The sensible world and creatio continua

Abstract

The article presents the principal contemporary positions in the discussion about the nature of secondary qualities, i.e. reductionist materialism, dispositionalism, and mentalism. In this context the author proposes his own solution, which draws on the ideas of Berkeley. Secondary qualities can neither be reduced to the microstructural properties of objects, nor can they be treated as so-called dispositional properties of physical objects, nor finally can they be considered to be properties of mental states as such. The emergentist proposal, which claims that secondary qualities are a third kind of being in addition to matter and mental states, is also inadequate. Apart from other difficulties, all of the aforementioned proposals are unable to explain the genesis of secondary qualities. This is especially clear in the case of the materialist proposals: it is impossible to construct a causal-structural model which will show how secondary qualities arise from the structural interactions between spatial material objects. In view of this the best solution seems to be to have recourse to the creative activity of God. This should not, however, be interpreted as an argument for the existence of God, since according to the author the only valid such proof proceeds a priori (as does, for example, the ontological proof). The secondary qualities that we known exist as they are perceived even when nobody is perceiving them, since they are fragments of an actually infinite fullness of properties, which is God. The author argues that the being of God can be understood either as an actually infinite fullness of properties or as a continuous creation.