Kant and Helmholtz on primary and secondary qualities

In Lawrence Nolan (ed.), Primary and secondary qualities: the historical and ongoing debate. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 304-338 (2011)
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Abstract

This chapter finds two versions of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities in Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Locke. Although agreeing that primary qualities are physically basic properties of extended particles (including size, shape, position, and motion), these authors differed on whether secondary qualities such as color exist only in the mind as sensations or belong to bodies as powers to cause sensations. Kant was initially a metaphysical realist about primary qualities as spatialized forces (vs. bare extended particles), before placing space among the appearances in his critical period. Space becomes the subjective form in which transcendently real forces and relations appear. Kant viewed color as a subjective sensation in the mind, whereas Helmholtz treated color as a power to cause sensations. Helmholtz was initially a realist about primary qualities as spatialized masses and forces, but he later adopted the epistemically modest view of space as the subjective form in which forces and relations appear.

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Gary Hatfield
University of Pennsylvania

Citations of this work

Objectivity in Science: New Perspectives From Science and Technology Studies.Flavia Padovani, Alan Richardson & Jonathan Y. Tsou (eds.) - 2015 - Cham: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol. 310. Springer.
Helmholtz on Perceptual Properties.R. Brian Tracz - 2018 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 6 (3).
The Physiology of the Sense Organs and Early Neo-Kantian Conceptions of Objectivity: Helmholtz, Lange, Liebmann.Scott Edgar - 2015 - In Flavia Padovani, Alan Richardson & Jonathan Y. Tsou (eds.), Objectivity in Science: New Perspectives From Science and Technology Studies. Cham: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol. 310. Springer.

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