Abstract

The conviction that some of the properties we attribute to objects are objective and mind-independent, and that others belong only to the mind, commonly finds expression in some version or other of the primary/secondary quality distinction. Both the conviction and the distinction used to express it receive support from ordinary sensory experience and from explanatory considerations of modern science. Yet a largely unappreciated and frequently misunderstood argument of Berkeley's shows, I maintain, that the conviction, at least as expressed in a primary/secondary quality distinction, is fundamentally confused. Berkeley's argument is significant in three main respects. First, it undermines compatibilist attempts to defend an ontologically significant primary/secondary quality distinction from within a particular point of view. Second, the argument shows that, contrary to what some have supposed, science cannot be expected to resurrect a primary/secondary quality distinction that is ontologically significant. Insofar as the conception of material things provided by physical theory is supposed to be a conception of material things as they are in themselves, it faces the same difficulty as the conception supplied by traditional primary/secondary quality distinctions. Third, Berkeley's argument has important implications for contemporary accounts of color and other response-dependent concepts. To the extent that these accounts presuppose the same ontologically significant distinction that appears in traditional primary/secondary quality distinctions they, too, are deeply confused