Abstract

A fundamental tenet of the primary/secondary quality distinction is that objects possessing only primary qualities cause (or cause ideas of ) secondary qualities. While Berkeley acknowledged the causal hypothesis "that colours, sounds, heat, cold, and such like secondary qualities, ... depend on and are occasioned by the different size, texture and motion of the minute particles of matter" ( Principles §10), he seems to provide no reply to it. This paper defends the thesis that Principles §10 contains an implicit reply to the causal hypothesis.

It was a widely accepted principle that the cause of a phenomenon must be numerically distinct from its effect. Call this the distinctness thesis. Insofar as Berkeley shows that the primary qualities cannot be conceived as entities distinct from all secondary qualities, there is no ground for claiming numerical distinctness between the alleged cause and its effect. So, the causal hypothesis is rejected.

The paper shows that the distinctness thesis was widely accepted and provides evidence that Berkeley accepted it. It sketches a distinction between an ontological and an epistemological approach to the Berkeley's works. It concludes with some speculation on why Berkeley did not make his criticism of the causal hypothesis explicit.

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