Is primary and secondary qualities by Locke & Hume the same thing as the Representative Theory of Perception?

Question

My essay question is "Compare and contrast the reprsentative theory of perception and the distinction between primary & secondary qualities as espoused by Locke and Hume respectively".

I am having trouble comming up with a plan on how to do this. Any good points on what to include will be most appreciated!! Thanks x x

Answer 1

This is interesting stuff:

Locke denied the existence of innate ideas. The mind, he famously said, is a tabula rasa, a blank tablet or clean page. At least it is at birth. Once we are out in the world, so long as our senses are working, the mind starts to fill up with all kinds of ideas. According to him, secondary qualities are subjective, depending on the perceiver, whereas primary qualities really exist in substances - what an object tastes like or feels like depends on how we react to it.

Whether it is one thing or two things, moving or at rest, liquid or solid (primary qualities), though, does not depend on us at all. One way to think of the difference is to imagine a person with no senses, who is blind, deaf, and unable to taste, or feel (secondary qualities) or smell things. The qualities of things that could affect this person (by getting in the way, drowning, stabbing or crushing body parts, say) are primary qualities.

Then what about objects themselves? Locke believes all objects are made of matter, and it is this matter that has various properties. So a lake is some matter with the properties of being wet, a certain size, blue, etc. What matter itself is, though, is impossible to say. Locke says it is "something," but "I know not what." Given his view of how the mind gets its ideas, this is not surprising. We only have ideas of what we perceive. We perceive lakes, trees, people, etc. (in fact what we literally perceive are ideas of blueness, wetness, leafiness, etc.) but never matter itself. So we can, according to Locke’s theory, have no idea of it.

It gets worse. Like Descartes, Locke believed in the representative theory of perception: the theory that the mind does not directly perceive objects but rather it perceives representations, or ideas, of them. For instance, you do not listen to a CD. Sound-waves travel from your CD-player to your ear, then a message is sent into your brain and your mind perceives or decodes this message. This sounds like common sense. BUT is it literally true? Two problems: (i) it sounds ridiculous to say that I have never heard a CD, or tasted a burger, or seen a football game, (ii) if all I ever perceive is the contents of my own mind, how do I know there is anything outside it? We seem to be back with Cartesian scepticism. Locke did not solve these problems.

Source: http://academics.vmi.edu/psy_dr/locke_and_berkeley.htm

Answer 2

I'm not sure what the represententive theory is but I'll give you an objection to Locke's secondary qualities theory.

He lists 'colour' as a secondary quality, but fails to realise that without colour we can see no shape/extension (a primary quality). Therefore colour must be a primary quality.