Review of Thomas Reid and the Problem of Secondary Qualities by Andrew Shrock

Locke Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Alastair Crosby
Keyword(s):  
Recent Book ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Secondary Qualities

A review of Andrew Shrock’s recent book, Thomas Reid and the Problem of Secondary Qualities (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2018).

Thomas Reid and the Problem of Secondary Qualities

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Shrock
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Secondary Qualities

Thomas Reid, the father of Common Sense, champions Direct Realism against the Problem of Secondary Qualities. Direct Realism holds immediate objects of perception, like rocks and desks, to be objective and physical. But the Problem of Secondary Qualities argues that some perceptual properties—colours, smells, sounds, tastes, and heat—must be subjective or mental, because science offers no place to them in the physical world. This new reading of Thomas Reid on primary and secondary qualities shows how Reid supports Direct Realism, answers the Problem of Secondary Qualities, and maintains a healthy optimism about science and reason.

Locke and the “Ancient Hypothesis”

1975 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-48
Author(s):  
David Palmer
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Secondary Qualities ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Mind

John Locke sometimes claims in An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding that secondary qualities are qualities of bodies and not simply ideas. Few commentators, however, have taken that claim seriously. This is at least partly because Locke also claims that ideas of secondary qualities do not resemble the secondary qualities of bodies and the commentators have taken these two doctrines to be irreconcilable. In this paper I shall briefly present the traditional reasons for thinking the two doctrines incompatible, and then present Locke's neglected attempt to reconcile these two claims.Thomas Reid in his Philosophical Works tries to explain the traditional interpretation of Locke's claims about the nature of secondary qualities. In doing so he cites an “ancient hypothesis“:… the mind, like a mirror receives the images of things from without, by means of the senses; so that their use must be to convey the images into the mind.

Reid on Primary and Secondary Qualities

1978 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 207-218
Author(s):  
Arthur R. Greenberg
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Secondary Qualities ◽  
New Science ◽  
Secondary Quality ◽  
Cognitive Operations ◽  
Quality Distinction

In recent years renewed interest in Thomas Reid's philosophy has led to fruitful discussion of Reid's theories of sensation and perception. Although certain aspects of these topics can be discussed without setting out Reid's version of the primary-secondary quality distinction, the ultimate evaluation of Reid's work on both sensation and perception requires discussion of his views on primary and secondary qualities. Current Reid literature virtually ignores this important topic. This paper is an attempt to remedy this situation. In addition to setting out Reid's position on primary and secondary qualities I will discuss Reid's curious relation to the New Science of his day and will explain how Reid thought he could reintroduce the primary-secondary quality distinction despite Berkeley's attacks on the doctrine.In both of his major works, An Inquiry Into The Human Mind (1764), and Essays On The Intellectual Powers Of Man (1785), Thomas Reid was intent upon examining the philosophical problems of human knowledge. In the Inquiry perception received his exclusive attention. In the Essays other cognitive operations were examined as well. The impetus for these investigations was provided by Reid's negative assessment of the achievements of his philosophical predecessors.

Christian-Jewish Dialogue in the Land of Sick Imagination. On the Margins of Waldemar Chrostowski’s Book Kościół, Żydzi, Polska

2010 ◽  
pp. 475-482
Author(s):  
Janusz Salamon, SJ
Keyword(s):  
Recent Book ◽  
Conflict Of Interests ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Church

The article is a polemic with the pessimistic assessment of the current state of the Christian-Jewish dialog presented by Waldemar Chrostowski in his recent book Kościół, Żydzi, Polska [The Church, Jews, Poland]. The author criticizes Rev. Chrostowski for defining the Christian-Jewish and Polish-Jewish relations in terms of strict opposition and unavoidable conflict of interests, and for putting all blame on Jews, while absolving Christians from all their past and present sins which contributed to the tensions between the two communities.

Perdre la mesure… Or, The Ecologics of Extinction

CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Stefan Herbrechter
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Solar System ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Current Level ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Human Race ◽  
World Picture ◽  
Adequate Measurement ◽  
Ecological Catastrophe

The article takes its cue from Olivier Rey's recent book Une question de taille (a question of size) and develops the idea of humanity ‘losing its measure, or scale’ in the context of contemporary ecological catastrophe. It seems true that the current level of global threats, from climate change to asteroids, has produced a culture of ambient ‘species angst’ living in more or less constant fear about the survival of the ‘human race’, biodiversity, the planet, the solar system. This indeed means that the idea of a cosmos and a cosmology may no longer be an adequate ‘measurement’ for scaling the so far inconceivable, namely a thoroughly postanthropocentric world picture. The question of scale is thus shown to be connected to the necessity of developing a new sense of proportion, an eco-logic that would do justice to both, things human and nonhuman. Through a reading of the recent science fiction film Interstellar, this article aims to illustrate the dilemma and the resulting stalemate between two contemporary ‘alternatives’ that inform the film: does humanity's future lie in self-abandoning or in self-surpassing, in investing in conservation or in exoplanets? The article puts forward a critique of both of these ‘ecologics’ and instead shows how they depend on a dubious attempt by humans to ‘argue themselves out of the picture’, while leaving their anthropocentric premises more or less intact.

The Common as Body Without Organs

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (supplement) ◽  
pp. 46-63
Author(s):  
Vidar Thorsteinsson
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
Body Without Organs ◽  
Social Factory ◽  
The Common

The paper explores the relation of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's work to that of Deleuze and Guattari. The main focus is on Hardt and Negri's concept of ‘the common’ as developed in their most recent book Commonwealth. It is argued that the common can complement what Nicholas Thoburn terms the ‘minor’ characteristics of Deleuze's political thinking while also surpassing certain limitations posed by Hardt and Negri's own previous emphasis on ‘autonomy-in-production’. With reference to Marx's notion of real subsumption and early workerism's social-factory thesis, the discussion circles around showing how a distinction between capital and the common can provide a basis for what Alberto Toscano calls ‘antagonistic separation’ from capital in a more effective way than can the classical capital–labour distinction. To this end, it is demonstrated how the common might benefit from being understood in light of Deleuze and Guattari's conceptual apparatus, with reference primarily to the ‘body without organs’ of Anti-Oedipus. It is argued that the common as body without organs, now understood as constituting its own ‘social production’ separate from the BwO of capital, can provide a new basis for antagonistic separation from capital. Of fundamental importance is how the common potentially invents a novel regime of qualitative valorisation, distinct from capital's limitation to quantity and scarcity.

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