Berkeley, as we have seen (in the eighth proposition), declares that
there is no likeness between the ideas given by sight and those given
by touch; and one cannot but agree with him, so long as the term ideas
is restricted to mere sensations. Obviously, there is no more likeness
between the feel of a surface and the colour of it, than there is
between its colour and its smell. All simple sensations, derived
from different senses, are incommensurable with one another, and only
gradations of their own intensity are comparable. And thus so far as
the primary facts of sensation go, visual figure and tactile figure,
visual magnitude and tactile magnitude, visual motion and tactile
motion, are truly unlike, and have no common term. But when Berkeley
goes further than this, and declares that there are no "ideas" common
to the "ideas" of touch and those of sight, it appears to me that he
has fallen into a great error, and one which is the chief source of
his paradoxes about geometry.
Berkeley in fact employs the word "idea" in this instance to denote
two totally different classes of feelings, or states of consciousness.
For these may be divided into two groups: the primary feelings,
which exist in themselves and without relation to any other, such as
pleasure and pain, desire, and the simple sensations obtained through
the sensory organs; and the secondary feelings, which express those
relations of primary feelings which are perceived by the mind; and the
existence of which, therefore, implies the pre-existence of at least
two of the primary feelings. Such are likeness and unlikeness in
quality, quantity, or form; succession and contemporaneity; contiguity
and distance; cause and effect; motion and rest.
Now it is quite true that there is no likeness between the primary
feelings which are grouped under sight and touch; but it appears to me
wholly untrue, and indeed absurd, to affirm that there is no likeness
between the secondary feelings which express the relations of the
primary ones.
The relation of succession perceived between the visible taps of
a hammer, is, to my mind, exactly like the relation of succession
between the tangible taps; the unlikeness between red and blue is a
mental phenomenon of the same order as the unlikeness between rough
and smooth. Two points visibly distant are so, because one or more
units of visible length _(minima visibilia_) are interposed between
them; and as two points tangibly distant are so, because one or more
units of tangible length _(minima tangibilia_) are interposed between
them, it is clear that the notion of interposition of units of
sensibility, or _minima sensibilia_, is an idea common to the two. And
whether I see a point move across the field of vision towards another
point, or feel the like motion, the idea of the gradual diminution of
the number of sensible units between the two points appears to me to
be common to both kinds of motion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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