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Notes
1 Principles I, 43. References to Berkeley's Principles, New Theory of Vision, and Theory of Vision … Vindicated (hereafter: the Vindication), are to the canonical edition of A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, The Works of George Berkeley (London, 1949) by section to facilitate cross-reference to other editions. References to the Three Dialogues are to the same edition, by page number.
2 The Works of George Berkeley, edited by A. C. Fraser (Oxford, 1901) Vol. I, p. 7.
3See also W. H. S. Monck, Space and Vision (1872) ii; Charles R. Teape, Berkeleian Philosophy (1870) 2–3; G. Dawes Hicks, Berkeley (1932) 39. See C. M. Turbayne, ‘The Influence of Berkeley's Science on His Metaphysics’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 16 (1956) 476.
4Berkeley, Works (1949) Vol. II, p. 58, n1.
5Turbayne (1956) 476–8.
6Ibid., 478.
7Turbayne (1956) 480. Perhaps surprisingly, Turbayne takes this to be what later came to be called the Master Argument, citing the version of it at Principles I, 22, where indeed Berkeley says, that an idea ‘or anything like an idea’, should exist without the mind cannot be conceived.
8Margaret Atherton properly insists on the distinction, because in her view Berkeley's concern in the New Theory is not the mind-dependence of sensible qualities (idealism), but the inability of ideas to represent material substances (immaterialism). ‘What Have We Learned when we Learn to See’ in Festschrift for Vere Chapell, edited by Paul Hoffman, Gideon Yaffe and David Owen, Broadview, forthcoming. The thesis to be defended below cuts across this distinction.
9Turbayne (1956) 77. See also his note to Principles, I, 44, in George Berkeley, Works on Vision (Indianapolis, 1963) 5, n12.
10Luce, Berkeley and Malebranche: A study in the origins of Berkeley's thought (Oxford, 1934), preface to the new impression (1967) ix.
11The standard interpretation has been in place from the outset of modern Berkeley scholarship, with Fraser:
In the Essay of 1709, the Berkeleian Principle [it is impossible that anything exist that is independent of perception and volition] is applied to sight but not to touch. Tangible phenomena are left in undisturbed possession of a kind of reality that is inconsistent with it, while visible phenomena are subjected to its sway. The reason for this partial application of what, if applicable at all, was to be universally applied lay probably in Berkeley's unwillingness to shock the world with a conception of its own existence against which he anticipated a storm of opposition. Its actual effect has been to expose the New Theory of Vision to criticisms not in all cases undeserved. This reserve of a foregone conclusion makes Berkeley's first essay on philosophy his least artistic. Its main conclusion cannot be fully comprehended without the New Principle, and yet the New Principle is held in reserve.
See also Fraser, Berkeley (Edinburgh, 1912) 31. Also, Luce, Berkeley and Malebranche, 47. Armstrong has a nuanced version of the standard interpretation: in the New Theory Berkeley speaks of visibilia as in the mind, but of tangibilia‘in quite realistic fashion;’ yet that work ‘stands in no real relation to Berkeley's Immaterialism’. Berkeley's Theory of Vision (Melbourne, 1960) 30, 32. Also, the first two sentences of W. B. Carter's ‘Some Problems of the Relation between Berkeley's New Theory of Vision and His Principles’, Ratio 3 (1961) 174–92. Also, Turbayne (1963) 5, n12. Also, Michael R. Ayers, George Berkeley: Philosophical Works, including the works on vision (London, 1st edn, 1975) xxxvii: ‘The Essay on Vision is a special case, since in it Berkeley deliberately suppressed a part of his metaphysics, treating the objects of touch as independent and in external space’. Also, Robert G. Muehlmann, ‘Strong and Weak Heterogeneity in Berkeley's New Theory of Vision’ (to appear):
Berkeley decided to write his first book … in a way that concealed his idealism while simultaneously preparing his readers for its launching … He would do this by assuming a ‘false and popular supposition’[namely, the mind-independence of the tangible] that would lead his readers to the truth.
12 Principles I, 42.
13He states the objection in the Three Dialogues as well, and makes the same initial response to it. Works II, 201.
14 Principles I, 43.
15Turbayne (1963) 3, n1.
16Ibid, 3, n2. Malebranche, The Search After Truth, translated by T. M. Lennon and P. J. Olscamp (Columbus, 1980) 569.
17Malebranche as a source for Berkeley has been beyond question since Luce (1934). McCracken has two lovely pages that state the connection on vision, beginning with the observation that visual sensation for both is a direct communication from God for purposes of survival. Malebranche and British Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) 224–5. Curiously, Malebranche hardly figures in Turbayne's Myth of Metaphor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), and of the text above that is about to be discussed there is no mention by Atherton, who discusses the Search only in connection with the geometrical theory of vision that Berkeley rejects. Berkeley's Revolution in Vision (Ithaca, 1990). Armstrong, in Berkeley's Theory of Vision (Melbourne, 1960), does not mention him at all.
18 Search, 571. The upshot for the realist Malebranche is that material bodies are not even the theoretical bodies they are for Locke, but revealed entities in the sense that Scripture cannot be true unless they exist. The claim that the wall of Jericho fell at Joshua's trumpet call cannot be true unless there were walls to fall. Thus Berkeley's own pains at the end of the Three Dialogues to show how his view comports with Scripture.
