Locke, Barkley And Locke: Is There A Real World?

Is there a real world? I believe so, but based the concepts of Locke, Barkley and Hume, the real world isn’t actually how I perceive it to be.

Locke’s concepts outline the distinction between the two types of ideas produced by sensations. In this concept, there is a real world

In Locke’s concept, there is a real world that is produced by sensations. From sensations there are two qualities that Locke elaborates on: Primary and Secondary qualities. The distinction between primary and secondary qualities, as defined by Locke, is made by the different kinds of ideas the qualities of the object produce in our minds. The primary qualities of objects produce ideas in our minds that “resemble” the corresponding qualities in the objects, such as texture,

According to Locke, sensations such as color, taste, sound, and odor are produced by the powers, the arrangement of matter, of primary qualities. Secondary qualities exists in the sense that objects have the ability to act on our senses and create sensations or impressions like color, smell, taste, touch, sound, and temperature. These sensations are explained to be produced because of the size, shape, texture, motion, and weight of miniature units of matter that everything is made up of. Locke reasons that we can explain everything by putting forward the existence of primary qualities, so we don’t necessarily need to believe that secondary qualities have any premise in the real

An example used is an objects color, the color is a part of our perception of the color and not a part of the object or a result of the power of the object.

For his argument against Locke, Berkeley begins with discrediting the idea of secondary qualities existing in objects. Two secondary qualities elaborated on were sensation and taste. With sensation, water can’t be cold and hot at the same time. If your hand temperature is higher than the temperature of the water, than the water will be perceived as cool and vice versa, so the perception of the temperature of the water must be in the perceiver. With taste as well, the same item can be perceived as pleasurable and distasteful depending on the perceiver and not the object.

I touched a little bit on the next point that Berkeley made, which is that perceptions are relative. The secondary qualities used to prove this point were color and speed. Relating to color, depending on the perspective of a person, two people can look at the same object and believe to see two different colors. Relating to speed, the example used was someone looking at people on a train. Of course the people on the train are moving at a consent speed but seems to be standing still, which is another example of how perception is relative to the