Abstract
In his New Theory of Vision Berkeley famously denied the immediate perception of distance by sight. In addition, he claimed that ideas of sight and touch do not have anything in common, but are entirely heterogeneous. In this paper I present an interpretation of what Berkeley understood the visual perception to be like before we learned to see things at a distance by analyzing Berkeley’s thought experiments about the Molyneux man and about the “unbodied spirit”. This analysis enables us to see Berkeley’s reasons for upholding the heterogeneity of ideas sight and touch: for Berkeley the visual organization of proper objects of sight, lights and colours, is such that it enables us to come to perceive them as in distance but in themselves the proper objects of sight lack even basic geometric features that ideas of touch, according to Berkeley, posses. Thus, for Berkeley, the denial of immediate visual perception of objects at distance leads us to consider the exact nature of proper objects of sight which in turn serves as evidence for Berkeley’s denial that there would be common ideas of sight and touch.
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Notes
- 1.
Berkeley is most explicit about the passivity of perception in the First Dialogue in the context of arguing that sensations could not exist in “an unperceiving substance”: “you are in the very perception of light and colours altogether passive … the perception of light and colours, including no action in it”. (DHP I, 197). Kenneth Winkler has pointed out the ad hominem character of the argument in First Dialogue, where the aim is to force Hylas into an unsupportable position rather than to reflect Philonous’s, i.e. Berkley’s own position. Winkler has also paid attention to the subtleties of what could be meant by action in this context. See Winkler (1989, pp. 7–9).
- 2.
See, for instance, Migely (2007) for a discussion on this inconsistency. Charles McCracken has pointed out a related worry about the activity of the mind that is not directly related to Berkeleyan dualism between active minds and passive ideas but rather to the metaphysical status of the mind itself: if the mind has both active and passive functions, it seems to pose a threat to its unity and simplicity. See McCarcken (1988).
- 3.
“a spirit is one, simple, undivided, active being” (PHK 27, 52), “a soul or spirit is an active being, whose existence consists not in being perceived, but in perceiving ideas and thinking” (PHK 139, 105).
- 4.
Berkeley to Johnson in March 24 1730, in Works II, 293.
- 5.
This denial is known in the literature as Berkeley’s “heterogeneity thesis”, i.e. that ideas of sight and touch have nothing in common but are completely heterogeneous.
- 6.
NTV 1, 171.
- 7.
NTV 2, 171. “Fund of the eye” means retina. This argument against the possibility of immediate perception of distance is known as the “one-point argument” in the literature. Note however that the argument is stated somewhat differently in Alciphron: ”Therefore the appearance of a long and of a short distance is of the same magnitude, or rather of no magnitude at all, being in all cases one single point” (Alc IV, 8, 150. See also DHP I, 202) As Alan Donagan has noted, this latter way of spelling out the argument is done in terms of the way things look, not in terms of physical points of projected light in the retina. See Donagan (1978). This alone puts David Armstrong’s interpretation of Berkeley as identifying the object seen with retinal image in doubt. See Armstrong (1960, pp. 9–10). In addition, were it the case that we would see our retinal image in visual perception, we would be actually seeing tangible objects since the image in the retina is a physical picture formed by physical light reflecting from objects. In this case we would immediately see tangible objects, which is exactly what Berkeley denies. This should not be taken to insinuate that for Berkeley there would be no connection between retinal image and what is seen, for would that be the case then Berkeley would never have asked for instance the question of inverted retinal image (NTV 98, 211). Berkeley says himself in NTV 88, 206–207 that “There is at this day no one ignorant that the pictures of external objects are painted on the retina, or fund of the eye: That we can see nothing which is not so painted”. It suffices for our purposes to say that there exists a correspondence between the retinal image and the visual perception without claiming these two to be identical. For interesting discussion on the relation between retinal image and objects of vision see Thrane (1977).
- 8.
See, for instance NTV 40, 185 where Berkeley calls Molyneux “ingenious”.
- 9.
Armstrong has not been convinced of Berkeley’s criticism, and considers it sufficient for geometric optics to hold that lines and angles are perceived unconsciously, instead of consciously as Berkeley demands, see Armstrong (1960, pp. 21–22). Neither Descartes nor Malebranche considered the calculation performed in perceiving objects at distance to be a conscious one: indeed Malebranche acknowledges that it would be far too complex for finite minds to perform and concludes that it is God who makes the calculations for us (Search I, 9, 46–8 and Elucidations 17, 746).
- 10.
This has already been done in the secondary literature. For a fuller account of Berkeley’s critique of geometric optics, see Atherton (1990, pp. 61–88).
