The argument from subjective classification

Let us turn to Berkeley’s first argument for his heterogeneity view of extension and shape. He writes:

When, upon perception of an idea, I range it under this or that sort; it is because it is

perceived after the same manner, or because it has a likeness or conformity with, or

affects me in the same way as the ideas of the sort I rank it under. In short, it must not be

entirely new, but have something in it old, and already perceived by me: it must, I say,

have so much at least, in common with the ideas I have before known and named, as to

make me give it the same name with them. But it has been, if I mistake not, clearly made

out, that a man born blind would not, at first reception of his sight, think the things he

saw were of the same nature with the objects of touch, or had anything in common with

them; but that they were a new set of ideas, perceived in a new manner, and entirely

different from all he had ever perceived before: so that he would not call them by the

same name, nor repute them to be of the same sort, with any thing he had hitherto

known.73

According to Berkeley, an object delivered by perception would be of the same kind as other objects which were delivered by perception in the past, if they all have so

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much in common as to be called by the same name by the subject. Then the question is: can any object delivered by visual perception be called by the same name as any object delivered by tactile perception? Berkeley does not trust a normal subject’s classification, because for a normal subject, visual experiences already have habitual and contingent connections with tactile experiences. Berkeley would say that the classification would not be free of a ‘delusion’. That is why Berkeley is concerned with the case of a newly sighted subject.

As Berkeley says in the above quote, he has argued in earlier sections for the claim that a newly sighted person could name nothing at all by sight. Since this

claim is a blanket one regarding anything that could be delivered by perception, the argument has various points. The points include those as to habitual and contingent connections between visual and tactile experiences with respect to upper and lower directions, size, shape, and number.74The argument also draws on the point that only light and colours are delivered by visual perception.75Berkeley repeats this last point as his third argument for the thesis that visual perception and tactile perception deliver different kinds of extension and shape, so I will discuss it in the next section. Here, for my purpose, I would like to consider Berkeley’s point on shape that he develops in earlier sections. (Berkeley does not specify which earlier points are relevant to the later argument concerning the kinds of extension and shape delivered by visual perception and by tactile perception. This, I think, is because his claim that a newly sighted subject would classify nothing delivered by visual perception as the same as anything delivered by tactile perception is so strong as to entail that a newly

74

Ibid., §§ 92-106, pp. 56-72.

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sighted subject would classify no extension or shape delivered by visual perception as the same as that delivered by tactile perception.)

We need to begin by looking at Berkeley’s point onsize, since his conclusion on

shape perception is drawn from his conclusion on size perception. Discussing size perception, Berkeley refers back to even earlier sections, where he argues that a size delivered by visual perception has no necessary connection with a particular size delivered by tactile perception. First, he argues for the possibility that visual size experience has no connection at all with tactile size experience. He imagines a possibility that visual perception could only deliver objects smaller than the smallest possible object that tactile perception could deliver. Then no size delivered by visual perception could be related to any size delivered by tactile perception. Berkeley regards this possibility as showing that the connection between visual size experience and tactile size experience is merely contingent.76Second, he argues that ‘the greater visible magnitudes might have been connected with, and introduced into our minds lesser tangible magnitudes, and the lesser visible magnitudes greater tangible magnitudes’.77We might ordinarily believe that a larger object delivered by visual perception has a necessary relation to a larger object delivered by tactile perception, and smaller object delivered by visual perception is necessarily related to a smaller object delivered by tactile perception. For example, when we have visual experience as of something large, we expect tactile experience as of a large object. However, Berkeley insists, such a relation is a mere contingent one established by habit. For example, when the mind is given a large object through sight, it is often also given a large object through touch. It is because we have had many such

76

Ibid., § 62, p. 40.

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experiences that a large size delivered by visual perception has come to ‘suggest’ to the mind a large size delivered by tactile perception. Had our normal experiences been different, such that, for example, visual perception as of a large object was often followed by tactile perception as of a small object, the former would have come to make us expect the latter. Berkeley writes that this is not a mere possibility, but is what we actually experience. For example, a distinct large object delivered by visual perception seems smaller to the subject than a faint small object delivered by visual perception, for the former is habitually connected with a smaller size delivered by tactile perception than the latter.78The connection of a size delivered by visual perception to a particular size delivered by tactile perception is not necessary.

