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8/8/2025, 3:49:22 PM
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democritus/#1
>He famously denies that perceptible qualities other than shape and size (and, perhaps, weight) really exist in the atoms themselves: one direct quotation surviving from Democritus claims that ‘by convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color; but in reality atoms and void’ (DK 68B9, trans. Taylor 1999a). There are different accounts of this distinction. Furley argues that the translation ‘convention’ should not be taken to suggest that there is anything arbitrary about the perception of certain colors, say: the same configuration of atoms may be regularly associated with a given color (Furley 1993; cf. Barnes 1982, pp. 370–7). What Democritus rejects with the label ‘merely conventional’ is, perhaps, the imputation of the qualities in question to the atoms, or perhaps even to macroscopic bodies. Mourelatos (2005) draws the contrast as that between intrinsic and relational properties.
>While several reports of Democritus’ view, apparently direct quotations, mention exclusively sensible qualities as being unreal, a report of Plutarch includes in the list of things that exist only by convention the notion of ‘combination’ or sunkrisis. If this report is genuinely Democritean, it would broaden the scope of the claim considerably: the idea that any combination—by which he presumably means any cluster of atoms—is ‘unreal’ or merely ‘conventional’ suggests that Democritus is drawing a more radical distinction than that between sensible and nonsensible qualities. The implication would be that anything perceived, because it is a perception of combinations of atoms and not atoms themselves, would be suspect, not merely the qualia experienced by means of individual sense organs. One report indeed attributes to Democritus a denial that two things could become one, or vice versa (DK 68A42), thus suggesting that combinations are regarded as conventional.
>He famously denies that perceptible qualities other than shape and size (and, perhaps, weight) really exist in the atoms themselves: one direct quotation surviving from Democritus claims that ‘by convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color; but in reality atoms and void’ (DK 68B9, trans. Taylor 1999a). There are different accounts of this distinction. Furley argues that the translation ‘convention’ should not be taken to suggest that there is anything arbitrary about the perception of certain colors, say: the same configuration of atoms may be regularly associated with a given color (Furley 1993; cf. Barnes 1982, pp. 370–7). What Democritus rejects with the label ‘merely conventional’ is, perhaps, the imputation of the qualities in question to the atoms, or perhaps even to macroscopic bodies. Mourelatos (2005) draws the contrast as that between intrinsic and relational properties.
>While several reports of Democritus’ view, apparently direct quotations, mention exclusively sensible qualities as being unreal, a report of Plutarch includes in the list of things that exist only by convention the notion of ‘combination’ or sunkrisis. If this report is genuinely Democritean, it would broaden the scope of the claim considerably: the idea that any combination—by which he presumably means any cluster of atoms—is ‘unreal’ or merely ‘conventional’ suggests that Democritus is drawing a more radical distinction than that between sensible and nonsensible qualities. The implication would be that anything perceived, because it is a perception of combinations of atoms and not atoms themselves, would be suspect, not merely the qualia experienced by means of individual sense organs. One report indeed attributes to Democritus a denial that two things could become one, or vice versa (DK 68A42), thus suggesting that combinations are regarded as conventional.
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