes it pretty clear that colors are the dispositions, not the phys-
ical bases which those dispositions happen to have in our world;
and that secondary qualities are, in this way, significantly differ-
ent from primary qualities. It s my impression that most of the
time, though by no means always, Reid instead thinks of sec-
ondary qualities as the physical bases, since he regularly says that
we know not what they are. The inconsistency, while regrettable,
Reid s Analysis of Perception 113
seldom if ever makes any difference to the points he s concerned
to make; his attention, as I said, is elsewhere than on this issue.
For convenience of exposition, though, a choice must be made.
Because it appears to me that Reid s dominant tendency is to
think of secondary qualities as the physical bases rather than as
the dispositions, let me henceforth speak in that fashion. It would
not be difficult to reformulate everything along the lines of the
alternative understanding.
A point Reid does emphasize is that while in vision, for
example, certain aspects of our sensations function as indicators
of those qualities that are the colors of the perceived objects, it
is those objective qualities that are the colors, not our subjective
sensations nor any qualities thereof. This is true, at least, if we
are using words in the ordinary way. By color, he says,
all men, who have not been tutored by modern philosophy, understand,
not a sensation of the mind, which can have no existence when it is not
perceived, but a quality or modification of bodies, which continues to
be the same, whether it is seen or not. The scarlet rose, which is before
me, is still a scarlet rose when I shut my eyes, and was so at midnight
when no eye saw it. The colour remains when the appearance ceases: it
remains the same when the appearance changes. . . . The common lan-
guage of mankind shows evidently, that we ought to distinguish between
the colour of a body, which is conceived to be a fixed and permanent
quality in the body, and the appearances of that colour to the eye, which
may be varied a thousand ways, by a variation of the light, of the medium,
or of the eye itself. (IHM VI, iv [137a b; B 85 6])
We can now see more than we could before of what Reid has
in mind when he speaks of the sensory experiences ingredient in
perception as signs of the perceived entities in particular, of
perceived qualities. The color of my desk blotter is green. It
retains that color whether or not I m looking at it whether
anybody is looking at it. Likewise it retains that color when it s in
the dark, and throughout different colors of light being shone
upon it. Lastly, several of us can see the color of the blotter. The
sensory experience I have when perceiving the blotter is very dif-
ferent: It does not abide as the color of the blotter abides, nor [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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