[extropy-chat] effing

[gts]

This is John Locke talking about Brent's idea of "phenomenal properties".

Locke called them "secondary qualities". (Same thing, Brent?)


====
23. So the qualities that are in bodies are of three sorts.

First, the size, shape, number, position, and motion or rest of their  
solid parts; those are in
them, whether or not we perceive them; and when they are big enough for us  
to perceive them
they give us our idea of what kind of thing it is - as clearly happens  
with artifacts. ·For example,
we recognize a clock or a coach from how its visible parts are assembled,  
without need for
guesswork about its submicroscopic features. I call these primary  
qualities.

Secondly, the power that a body has, by reason of its imperceptible  
primary qualities, to
operate in a special way on one of our senses, thereby producing in us the  
different ideas of
various colours, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. These are usually called  
sensible qualities. ·I call them
secondary qualities.

Thirdly, the power that a body has, by virtue of the particular set-up of  
its primary qualities,
to change the size, shape, texture or motion of another body so as to make  
the latter operate on
our senses differently from how it did before. Thus the sun has a power to  
make wax white, and
fire to make lead fluid. These are usually called powers.

The first of these, I repeat, may be properly called real, original, or  
primary qualities, because
they are in the things themselves, whether or not they are perceived. It  
is upon different
modifications of them that the secondary qualities depend. [A  
?modification? of a quality is a
special case of it, a quality that involves it and more. Squareness is a  
modification of shapedness,
which is a modification of extendedness.]

The other two are only powers to act differently upon other things, which  
powers result from
the different modifications of those primary qualities.

John Locke,  _An Essay  Concerning Human Understanding_
====

-gts