Adam Smith and the Problem ofthe External World [To appear in The Journal of Scottish Philosophy, Fall

2011] Brian Glenney, Gordon College Abstract: How does the mind attributeexternal causes to internal sensory experiences? Adam Smith addresses this question in his little known essay Of the External Senses.I closely examine Smiths various formulations of this problem and then argue for an interpretation of his solution: that inborn perceptual mechanisms automatically generate external attributions of internal experiences. I conclude by speculating that these mechanisms are best understood to operate by simulating tactile environments. Key Concepts: Perception, Sensation, Distal Attribution, Sympathy, Simulation, Molyneuxs Question, William Cheselden, GeorgeBerkeley Adam Smiths consideration of the problem of the external world is found in hisessay entitledOf the External Senses.i Though a juvenile work,ii and perhaps for this reason an underappreciated one,iii his discussion is worthy of being subject to philosophical analysis in its own right. This paper represents a first attempt at this task. I: The Problem of Externality Adam Smith begins ES with a problem of perception: if the origin for our common belief in the existence of an external world is the feeling of resistance, which cannot help but bring to mind the existence of bodies external to the feeling itself,iv how is it that this same external existence is attributed to objects not felt to resist? How, for instance, is the feeling of heat taken to be caused by the sun, when it is merely an internal experience, felt, not as pressing upon the body, but as in the body. (ES 20) Smiths problem might be best articulated as the psychological problem of the external worldthe problem of distal attribution as it is called in current literature in psychology.v One such article wrote of the problem: Distal attribution can be defined as the ability to attribute the cause of our proximal sensory stimulation to an exterior and distinct other.vi Though related to the epistemological problem of the external worldhow we justifiably make such an attribution of objects, Smiths concern was how our minds make this attribution of externality. Neither was Smiths issue the related problem of perception brought about by illusions and hallucinations,vii nor the more contemporary issue of intentionalityof what it is to direct our thoughts externally.viii Smiths problem concerned how it is that we take sensory experiences as caused by things outside us, as externaland as altogether independent (ES 3) When considering Smiths problem of externality, it is difficult not to bring Humes own query on the doctrine of the independent existence of our sensible perceptions (Treatise1.4.2, 44) to mind.ix Smith, however, neither mentions Hume, nor his account.xThough such a contrastwould be fruitful and worth consideration in its own right, very little discussion of Hume will be taken up here.

Berkeleys Towards a New Theory of Visionxi was the overt provocation for Smiths interest in the problem of externality.xii Yet for Berkeley, externality was inextricably linked to the problem of seeing distance.xiii Seeing distance and attributing externality are, however, distinct problems. We have to, for instance, refer to an object as being out therein the external world before taking it to be over there in the distance. Smith recognized this distinction, articulating problems usually reserved as problems of distance, such as the infamous one point problemhow we see distance when distance lines are a point directed endwiseas problems of external attribution.These specific cases, which included Cheseldens report of a boy recovering from cataract surgery, Molyneuxs question regarding the kind of experiences had by the newly sighted, and Smiths own observations of animals, led him to focus on three particular problems of external attribution. How is it that we attribute external causes to our non-resisting experiences when: 1) The senses indirectly related to resisting objects like sight and audition are directly related to internalobjects of perception, like retinal images, which are thus the more proper candidates for what causes sensory experience. 2) Senses indirectly related to resisting objects are heterogeneous to touch, the sense directly related to resisting objects of experience. 3) The experiences conjoined with senses indirectly related to resisting objects are not interactive with our bodily movements, and are as like shadows, failing themselvesto cause harm or health to our body. These problems, which I will discuss individually below, led Smith to appeal totwo inborn mechanisms of perception: preconception, a mechanism triggered by bodily sensations like smells or pains and instinctive suggestion, triggered by visual and auditory experiences. Smiths surprisingly nuanced responses based on these mechanisms anticipate many current findings in developmental psychology. One wonders after reading Smiths account whether the dark ages of developmental psychology, which culminated in James appellation of infant experience as a blooming, buzzing confusion, would have emerged had Smith been as persistent in his account of perception as he was in his accounts ofthe principles of economy and morality. II. The Internal Objects of Perception How is it that visual experience includes external attribution when the direct object of vision is internal to the eye? Berkeleys one-point problem for seeing distance exemplified this dilemma for Smith. Just as distance is immediately seen as a point, so the object that causes visual experiences must be attributed to something in the eye: [I]f we consider that the distance of any object to the eye, is a line turned endways to it; and that this line must consequently appear to it, but as one point; we shall be sensiblethat all visible objects must naturally be perceived as close upon the

