Perception & The Primary|Secondary Quality Distinction (Peter Millican - General Philosophy)

Peter Millican introduces the problem of perception (and the distinction between the world and what we perceive), along with the concepts of primary and secondary qualities. He explores Berkeley's and Locke's arguments concerning the resemblance of qualities and objects; that the perceived qualities of objects exist only in the mind or whether secondary qualities are intrinsically part of the object. Next he discusses criticisms of the resemblance theory of perception and an introduction to idealism - that perceptions of the external world are within the mind as ideas. Finally, he gives a brief overview of contemporary accounts of perception; including phenomenalism (that objects are logical constructions from sense data) and direct realism (that we perceive objects and the external world directly).

This comes from a series of lectures on General Philosophy given by Peter Millican at Oxford in 2010. I thought it provided a pretty good introduction to the issues regarding perception. Note, I added the slides to the video to make it easier to follow. I also fixed up the audio, making parts louder. In any case, you can find the rest of the lectures on Youtube here:

The lectures are available to download in video or audio form at the original source here:

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Philosophy,Analytic Philosophy,Necessity,Metaphysics,Hume,David Hume,Causation,Locke,John Locke,Epistemology,Perception,Problem of Perception,Berkeley,Idealism,Realism,Direct Realism,Descartes,Peter Millican,General Philosophy,History of Philosophy,Sense Data,Philosophy of Perception,Phenomenalism,Abstraction,Anti-Realism,Subjectivity,Argument From Illusion,Subject-Object,Philosophical Realism,Empiricism,Modern Philosophy,Philosophical Skepticism,