Colloquium - Prof. Jacob Beck: "Locke’s Other Distinction: On Our Ideas of Primary and Secondary Qualities"

In his discussion of primary and secondary qualities, Locke draws two distinctions. The first is between primary qualities such as bulk (size), figure (shape), mobility, solidity, position, and number, and secondary qualities such as color, odor, taste, sound, and warm/cold. The second is between ideas of primary qualities and ideas of secondary qualities. While the latter distinction has not gone unnoticed, it has often been treated as ancillary—as though it were merely a clumsy and indirect way of getting at what really matters: the distinction between primary and secondary qualities themselves. Beck will argue that this is a mistake that is liable to distort our understanding of Locke’s aims in Book II, Chapter viii of the Essay. On the reading Beck will recommend, the distinction between our ideas of primary and secondary qualities is the main event. 

This reading has several advantages. First, it explains why Locke is discussing primary and secondary qualities in a chapter that is nominally about simple ideas and why he considers his discussion of these qualities an “excursion” for which he asks to be pardoned. Second, it helps us appreciate what makes Locke’s discussion special. Locke’s focus on ideas is an innovation for which he deserves credit. Third, it avoids controversial metaphysical commitments that many today would reject and to which (Beck will argue) Locke was not committed in any case. For example, it takes no stand on whether secondary qualities are dispositional properties nor whether they are perceiver dependent, distancing Beck's reading from other prominent interpretations. Fourth, it offers a novel interpretation of Locke’s notorious resemblance thesis that allows us to resolve several outstanding interpretative puzzles, including why Locke thinks that the resemblance thesis “is easier” to establish. Finally, it yields an interpretation of Locke with contemporary relevance. The question of whether perception resembles the world continues to be debated, even by perception scientists, and Locke’s qualified answer to this question, though advanced several centuries ago at the dawn of the scientific revolution, remains compelling today. 

Prof. Beck is also a member of York’s Cognitive Science Program, which he directed from 2018 to 2022, and Centre for Vision Research. Beck’s research makes progress on longstanding philosophical puzzles about the mind by reconceptualizing them in light of contemporary cognitive science. He has a special interest in pre-linguistic forms of mental representation, such as perception and the number sense.

Beck’s work has appeared in philosophy journals such as Mind, Noûs, and The Journal of Philosophy, cognitive science journals such as Cognition and Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and popular outlets such as Scientific American and The Atlantic. He co-edited (with Kristin Andrews) the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds. Beck has been a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH), and the recipient of two Insight Grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. He is an area editor at the open access journal Ergo.