Coffey: Primary and Secondary Qualities #2

Coffey's view is that there is no difference knowledge-wise between primary and secondary qualities. Of course, he doesn't argue against the distinction Aristotle made between the common and proper sensibles -- those that are perceived by more than one sense (shape, mass, motion, solidity, number) and those that are perceived by only one sense (color, taste, sound, smell). He disagrees with and critiques two alternative views -- immaterialism and physical realism.

Coffey devotes several pages to the view of Bishop George Berkeley. Since Coffey criticized immaterialism rather than primary and secondary qualities, I will be brief.

In Berkeley's book Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous,  Berkeley's views were represented by Philonous (Greek: "lover of mind"), while Hylas (Greek: "matter") embodies Berkeley's opponents, in particular John Locke. Hylas presents the primary-quality distinction as follows.

"You must know sensible qualities are by philosopher divided into primary and secondary. The former are extension, figure, solidity, gravity, motion, and rest. And these they hold really existing in bodies. The latter are those above enumerated [colors, sounds, tastes, etc.]; or briefly, all sensible qualities beside the primary, which they assert are only so many sensations or ideas existing nowhere but in the mind" (Three Dialogues). 

Locke wrote: "Such qualities, which in truth are nothing in the objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, i.e. by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their sensible parts, as colours, sounds, tastes, &c., these I call secondary qualities" (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Chap. 8, Sect. 10).

Thus Berkeley misrepresented Locke's claim. Primary qualities cause the perceived secondary qualities.