Berkeley: Vision

(Originally published in _Reid Studies_ 4 (2000-01): 35-51.) Reid and Berkeley disagreed over whether we directly perceive objects located outside of us in a surrounding space, commonly revealed by both vision and touch. Berkeley considered a successful account of erect vision to be crucial for deciding this dispute, at one point calling it ‘the principal point in the whole optic theory.’ Reid's critique of Berkeley's position on this topic is very brief, and appears to miss Berkeley's point. I argue that (...) there is more to Reid's response to Berkeley than at first meets the eye. Reid's rival account of erect vision draws on evidence that makes a compelling case for the position that we see the same space that we touch. (shrink)

I propose a reading of Berkeley's Essay towards a New Theory of Vision in which Molyneux-type questions are interpreted as thought experiments instead of arguments. First, I present the general argumentative strategy in the NTV, and provide grounds for the traditional reading. Second, I consider some roles of thought experiments, and classify Molyneux-type questions in the NTV as constructive conjectural thought experiments. Third, I argue that (i) there is no distinction between Weak and Strong Heterogeneity theses in the NTV; (ii) (...) that Strong Heterogeneity is the basis of Berkeley's theory; and (iii) that Molyneux-type questions act as illustrations of Strong Heterogeneity. (shrink)

Berkeley holds that vision, in isolation, presents only color and light. He also claims that typical perceivers experience distance, figure, magnitude, and situation visually. The question posed in New Theory is how we perceive by sight spatial features that are not, strictly speaking, visible. Berkeley’s answer is “that the proper objects of vision constitute an universal language of the Author of nature.” For typical humans, this language of vision comes naturally. Berkeley identifies two sorts of objects of vision: primary (light (...) and colors) and secondary (distance, figure, magnitude, and situation). Berkeley also appeals to a third class of a different sort: visible figure, magnitude, and situation, constituting the vocabulary of the language of vision. By considering two perceivers who lack this vocabulary we may better understand this third category and the difference between those who must learn the language of vision and those for whom it is a natural endowment. (shrink)

In Section 38 of the Theory of Vision Vindicated, George Berkeley claims that he had used the method of analysis throughout the Theory of Vision. What does that mean? I first show that "analysis" denoted a fairly well-defined method in the early modern period: it was regularly described as a method of discovery. Then I show that the discussion of distance perception in the Theory of Vision exemplifies the method of analysis and may be seen as a modification of a (...) non-geometrical account of distance vision in Rene Descartes' Optics. (shrink)

Bertil Belfrage has recently given a "new interpretation" of Berkeley's Theory of Vision. He opposes the view that it is a contribution to metaphysics; it is, he argues, a scientific theory comparable with physics and mechanics. I shall argue that both alternatives are mistaken: Berkeley does not present any definite theory at all in his essay on vision; it is not a contribution either to science or metaphysics but an essay towards a theory that would include both scientific and metaphysical (...) aspects. Even if the Theory of Vision is not a treatise on ontology or theology, and it is no doubt an empirical work, it is not a contribution exclusively to empirical psychology. Berkeley wanted to show the need for a new theory of vision. This explains why he seems to deal with both scientific and metaphysical themes at the same time. (shrink)

Dans l'Essai pour une nouvelle théorie de la vision (1709) Berkeley critique un usage illégitime de l'optique géométrique dans l'explication de la perception des qualités spatiales. Toutefois, dans la Théorie de la vision défendue et expliquée (1733), il assigne à l'optique géométrique un rôle théorique positif, à côté de sa propre théorie de la vision. Nous défendons la thèse suivant laquelle une image rétinienne, chez Berkeley, est une configuration de corpuscules en mouvement, tangibles de droit. Cette lecture corrobore l'interprétation d'une (...) forme de corpuscularisme dans le système immatérialiste. In An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) Berkeley objects to an illegitimate use of geometrical optics in the explanation of our perception of spatial qualities. However, in The Theory of Vision, Vindicated and Explained (1733), he grants geometrical optics a positive theoretical role alongside his own philosophical theory of vision. I defend the claim that a retinal image, for Berkeley, is a configuration of moving corpuscles that are tangible in principle. This reading corroborates the interpretation according to which Berkeley accommodates a form of corpuscularism within his immaterialism. (shrink)

Berkeley's Theory of Vision, or Visual Language Showing The Immediate Presence and Providence of A Deity, Vindicated And Explained was published in 1733, occasioned by an anonymous letter of the previous year to the London Daily Post Boy . The letter criticized Berkeley's New Theory of Vision , which had been published in 1709, but which had been appended to Berekely's Alciphron , published in 1732. No one has ever identified the author whose criticisms led Berkeley to his Theory of (...) Vision Vindicated . Circumstantial evidence presented here suggests that the author was Catherine Trotter Cockburn. Part of the evidence is the brilliance of her interpretation of Locke, whose position is defended in the letter against Berkeley. (shrink)

George Berkeley (1685–1753) believed that the visible world was a series of signs that constituted a divine language through which God was speaking to us. Given the nature of language and the nature of the visual world, this paper examines to what extent the visual world could be a divine language and to what extent God could speak to us through it.

