Paper Abstract
In this paper, I compare Margaret Cavendish’s argument for the view that colours of objects are inseparable from their ‘physical’ qualities (such as size and shape) with George Berkeley’s argument for the view that secondary qualities of objects (such as colours, tastes, and sounds) are inseparable from their primary qualities (such as size and shape). By reconstructing their respective arguments, I show that both thinkers rely on the ‘inconceivability principle’: the claim that inconceivability entails impossibility. That is, both premise their arguments on the claim that it is impossible to conceive of an object that has size and shape but (e.g.) no colour.
I argue that Cavendish, like Berkeley, accepts the inconceivability principle on the grounds that it is impossible to conceive of something that could not, in principle, be perceived and, in turn, that something imperceptible could not possibly exist. As such, I argue that both Cavendish and Berkeley are committed to an ‘empiricist’ modal epistemology: one wherein our knowledge of what it is possible to perceive informs us about what could possibly exist. For this reason, I conclude that there is more empiricism (albeit of the Berkeleian rather than, say, the Baconian variety) in Cavendish’s epistemology than secondary literature to date suggests.
Notes
© 2020. Peter West. © 2020. Colin Chamberlain. These materials are presented under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International copyright license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). 
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Start Date
5-6-2020 9:00 AM
Time Zone
Pacific Daylight Time
End Date
5-6-2020 9:55 AM
Location
Author's Homepage
https://philpeople.org/profiles/peter-west
Keywords
Cavendish, Berkeley, inconceivability, impossibility, colour, primary and secondary qualities
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Cavendish and Berkeley on Inconceivability and Impossibility
In this paper, I compare Margaret Cavendish’s argument for the view that colours of objects are inseparable from their ‘physical’ qualities (such as size and shape) with George Berkeley’s argument for the view that secondary qualities of objects (such as colours, tastes, and sounds) are inseparable from their primary qualities (such as size and shape). By reconstructing their respective arguments, I show that both thinkers rely on the ‘inconceivability principle’: the claim that inconceivability entails impossibility. That is, both premise their arguments on the claim that it is impossible to conceive of an object that has size and shape but (e.g.) no colour.
I argue that Cavendish, like Berkeley, accepts the inconceivability principle on the grounds that it is impossible to conceive of something that could not, in principle, be perceived and, in turn, that something imperceptible could not possibly exist. As such, I argue that both Cavendish and Berkeley are committed to an ‘empiricist’ modal epistemology: one wherein our knowledge of what it is possible to perceive informs us about what could possibly exist. For this reason, I conclude that there is more empiricism (albeit of the Berkeleian rather than, say, the Baconian variety) in Cavendish’s epistemology than secondary literature to date suggests.