2 Realism and Response‐Dependence

Abstract

There are many different accounts of the distinction between primary quality and secondary quality concepts. But one thing is generally agreed. Secondary quality concepts implicate subjects in a way primary quality concepts do not. Consider the concepts of smoothness, blandness, and redness. They are tailor-made for creatures like us who are capable, as many intelligences may not be, of certain responses: capable of finding things smooth to the touch, bland to the taste, red to the eye. The concepts, as we may say, are response-dependent. i They are fashioned for beings with a capacity for certain responses and it is hard to see how creatures which lacked that capacity could get a proper, first-hand grasp of the concepts. The notion of response-dependence requires further definition, and this will be provided in ?2.2 But however it is understood, it enables us to identify a certain sort of doctrine about any range of concepts. This is the claim that the concepts in question, objective though they may at first seem, are really response-dependent notions: they conform in relevant respects to the general image of secondary quality concepts. That claim is meant to be descriptive of the concepts in question: to provide an analytical characterisation of how they function. (A variant on such a doctrine would argue, not that the concepts in ordinary use are responsedependent, but that the ordinary concepts should be given up in favour of response-dependent surrogates. The variant is a revisionary doctrine, where the original claim is descriptive.3) Most philosophers will acknowledge that some concepts are response-dependent: most will go along with the general view and think of secondary quality concepts in that way; and many will add apparently more objective concepts to the response-dependent camp. These philosophers all make a distinction between response-independent concepts that have a tenure in nature and response-dependent concepts whose tenure is tied to our interests or sensibilities; they differ only in where they draw the line between tenured and non-tenured concepts. Other philosophers reject that distinction, or at least this way of making it, and hold that