From the above argument on size perception, Berkeley draws the following conclusion as to shape perception:

… figure is the termination of magnitude, whence it follows, that no visible magnitude,

having in its own nature an aptness to suggest any one particular tangible magnitude, so

neither can any visible figure be inseparably connected with its corresponding tangible

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According to Berkeley’s account, there is such a case because what participate in ‘suggesting’ tactile experience of size are not only visual size experience, but visual ‘confusion or distinctness’ and visual ‘vigorousness or faintness’ (ibid., § 56, p. 37). In addition, Berkeley writes: ‘the judgments we make of greatness do … depend on the disposition of the eye; also on the figure, number, and situation of objects, and other circumstances that have been observed to attend great or small tangible magnitudes’ (ibid., § 57, p. 37). Berkeley also thinks that visual perception as of an object located at a higher position ‘suggests’ a smaller tactile size than visual perception as of an object located at a lower position (ibid., § 63, p. 40; § 73, pp. 44- 5). The point is that various kinds of experiences could be habitually connected with tactile size experience, depending on what experiences we frequently have simultaneously with tactile size experience, so a particular size delivered by visual perception, in combination with other experiences, could ‘suggest’ more than one size delivered by tactile perception.

feature: so as of itself and in a way prior to experience, it might suggest it to the

understanding.79

Any connection between a size delivered by visual perception and a size delivered by tactile perception is habitual and contingent. Because a shape is an outline of a size, the same is true of shape perception; any connection between an outline of a size delivered by visual perception and an outline of a size delivered by tactile perception is habitual and contingent. Then a newly sighted man would classify no shape delivered by visual perception as the same as any particular shape that has been delivered by tactile perception. This subjective classification, for Berkeley, implies a difference in kind between shapes delivered by visual perception and shapes delivered by tactile perception.

Let us make further clarification by considering the following objection. One might point out a leap in the above reasoning. Suppose it is true that, as Berkeley holds, a size delivered by visual perception could be connected, by habit, with none or any of the sizes delivered by tactile perception. Suppose it is also true that ‘figure is the termination of magnitude’, and so that a shape delivered by visual or tactile perception is a contour of a size delivered by visual or tactile perception. It might follow that a newly sighted person, before further experiences, would not classify a size delivered by visual perception as the same as any size that have been delivered by tactile perception before. However, it might be objected, this would not eliminate the possibility that a newly sighted subject might be able to classify a shape delivered by visual perception as the same as some shape that has been delivered by tactile perception. For, generally, classification of shape does not require classification of size. We can understand that the outlines of two things are both

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triangular, for example, without asking what the relation between their sizes is. In so far as there are two or more things with extension, their contours could be classified as the same shape, and the relations between their sizes would be irrelevant to the classification. Then, it might be claimed, even if a newly sighted person could not make a cross-modal classification of sizes, he might be able to make a cross-modal classification of shapes, or of the contours of sizes.

I think that Berkeley would respond to the above objection by explicating the second of the arguments regarding size experience that we have discussed – i.e. the argument that a size delivered by visual perception only has a habitual and contingent connection with a particular size delivered by tactile perception. In this argument, he holds that a size delivered by visual perception is actually connected with more than one size delivered by tactile perception. That, he thinks, is because sizes delivered by visual perception are changeable whereas those delivered by tactile perception are stable.

The magnitude of the object which exists without the mind, and is at a distance, continues

always invariably the same: but the visible object still changing as you approach to, or

recede from the tangible object, it hath no fixed and determinate greatness. Whenever

therefore we speak of the magnitude of any thing, for instance a tree or a house, we must

mean the tangible magnitude; otherwise there can be nothing steady and free from

ambiguity spoken of it.80

For example, when I hold a book in a bookshelf with my hand and move forward, the size of the object delivered by visual perception becomes larger. If I step backward, the size becomes smaller. In contrast, the size of the object delivered by

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tactile perception remains unchanged throughout my movements. We have had such experience so often that a changing size delivered by visual perception has come to be connected with, and has come to ‘suggest’, a stable size delivered by tactile perception. Near the end of theNTV, Berkeley writes as follows:

All that is properly perceived by the visive faculty amounts to no more than colours with

their variations, and different proportion of light and shade: but the perpetual mutability

and fleetingness of those immediate objects of sight, render them incapable of being

managed after the manner of geometrical figures; 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.81