- 11.
See TVV 16, 257; NTV 14, 173. As Berkeley’s great respect towards William Molyneux already suggests, Berkeley had no quarrel with the project of explaining mathematically the refraction and reflection of light, he merely insisted that this geometrical explanation is not applicable to study of vision: “To explain how the mind or soul of man simply sees is one thing, and belongs to philosophy. To consider particles as moving in certain lines, rays of light as refracted or reflected, or crossing, or including angles, is quite another thing, and appertaineth to geometry. … [t]he former theory is that which makes us understand the true nature of vision, considered as a faculty of the soul.” (NTV 43, 266).
- 12.
NTV 9, 172–173.
- 13.
NTV 9–10, 172–173.
- 14.
By proper object of sight Berkeley does not have in mind objects in the usual sense as objects in the world but subjective experiences one has when perceiving by sight.
- 15.
Note, however, that Berkeley does once use the word “distance” in the latter sense while arguing that there can be distance only between things which appertain under the same sense modality: “For by the distance between any two points nothing more is meant than the number of intermediate points” (NTV 112, 216). It follows from this that it would be absurd to say that visual point is adjacent to tangible point; for this would mean that the line between them would consist of neither visually nor tangibly perceived points, and would hence be inconceivable. For more thorough discussion of this argument, see Schwartz (2006, pp. 49, 55–68).
- 16.
- 17.
This is not to say that metric distance would not be relevant topic for Berkeley. In particular, when discussing the impossibility of geometry based solely on visible extension Berkeley might have had some considerations concerning the problems of calibrating the visible units with tangible units as one of his background assumptions (NTV 149–159, 232–235).
- 18.
Perhaps the proponent of geometric theory might explain the misperception of the distance of objects as the outcome of the influence of non-geometric psychological processes on the process of visual perception, as Descartes and Malebranche in fact seem to be doing.
- 19.
If this were Berkeley’s project he would in fact be in accordance with Descartes and Malebranche, who both acknowledged the fact that psychological cues can and do play a role in estimating the distance of objects in addition to geometrical reasoning. As a matter of fact Malebranche holds that as the distance to an object is far enough the rays issuing from it converge on the retina (Search I, 6, iii, 43) thus failing to provide us information about the distance to object. In those cases we judge the distance based on psychological cues. Descartes speaks of “judgements” in his Sixth set of Replies, which we are accustomed to make from our earliest years and which have an influence on what I see. See Descartes (CSM II, pp. 298–299; AT VII, pp. 438–439). Although Descartes’ example of these judgments in the Sixth set of replies is calculations made on the distance of objects, in the Sixth Discourse of Dioptrics he mentions “the knowledge or opinion, that we have of the position of various parts of an object” as influencing our perception of the shape of an object, which clearly count as psychological cues in vision (CSM I, 172; AT VI, 140). For a discussion of the role of judgments in visual perception in Descartes see for instance Atherton (2005); Wolf-Devine (2000).
- 20.
Berkeley writes in NTV 52, 190 “I have now done with distance, and proceed to shew how it is that we come to perceive the magnitude of objects”. He proceeds to distinguish visible magnitude from tangible, maintaining that we see both of them, albeit only the former “properly and immediately” and the latter only mediately (NTV 54, 191).
- 21.
Think of, for instance, visual perception of a ship just before it vanishes to the horizon. Although we know the ship to be an object with volume in all three dimensions of space, and normally appearing to us as such, we still see it for a moment as two-dimensional regardless of the fact that we know it to be three-dimensional. Some contemporary writers, who have hold that since we originally perceive objects as three-dimensional, we could not perceive objects as genuinely two-dimensional at all, would deny this. See for instance Schwitzgebel (2007). Margaret Atherton cites Robert Schwartz’s example of seeing a picture of a globe through a stereoscope, which will “look bulgy or in depth” but will not look to be in any distance from us (Atherton 1990, pp. 74–75). Thus as in the former example, where we could be able to see object to be two-dimensional but nevertheless as in distance from us, perhaps we could also perceive an object to be three-dimensional without being at any distance from us. It seems, however, that the former example does not suffice to show that we could perceive three-dimensional object without it being at distance from us but merely that we could perceive such object without being able to say at what metric distance it is from us. At least in the case of these two examples it seems that perception of objects in distance is primary in relation to perceiving objects in depth. In more general note, it is interesting that just as during the eighteenth century there was more or less a consensus that we originally see objects as two-dimensional, there has been a wide agreement in the twentieth century that our original visual perception of objects is three dimensional.
- 22.
NTV 16, 174.
- 23.
