Interrelation of Individual to the World

In trying to make these distinctions, the author first author clarifies what he means by ideas (what the mind perceives in itself), qualities (those elements in an object which gives it the power to produce ideas in our minds), primary qualities (those elements of an object which are constant and permanent and a part of the object itself), secondary qualities (those elements which are not truly parts of the object themselves but which produce in us the sensation or perception of color, sound, taste, etc.) (134-135).

Then the author asks the question, "Why is Whiteness and Coldness in Snow, and Pain not, when it produces the one and the other Idea in us, and can do neither, but by the Bulk, Figure, Number, and Motion of its solid Parts?" (137). In other words, the author wants to find out the nature and course of the process whereby we experience and comprehend the objects of the world, and what elements of th

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d around the self. If we do not know accurately where the external world begins and ends, and where we ourselves begin and end, we will not have yet come to understand the most fundamental aspect of that inquiry. We will be little more than superstitious beasts believing in pure illusion and self-deception, and frightened of things which we have given power over us through irrationality. Using the example of our experience of water, the author argues effectively that one hand can experience, or produces in the individual whose hand it is the idea of a body of water as cold, while the other hand experiences, or produces in the individual whose hand it is the idea of the same body of water as warm. The difference is not evidence of a difference inherent in the body of water itself, for it is one body of water and has the same temperature throughout. To the contrary, the difference has to do with the sensations of the two hands based on the comparative temperatures of the hands themselves. If the first hand is warmer than the body of water, the hand will have the sensation of the water as being cold. And if the second hand is colder than the body of water, that hand will have the sensation of the body of water as being warm. The
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Original Qualities, Effects Operations, , Pain Manna, Figure Motion, body water, Snow Pain, bulk figure motion, qualities elements, heat whiteness, bulk figure, figure motion, whiteness coldness, remind ourselves, secondary qualities, Whiteness Coldness, Simple Ideas, qualities exist snow, individual hand idea, light heat, exist snow, produces individual hand, heat whiteness coldness,
Approximate Word count = 1633
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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