organ, or more properly, perhaps, like all other Sensations, as in the organ which perceives them. (ES 45) The problem concerned more than just vision. Heat and Cold, Taste, Smell, and Sound; being felt, not as resisting or pressing upon the organ; but as in the organ, are not naturally perceived as external and independent substances; or even as qualities of such substances; but as mere affections of the organ, and what can exist nowhere but in the organ. (ES 25)These affections include retinal images and the respective images of other sensory modalities, or whatever has the power of exciting that sensation in our organ.xiv The internal objects of perception constitute a specific problem for how one attributes externality to non-tactile senses: given the organ-based existence of the immediate object of experience (like the retinal image) the external attribution of a sensory experience is not properly accounted for. To put it more generally: a) The object most immediately related to the effect is properlyattributed as the cause of the effect. b) The most immediate object of non-tactile experience is aninternal object. c) So, we have no proper basis for attributing external objects as the cause of an experience. The problem specified here, however, rests on an error of modeling an account of perception on an account of optics, what James termed the psychologists fallacythe great snare of the psychologist.xvDescartes, for instance, infamously portrayed (or is often depicted as portraying) vision as a process akin to a blind mans seeing with crossed sticks and is said to have erred in assuming that the optical inversion of images on the retina needed a re-inversion to account for the upright appearance of objects in visual experience.xviThus, the problem equivocates on immediate object, as (a) an object of experience and (b) a theoretical object that is the result of an optical explanation.xviiThe operations involved in perception include things internal to sensory organs, but this in no way entails that these same things are aspects of experience, much less the immediate objects of experience. Is Smiths own description of the problem of internal objects guiltyof this fallacy?xviiiSmiths worry was not prompted by optics but ratherthe famous case study by William Cheselden of a blind boys visual experience after cataract surgery. The report infamously stated that the subject saw the objects as close upon his eyes.xix Smiths interpretationis as follows: When the young gentleman said, that the objects which he saw touched his eyeshe could mean no more than that they were close upon his eyes, or, to speak more properly, perhaps, that they were in his eyes. (ES 65) Smith took Cheseldens patient to be saying that the colors were seen as in the eye and were thus attributed as internal to his organ of sight. No anatomy lesson is required to generate Smiths concern. The anecdotal evidence of Chesledens patient alone suggested to Smith the possibility that initially we all visually experience objects as in the eye.xx Cheseldens report was taken by Smith to suggest that all initial sensory experiences are 3

naturally attributed internally because they are experienced as internal and that only with experience and maturation are these experiences attributed externally.xxi This suggests another formulation of the central premise of the problem: b*) The immediate object of non-resisting experiences is experienced asinternal. Because the problem of internal objects is based on a report from experience rather than knowledge gained from an anatomy lesson, there is no equivocation in arguing that sensory experiences have internal attributions. Rather, the problem of the initial experience of internal objects is problematic insofar as theinterpretation of these anecdotal reports of internal attribution stands. Smith argued in response that such an interpretation of these reports could not be correct for there is no natural propensity to attribute internal causes to sensory experience. For instance, according to Smith the quick recovery of Cheseldens cataract patient suggested a an unknown principle for external attribution: [H]e had made very considerable progress even in the two first months. He began at that early period to understand even the feeble perspective of Painting; and though at first he could not distinguish it from the strong perspective of Nature, yet he could not have been thus imposed upon by so imperfect an imitation, if the great principles of Vision had not beforehand been deeply impressed upon his mind, and if he had not, either by the association of ideas, or by some other unknown principle, been strongly determined to expect certain tangible objects in consequence of the visible ones which had been presented to him. (ES 68, my emphasis) Given the possibility of a natural inclination for external attribution, Smith reasoned that the most likely cause of the blind subjects internal attribution was his abnormal visual condition. This led Smith to an innovative critical period explanation for why the healed cataract patient would report attributing the new visual experiences as in the eye: In him this instinctive power, not having been exerted at the proper season, may, from disuse, have gone gradually to decay, and at last have been completely obliterated. Or, perhaps, (what seems likewise very possible,) some feeble and unobserved remains of it may have somewhat facilitated his acquisition of what he might otherwise have found it much more difficult to acquire.(ES 69) Smiths interpretation of Cheseldens report is the first record that I have come across which anticipates the critical period hypothesis, made first by Penfield (1959) for language acquisition and later Huber and Weisel (1970) for visual abilities.The claim is that there is a critical period in development, a cut-off age (thought to be around puberty), where experience isrequired in order to trigger normal development of functional areas of the brain.xxii Smiths alternative explanation nullified the chief support for (b*). In addition, the fact that initial sensory experiences are not of things internal to sensory organs found confirmation from Smiths Attenborough-esc tales of the behavior of various bird species: chicken, partridge, grouse, goose, duck and hawk, magpie, sparrow, all of which enjoy the distal 4

