Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

of them. At first strike, secondary qualities might seem to have a close affinity with universals. So, imagine a red hat — the redness being a secondary quality. There is not some separate redness that can exist by itself — the redness has to occur within the person observing the hat. So here the ‘universal’ seems to occur within ourselves. Things seem to be different for primary qualities such as extension and duration in time. There is no ‘extension’ apart from things that are extended. There is no time apart from things that endure. All of which might suggest that universals of primary qualities exist within objects, but it is also necessary to add that there is no extension or duration without subjects to experience these qualities. So perhaps the universals, once again, dwell within ourselves.

The question of what makes a ‘thing’ returns to us at this point. This question was addressed back in Chapter 2 and there it was noted that the relational properties of an object are critical — indeed it is the relational properties that lift ‘things’ into being ‘somethings'. Here we are asking, are objects simple things, or are they always a combination of things? Universals suggest there are no simple objects — any object must have its universal component as well as its normal presence as a thing in the observable world. At a simple level, we could say that a universal is a type of relation — a way of comparing an object with other objects that display similar qualities. It is, after all, only by comparison with other things that an object can be perceived at all, so taking a universal as a relation makes sense and ties in neatly with what was observed back in Chapter 2. At a

52