NTV 21, 175. Berkeley acknowledges that in most cases there are many other ideas which can act as visual cues for distance and mentions “particular number, size and kind” as examples (NTV 28, 177).
- 24.
NTV 23, 176.
- 25.
Berkeley writes “That one idea may suggest another to the mind it will suffice that they have been observed to go together, without any demonstration of the necessity of their coexistence, or without so much as knowing what it is that makes them so coexist”. (NTV 25, 176).
- 26.
In NTV 26, 176 Berkeley writes ”if it had been the ordinary course of Nature that the farther off an object were placed, the more confused it should appear, it is certain the very same perception that now makes us think an object approaches would then have made us imagine it went farther off. That perception, abstracting from custom and experience, being equally fitted to produce the Idea of great distance, or small distance, or no distance at all”.
- 27.
See NTV 52–87, 191–206 for magnitude and NTV 88–120, 206–219 for situation.
- 28.
NTV 45, 187–188: “Looking at an object I perceive a certain visible figure and colour, with some degree of faintness and other circumstances, which from what I have formerly observed, determine me to think that if I advance forward so many paces or miles, I shall be affected with such and such ideas of touch: So that in truth and strictness of speech I neither see distance it self, nor anything that I take to be at a distance”.
- 29.
“By touch I perceive, for example, hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance, and of all these more and less either as to quantity or degree. (Principles, 1, 41, emphasis added.)” As the expression “for example”, and the context of this passage suggest, Berkeley did not consider this list of proper objects of touch as exhaustive. Similar qualification seems to be hinted at the last sentence of NTV 45, 188: “Note that when I speak of tangible idea, I take the word idea for any the immediate object of sense or understanding, in which large signification it is commonly used by the moderns”. Although Berkeley never explicitly offers an organization of tangible ideas into different kinds, I think that his writings hint that he was aware of the complexity of the phenomena under the label “tangible ideas”.
- 30.
As it turns out, perceiving the hardness and softness of objects by touch, not to mention their movement and resistance, involves some sense of our body and its intentional movement, as in pushing and groping an object as is the case of tactual perception of shape and size as well. Interesting discussions on Berkeley and the sense of touch are found from Warnock (1982, pp. 47–59) and Armstrong (1960, pp. 73–80). For an illuminating account on the nature of the sense of touch in general see O’Shaughnessy (1989).
- 31.
It ought to be noted at this point that Berkeley has not given an argument against the possibility of illusions and misperceptions of distance and size and shape in the immediate perception by touch (the second point that I noted about the relationship between visual cues and the actual depth of objects). Supposing that he thinks that such an argument cannot be given, it seems to follow that our tangible perception of distance may be fallible but yet immediate.
- 32.
George Pitcher has pointed out that within an immediate perception one can distinguish two meanings: 1) perceiving directly without any intermediary and 2) perceiving immediately without any intellectual or mental process being involved in perception, see Pitcher (1977, pp. 9–13). In this paper I will limit my inquiries into immediate perception falling under the second category of the distinction, understanding immediate perception as having a sensation without any interpretation or belief connected to it.
- 33.
To apply Berkeley’s example of hearing a couch drive out on the street (NTV 46, 188–189), we might say that the content of immediate perception of the coach is same in both with a person who has never heard a coach in his life and who does not know how couch sound like and, on the other hand, with person who has heard the sound that one hears from coach driving by and who full well knows that this is how the coach sounds like.
- 34.
Later Hatfield and Epstein have called the visual field with only proper objects of vision in it by the name “sensory core” which they take to refer “to a conscious states with the phenomenal properties of the retinal image”, see Hatfield and Epstein (1979, p. 363). This term could be used in Berkeley’s case as well as long as it is remembered that there might be some retinal properties which the proper objects of vision do not track. For example, as the perceived object recedes far enough, the visual perception of it diminishes to smaller than one minima visibilia, which means that there is no phenomena of seeing anything, whilst at the same time retina might still have on it a point caused by the ray of light issuing from the tangible object.
- 35.