The changeability of sizes delivered by visual perception is such that those sizes could not serve the purpose of geometry. That is, we cannot rely on visual perception of size in order to study geometry. According to Berkeley, we cannot know the ‘proportions’ between sizes delivered by visual perception. For example, we believe that we see a square figure drawn on paper in studying the properties of the shape, but, in fact, the contour of the size delivered by visual perception does not have four equal parts. The proportion between the parts of the outline we call ‘sides’ constantly changes. (Berkeley would acknowledge that such change would result not only from the subject’s movement forward or backward, but from movement to any direction.) So, that outline is not something that could be given a name of shape. (Berkeley goes as far as to say that diagrams a mathematician sees are ‘not the figures, or even the

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likeness of the figures, which make the subject of the demonstration’.82) A shape delivered by visual perception only serves to ‘suggest’ certain tactile experience of shape in virtue of a habitual connection.83We believe that we see a figure with four equal sides, but that is because visual perception in such a case is habitually connected with an outline with four stably equal parts, which has been delivered by tactile perception. Thus, if a subject is made to see, he would not classify the shapes delivered by visual perception, which continuously undergo changes, as the same as shapes delivered by tactile perception, which are stable. Berkeley’s conclusion would be that shapes delivered by visual perception and those delivered by tactile perception differ in kind. (Berkeley’s thought that tactile perception delivers stable shapes presumably follows from his view that sizes delivered by tactile perception are constant. If a contour of a size delivered by tactile perception consists of parts whose sizes are constant, it follows that the size has a stable shape.)

Before we proceed, let us also look at Berkeley’s point on number which he

makes in arguing that a newly sighted man could name nothing at all by sight. The point is relevant to Berkeley’s heterogeneity view of shape perception. Berkeley writes:

… diversity of visible objects doth not necessarily infer diversity of tangible objects

corresponding to them. A picture painted with great variety of colours affects the touch in

one uniform manner; it is therefore evident, that I do not by any necessary consecution,

independent of experience, judge of the number of things tangible, from the number of

82

Ibid., § 150, p. 82.

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things visible. I should not therefore at first opening my eyes conclude, that because I see

two I shall feel two.84

We ordinarily believe that when we have visual experience as of a certain number of things, we can expect tactile experience as of the same number of things. This, on Berkeley’s account, is because of a habitual and contingent relation between visual and tactile perceptions. In fact, Berkeley thinks that there is no perception of number in the first place either through sight or through touch. He holds that number is ‘entirely the creature of the mind’.85He says that the mind can combine two or more ideas in different ways, and regard any collection of ideas as a unit. For example, the mind can count a window as one, a chimney as one, a house which has windows and chimneys as one, or a city with many houses as one. He insists:

Whatever therefore the mind considers as one, that is a unit. Every combination of ideas

is considered as one thing by the mind, and in token thereof is marked by one name. Now,

this naming and combining together of ideas is perfectly arbitrary, and done by the mind

in such sort, as experience shows it to be most convenient: without which our ideas had

never been collected into such sundry distinct combinations as they now are.86

Any collection of objects delivered by visual or tactile perception can be counted by the mind as one unit. The way the mind combines those objects varies with the purpose. Therefore, there is no number involved in visual or tactile perception as such.

Interestingly, Berkeley later develops an explanation which prima facie

contradicts the explanation that we have just seen. He writes:

84 Ibid., § 108, p. 62. 85 Ibid., § 109, p. 62. 86 Ibid., § 109, pp. 62-3.

… it must be acknowledged, the visible square, is fitter than the visible circle, to

represent the tangible square, but then it is not because it is liker, or more of a species

with it; but because the visible square contains in it several distinct parts, whereby to

mark the several distinct, corresponding parts of a tangible square, whereas the tangible

circle doth not. The square perceived by touch, hath four distinct, equal sides, so also

hath it four distinct, equal angles. It is therefore necessary, that the visible figures which

shall be most proper to mark it, contain four distinct, equal parts, corresponding to the

four sides of a tangible square; as likewise four other distinct and equal parts, whereby do

denote the four equal angles of the tangible square.87

Berkeley admits that a square shape delivered by visual perception has two sets of four equal parts, whereas a round shape delivered by visual perception has no such parts. (Berkeley would say that he is using the word ‘equal’ only in a rough sense here, for, as we have seen, he thinks that sizes delivered by visual perception have no steady proportions.) Berkeley also holds that a square shape delivered by tactile perception has four equal sides and four equal angles.88His explanation here implies that numbers, such as ‘four’, are delivered by visual and tactile perception. This seems incompatible with his earlier claim.

I think that the two seemingly incompatible explanations are reconcilable. Let us look at his claim that visible figures are ‘ordained to signify’ tangible figures ‘by nature’ or by ‘the Author or nature’.89He writes: