The one is (_a_) that the upper side of the coin, which I am said
to _see,_ is not simply identical with the visual sensible which I
_directly apprehend_ in seeing it. That this is so might be thought to
follow absolutely from each of the two facts which I have called (_b_)
and (_d_); but I am not quite sure that it does follow from either of
these or from both together: for it seems to me just possible that the
two sensibles in question, though _not_ circular _in my private space,_
may yet be circular in _physical_ space; and similarly that though the
sensible of the half-crown is smaller than that of the florin _in my
private space,_ it may be larger _in physical space._ But what I think
it does follow from is the fact that another person may be seeing the
upper side of the coin in exactly the same sense in which I am seeing
it, and yet his sensible be certainly different from mine. From this it
follows absolutely that the upper side of the coin cannot be identical
with _both_ sensibles, since they are _not_ identical with one another.
And though it does not follow absolutely that it may not be identical
with _one_ of the two, yet it does follow that we _can_ get a case in
which it is not identical with _mine_ and I need only assume that the
case I am taking is such a case.
From this it follows that we must distinguish that sense of the word
"see" in which we can be said to "see" a physical object, from that
sense of the word in which "see" means merely to directly apprehend
a visual sensible. In a proposition of the form "I see A," where A
is a name or description of some physical object, though, if this
proposition is to be true, there must be some visual sensible, B,
which I am directly apprehending, yet the proposition "I see A" is
certainly not always, and probably never, identical in meaning with the
proposition "I directly apprehend B." In asserting "I see A" we are
asserting not only that we directly apprehend some sensible but also
something else about this sensible--it may be only some proposition of
the form, "and this sensible has certain other properties," or it may
be some proposition of the form "and _I know_ this sensible to have
certain other properties." Indeed we have not only to distinguish that
sense of the word "perceive" in which it is equivalent to "directly
apprehend," from _one_ sense in which we can be said to perceive a
physical object; we have also to distinguish at least two different
senses in which we can be said to perceive physical objects, different
both from one another and from "directly apprehend." For it is obvious
that though I should be said to be now seeing _the half-crown_, there
is a narrower, and more proper, sense, in which I can only be said
to _see_ one side of it_--not_ its lower side or its inside, and not
therefore the whole half-crown.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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