I will leave aside all other senses expect vision and touch, since they seem to be the only ones by which we could be claimed to perceive distance directly. One might wonder why hearing is not counted as one of the senses by which we perceive distance. Berkeley indeed says that “by the ear I perceive distance, just after the same manner as I do by the eye” (NTV 46, 189), that is mediately. But he goes on to qualify that “I do not nevertheless say I hear distance in like manner as is say that I see it, the ideas perceived by hearing not being so apt to be confounded with the ideas of touch as those of sight are”. We are more accustomed to analyse hearing as hearing a sound rather than as hearing a (tangible) object at distance. (NTV 47, 189) Perhaps Berkeley ought to have said more about hearing in his discussion of perceived extension, to which he turns to in NTV 49, 189, since it seems that although hearing might not provide us with immediate perception of distance, there could still be a particular organization of sounds that merits the name of space. Sounds are ordered in terms of loudness and pitch in addition to which they seem to have a particular orientation: they, at least sometimes, seem to be at some direction from us. Perhaps Berkeley thought that being in certain direction is not immediately perceived by hearing but merely mediately, due to the fact that we have some immediate kinaesthetic perception of our own position, which in turn would be counted under the broad category of perception of touch. For a discussion of phenomenal spatiality in hearing, see Smith (2002, pp. 134–135, 144–145).
- 36.
NTV 41–42; 132–136, 186; 226.
- 37.
NTV 153–155, 233–234.
- 38.
A character in a thought experiment first introduced by Molyneux (The Correspondence of John Locke, IV, p. 651) and introduced to the public by Locke (Essay, II, ix, 8, p. 146).
- 39.
“From what has been premised it is a manifest consequence that a man born blind, being made to see, would at first have no idea of distance by sight; the sun and stars, the remotest objects as well as the nearer, would all seem to be in his eye, or rather in his mind. The objects intromitted by sight would seem to him (as in truth they are) no other than a new set of thoughts or sensations, each whereof is as near to him as the perceptions of pain or pleasure, or the most inward passions of his soul”. NTV 41, 186.
- 40.
The denial that Molyneux man would see objects at distance is clearly directed against the geometric theory, main proponents of whom Berkeley considered Descartes and Malebranche to be. If distance were perceived by lines and angles as geometric optics holds, Molyneux man ought to be able to make the calculations as soon as he opens his eyes and tell at what distance objects are. The latter part of the conclusion which Berkeley draws from the original experience of Molyneux man, that he would not perceive any ideas in common between ideas of sight and ideas of touch but would need to learn to connect particular visible ideas to particular tangible ideas, is directed towards Locke. Locke had given negative answer to the Molyneux question just as Berkeley, but was not entitled to do so, according to Berkeley, on the basis of his distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Locke thought that the so called primary properties are properties that material things themselves have independent of our perception of them. Our perceptions of these properties resemble the properties that they are perceptions of and are shared by different senses (with the exception of solidity, which can be only felt by touch): we can both see and feel extension, size, figure and motion of objects. If this is the case, then it ought to be possible for a Molyneux man to be able to figure out the shape of a seen thing without touching it. After all, shape is, according to Locke, an idea shared both by vision and touch and Molyneux man does not hence receive any new idea of shape via vision. The denial that there could be such “common sensibles” was at the core of Berkeley’s heterogeneity thesis and he considered it to be one of the greatest merits of his NTV, as he pointed out in TVV 15 and 41, 257; 265. See Brykman (1996) for an interesting discussion on the question of common sensible and common sense in Locke and Berkeley.
- 41.
For a reading of Berkeley’s NTV that interprets him as denying not only the visual perception of distance, but the visual perception of space altogether, see Morgan (1977, pp. 61–62). Morgan puts great weight on Berkeley’s solution of the problem of inverted retinal image (NTV 88–106, 206–213) and thinks that there is no meaningful way to speak of visual space without orientation, which can only take place in relation to our own body and its possible action, which is tangible and known by touch. However, it does not follow from the fact that there is no natural up, down, left, right, near, far in visual space that the visual space would be completely non-spatial and unordered. Berkeley explicitly acknowledges that ideas of sight have a situation, but reminds us that “the position of any object is determined with respect only to objects of the same sense”. NTV 111, 215.
- 42.
NTV 43, 187.
- 43.
Indeed, were it not, Berkeley would have contradicted himself on the denial of abstract ideas by granting the existence of unextended colour (in addition to already cited NTV 43, 187, see also, for instance, PHK 5, 42–43).
- 44.
NTV 44, 187.
- 45.
NTV 43, 187. Berkeley defines figure as the termination of magnitude in NTV 124, 221, in relation to geometry, but for our purposes we may consider figure to be synonymous with shape of perceived visual object.
- 46.