19 Search, 572. Somewhat altered to show the language that Berkeley would have picked up from Taylor's translation of the Search (London, 1700) 112.
21 Works II, 202.
20See Luce (1934) 4, 46.
22 Search, 217.
24Elucidation VI, Search, 572–3.
23The history of this issue is the long debate over the necessity of species as a condition for perception, asserted by Aristotle, but denied by Plotinus. See Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, Malebranche: Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1962) vol. 1, pp. 520–1, n324. Malebranche invokes this language only as une espèce [sic] de raillerie. The issue for him is the unintelligibility of particulars in themselves, such as the stars. For the full discussion, see Thomas M. Lennon, ‘Malebranche's Argument for Ideas and its Systematic Significance’, in Minds, Ideas and Objects: Essays on the theory of representation in modern philosophy, edited by P. D. Cummins and G. Zoeller, North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy (Atascadero, CA, 1992) 57–71.
25 Works II, 202.
26The intentionality of sensation is a vexed issue among these authors. A particularly relevant case is Kepler: ‘sight is the sensation of a stimulation of the retina’ (quoted by Turbayne, 1956, 483).
27‘That we should in truth see external space, and bodies actually existing in it, some nearer, others farther off, seems to carry with it some opposition to what hath been said, of their existing nowhere without the mind’.
29 Search, 68.
28 Oeuvres, I, 156, ni.
30 Search, 34.
31For more, see Commentary, Search, 774–8.
32 Oeuvres, XVII–1, 269.
33Berkeley rejected Malebranche's actual account as it had been found in Wallis, New Theory, 76.
34Thus does Berkeley speak of suggestion and judgement as synonymous, e.g. New Theory 25, 73; Vindication, 60.
35 Vindication, 42.
36Acts 17:28. Berkeley uses this text an epigraph to the Vindication. It is his favourite verse of Scripture. It is found repeatedly in Malebranche, whose key chapter on the ‘vision of all things in God’ ends by citing it. More importantly, the philosophies of both can be regarded as elaborations of this text.
37 Principles, I, 44.
38These are substantive reasons in addition to the grammatical consideration that if the concessive sense were intended, the verb would be, contrary to fact, in the indicative, whereas in fact the adversative seems intended by the subjunctive.
39Though ontologically deflationist, this interpretation is restricted to Berkeley's actual use of spatial terminology, without affecting the metaphysical importance that Berkeley in the New Theory attributes to vision itself. In other words, Margaret Atherton's recent thesis is beyond the purview here: ‘The New Theory was written in order to make a systematic, metaphysical point [that ‘vision is the language of the Author of Nature’] and is not merely a collection of investigations into issues of space perception’ (Atherton, forthcoming).
40 New Theory of Vision, 54.
41 New Theory of Vision, 103. This reading and below run contrary to Atherton (1990) 226, n7, who rejects the view that distance is always perceived mediately, even by touch. But her citation of Vindication 9, on behalf of that rejection seems not to affect the argument here.
42 New Theory of Vision, 153–4.
43Cf. Philosophical Commentaries, 687.
44Atherton (1990) 9–12.
45Atherton (1990) 221–8. A. A. Luce, ‘Editor's introduction’, to New Theory (1949), G. Warnock, Berkeley (London: Penguin, 1953) and I. Tipton, Berkeley: The Philosophy of Immaterialism (London, 1974) are discussed, but G. Pitcher, Berkeley (London, 1977) and G. Brykman, Berkeley, philosophie et apologétique (Paris, 1984) are also implicated.
46Atherton, 228–9.
47 New Theory of Vision, 55.
48 Optics VI, in Descartes, Discourse on Method, Geometry, and Meteorology, translated by Paul J. Olscamp (Indianapolis: Bobbs–Merrill, 1965) 108–10.
49 New Theory of Vision, 59.
50 New Theory of Vision, 74.
51 New Theory of Vision, 44–6.
53 New Theory of Vision, 111–12.
52 New Theory of Vision, 117.
54For practical purposes we must use the same word, ‘triangle’ for example, to refer to what is in fact numerically distinct and specifically different (New Theory of Vision, 65–6, 121). This is why realists fail to see the heterogeneity of the senses and are misled into their realism.
55 New Theory of Vision, 98, 99.
56Even individuation under such conditions is problematic (see New Theory of Vision, 109).
57 Essay, 2.9.8, 145. Berkeley, Works on Vision, edited by Turbayne, 119, n6.
58Berkeley, Works on Vision, edited by Turbayne, 5, n12. He also draws attention, properly, to the muscular and locomotive ideas as included in touch, and to the pragmatic dimension connoted by Berkeley's term ‘admonish’.
59Alciphron, published in the previous year, uses spatial terminology in still another sense: to distinguish private revelations of enthusiasm from the public communications Berkeley recognises. Thus, God speaks to men by ‘outward, sensible signs’ (IV, 6).
60Atherton (forthcoming); Vindication, 38.
61 Vindication, 52. For an account of why the problem of the retinal image should assume this importance for Berkeley, see the article that generated the first question raised in this one (Turbayne, 1956, esp. 486–7).
62 Vindication, 53.
63 Principles, 44.
64 New Theory of Vision, 43. Works on Vision, edited by Turbayne, 4, n9.
65I am grateful to an anonymous referee for useful suggestions for improvement.