Le motif du langage visuel, qui traverse l'ensemble de l'oeuvre de Berkeley, n'est pas seulement le noyau de sa philosophie de la perception. Il est aussi le préréquisit d'une preuve originale de l'existence de Dieu, une évaluation spécifique de la nature de l'expérience commune et de la portée de l'explication scientifique, et il a des conséquences singulières quant à la doctrine de la création du monde. La première conclusion de l'article est qu'en dépit du rejet berkeleyen du mécanisme, on peut (...) avec raison comparer sa pensée avec la conception cybernétique des machines à information; le langage visuel est, dans une certaine mesure, la source d'un réseau global de communication. Mais rien n'est plus important pour Berkeley que la question de la mort, et c'est pourquoi il doit rejeter toute forme d'objectivisme. L'immatérialiste est celui qui affirme que le monde ne peut pas survivre à son propre anéantissement sans l'aide d'un autre esprit, dont la vision est la substance même de toute chose. The design of visual language, which pervades the entire work of Berkeley, is not only the core of his philosophy of perception. It is also the prerequisite of an original proof of God's existence, a specific understanding of both the nature of common experience and the scope of scientific explanation, and it involves unusual consequences upon the doctrine of the creation of the world. The first conclusion of the paper is that, despite Berkeley's rejection of mechanicism, we have a right to confront his views with the cybernetic perspective on information processing machines : visual language is, to a certain extent, the source of a global communication network. But there is nothing more important to Berkeley than the topical question of death, and this is why he is compelled to rejecting whatever kind of objectivism. The immaterialist is he who acknowledges that the world cannot survive his own annihilation without the help of another spirit, whose vision is the very substance of all things. (shrink)

La paradoxale expression berkeleyenne « parler aux yeux » ne doit pas seulement être décryptée sur la toile de fond d'une savante psychophysiologie de la vision, mais, plus profondément, il importe aussi de la reconduire à ses sources : la Bible anglicane et maint texte de la tradition hermétique. Le langage optique doit être identifié comme la Parole même de Dieu qui s'adresse à l'humanité par l'intermédiaire de l'organe visuel : un mode de communication et de révélation. Et telle est (...) la détermination décisive de la métaphysique de l'évêque de Cloyne, cette véritable philosophie de l'esprit que certains ont parfois, arbitrairement, taxée de solipsiste. The paradoxical Berkeleyan expression « speaking to the eyes » is not only to be deciphered on the backdrop of a learned psychophysiology of vision, but, also, on a deeper level, it should be brought back to its sources, i. e. the Anglican Bible and a vast array of texts from the Hermetic (Hermaic ?) writings. The optical language must be identified as God's very speech, addressing messages to mankind through the visual organ, i.e. a way to reveal and to communicate. Such is the decisive determination of the metaphysics as delineated by the Bishop of Cloyne, a true philosophy of the mind (spirit ?) which a few people have sometimes quite arbitrarily accused of being solipsistic. (shrink)

This paper examines Berkeley's attitude toward our perception of spatial relations on the two- dimensional visual field. This is a topic on which there has been some controversy. Historians of visual theory have tended to suppose that Berkeley took "all" spatial relations to be derived in the way our knowledge of depth is: from association of more primitive sensations which are themselves in no way spatial. But many philosophers commenting on Berkeley have supposed that he takes our awareness of two- (...) dimensional visual layout to be directly perceived. I argue that Berkeley's position on this issue is deeply ambivalent and that neither alternative sits well with the rest of his philosophy. (shrink)

This article seeks the origin, in the theories of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Descartes, and Berkeley, of two-stage theories of spatial perception, which hold that visual perception involves both an immediate representation of the proximal stimulus in a two-dimensional ‘‘sensory core’’ and also a subsequent perception of the three dimensional world. The works of Ibn al-Haytham, Descartes, and Berkeley already frame the major theoretical options that guided visual theory into the twentieth century. The field of visual perception was the first area (...) of what we now call psychology to apply mathematics, through geometrical models as used by Euclid, Ptolemy, Ibn al-Haytham, and Descartes (among others). The article shows that Kepler’s discovery of the retinal image, which revolutionized visual anatomy and entailed fundamental changes in visual physiology, did not alter the basic structure of theories of spatial vision. These changes in visual physiology are advanced especially in Descartes' Dioptrics and his L'Homme. Berkeley develops a radically empirist theory vision, according to which visual perception of depth is learned through associative processes that rely on the sense of touch. But Descartes and Berkeley share the assertion that there is a two-dimensional sensory core that is in principle available to consciousness. They also share the observation that we don't usually perceived this core, but find depth and distance to be phenomenally immediate, a point they struggle to accommodate theoretically. If our interpretation is correct, it was not a change in the theory of the psychology of vision that engendered the idea of a sensory core, but rather the introduction of the theory into a new metaphysical context. (shrink)

Berkeley's "new theory of vision" and, In particular, His sensationalist solution to the problem of judging distance and magnitude were discussed by many eighteenth-Century authors who faced a variety of problem situations. More specifically, Berkeley's theory fed into the debate over whether the phenomena of vision were susceptible to mathematical analysis or were experientially determined. In this paper a variety of responses to berkeley are examined, Concluding with thomas reid's attempt to distinguish physical optics (which can be analyzed geometrically) from (...) the psychology of vision (in which experience plays a major role). (shrink)

Most of the New Theory of Vision is an argument for a negative answer to Molyneux's question.// re primacy of vision in spatial perception: "most rational philosopher on this topic is Berkeley, whose New Theory of Vision presents in cogent detail the argument" (from Bennett 1966, p. 30, in note cites 41ff.).// Berkeley's criticisms of Locke: "If we really abstract from colour and hardness and all that 'belongs to sensation', so far from being left with 'pure' notions of extension and (...) figure, we are left with nothing but words emptied of meaning" (from Strawson 1966, p. 61). (shrink)

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