Atherton (1990, p. 191). When talking about the visual experience of unbodied spirit, which I take to be same as Molyneux man’s at the very moment he regains his sight, Atherton grants that the immediate objects of vision, which Atherton calls colour patches, are distinguishable from one another and “which can therefore be judged to be greater or smaller than another”. (Atherton 1990, p. 206, emphasis added). However, she seems to be in a slippery slope here: if the immediate objects of vision, light and colour, are really colour patches which are individuated already in the first instance of vision before we have learned to connect our visual ideas with tactual ones, then would they not have to be in some organized relation to each other? How else could we perceive them as distinct from one another? Moreover, a “colour patch” sounds like an object with visual extension, in which case it ought to have figure as well. One might resist this objection by arguing that colour patches are really the minima visibilia, the smallest things that take up extension in the visual field and by insisting that such units of extension have no magnitude since they cannot be divided into any smaller parts, and hence have no figure either. But if colour patches are such things, and if our visual field is full of them, in that case should not they have some primitive organization amongst themselves? For instance, would it not appear even to the unbodied spirit that this particular green dot is between these two blue dots and so on?
- 47.
Atherton’s interpretation does not go as far since she maintains that immediate objects of sight are identifiable. However, Bertil Belfrage comes at least close to claiming the proper objects of sight to be lacking in criterion for individuation as well as organization. He considers any individuation of proper objects of sight as one rather than another to be entirely the creature of the mind and as necessarily involving some mixing of ideas of touch. See Belfrage (2003, pp. 197–198). For an illuminating discussion concerning immediate objects of vision in Berkeley see Falkenstein (1994).
- 48.
NTV 153, 233.
- 49.
NTV 154–155, 233–234.
- 50.
An easy answer would be that since unbodied spirit does not have eyes, it could not focus its attention since focusing requires straining one’s eyes. This answer would, however, be arbitrarily changing the rules of the thought experiment since it does not provide any reason to think that there could not be movement of visual ideas in relation to one another even when the gaze is focused on one point: why could not an idea of sight just flout across our visual field even while our gaze is focused on one point.
- 51.
NTV 156, 234. He continues: “nor is it in any degree useful that they should. It is true there are divers of them perceived at once, and more of some and less of others: but accurately to compute their magnitude and assign precise determinate proportions between things so variable and inconstant, if we suppose it possible to be done, must yet be a very trifling and insignificant labour”.
- 52.
It might also be asked, why is motion needed for plane geometry in the first place? What Berkeley must have thought, is that to make judgements about the geometry of our visual field, such as that these two triangles are similar or these two lines are of equal length, we need to be able to compare the figures against each other. The only way to do that, or to rule the length of any line, requires movement from our part. To be sure that those triangles are really similar we would have to move one over the other or to see whether those lines are of equal length by putting them by each other to see if this really is the case. This would require active control of objects and ability to intervene with the environment, to which unbodied intellect would be incapable of. As Margaret Atherton has noted, geometrical demonstration for Berkeley has to consist in the manipulation of objects in space (Atherton 1990, pp. 204–205).
- 53.
Or colour change from birth and destruction of new visual ideas for that matter.
- 54.
NTV 156, 234.
- 55.
What else than figure would border one part of extension from the other? And without some possibility to grasp certain features of our visible extension and to distinguish them from others, we cannot properly understand the process of learning to see distance mediately as a process of connecting immediately perceived visual ideas with immediately perceived tangible ideas.
- 56.
In TVV 36, 267 Berkeley writes: “It is true that terms denoting tangible extension, figure, location, motion and the like, are also applied to denote the quantity, relation and order of the proper visible objects or ideas of sight. But this proceeds only from experience and analogy. … to express the order of visible ideas, the words situation, high and low, up and down, are made use of, and their sense, when so applied is analogical”. In other words, touched figure comes to be related to certain particular organization of visible ideas, where certain visible ideas are related to certain others: this particular organization of visual field comes to be called by the name “figure” although it is neither the same nor even of the same kind as tangible figure.
- 57.
NTV 156, 234.
- 58.
TVV 44, 266.
- 59.
TVV 48, 268.
- 60.
Inquiry, VI, 3, p. 82.
- 61.
As Leibniz, amongst others, did (New Essays, p. 137).
- 62.
As Margaret Wilson and Rick Gursh have pointed out, merely on the basis of the fact that relation between ideas of sight and touch is not necessary, it is not ruled out that it could not be contingent but based on something more than mere co-occurrence of visual and ideas of touch. See Wilson (1999); Gursh (2007). Berkeley’s theory of the nature of immediate objects of sight and their organization grants this, but maintains that the “fitness” that certain visual ideas have to signify certain tactual ideas is not fine structured enough to enable the Molyneux man to a priori reason which visual idea signifies which tactual idea. For an interesting account of “fitness” of visual ideas to signify tactual ideas see Dunlop (2011).
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Paukkonen, V. (2014). Berkeley and Activity in Visual Perception. In: Silva, J., Yrjönsuuri, M. (eds) Active Perception in the History of Philosophy. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04361-6_14
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