powers of vision straight from shell and nest.xxiii The cow, horse, puppy, kitten, and beasts of preycome blind into the world; but as soon as their sight opens, they appear to enjoy it in the most complete perfection. (ES 73) All of Smiths observations suggested to him a natural propensity for external attribution in the animal kingdom, including man. It seems difficult to suppose that man is the only animal of which the young are not endowed with some instinctive perception of this kind. (ES 74) Smith argued that infant behavior effectively demonstrates this natural propensity for attributing the cause of non-resisting experiences to external objects: Childrenappear at so very early a period to know the distance, the shape, and magnitude of the different tangible objects which are presented to them, that I am disposed to believe that even they may have some instinctive perception of this kindit has a tolerably distinct apprehension of the ordinary perspective of Vision, which it cannot well have learnt from observation and experience. (ES 74) Smiths inference from his observations that infants possess natural abilities to see distance, shape, and size may be the first to anticipate a very productive body of work currently done in developmental science.xxiv This evidence strongly suggested to Smith, coupled with the explanation of a critical period of development missed by Cheseldens subject, that the cause attributed to initial visual experiences is always an external object. That being said, how visual experiences invoke normal external attributions of their causes remains an open question, particularly in comparison to experiences of resistance that do so automatically. This difference between direct external contact had by touch and indirect external contact had by non-tactile senses was deeply problematic for Smith, who followed Berkeleys analysis that the senses were heterogeneous. III. Affirming Molyneuxs Question The nature of ones experience at first sight was considered by many philosophers of the modern period in terms of a thought experiment known as MolyneuxsQuestion, whether a man born blind would recognize shapes known by touch at first sight were his sight restored.xxvAs most philosophers of this time advocated a heterogeneous relationship between the senses, where the newly sighted would not be able to use the past tactile experiences or the touch-based ideas thereby derived in their recognition of the shapes,most answered the query with a no. While Smith clearly held to a version of the heterogeneity thesis, he appears to have answered, implicitly at least, Molyneuxs question with a yes. Smiths heterogeneity thesis was based on the fact that tactile experiences of resistanceimmediately invoke external attributions whereas non-resisting experiences do not.xxvi [T]he thing which presses and resists I feel asexternal to my hand, and as altogether independent of it. (ES 3) In other words, attributions of externality are a precondition for experiences of resistanceare intrinsic to resistance.xxvii Conversely, experiences other than resistance have no natural basis for external attribution as they do not possess, nor can we even conceive them as capable of possessing, any one of the qualities, which we consider as essential to, and inseparable from, the external solid and independent substances. (ES 26) In sum, for Smith, The objects of Sight and those of Touch constitute two worlds. (ES 50) To Smith, resistance and external attribution are of a piece whereas vision and other non-resisting senses required a further mechanism to 5

generate external attribution. Smiths claim of a difference in kind between sensory modalities, particularly between sight and touch, is in step with Berkeleys own heterogeneity doctrinethat distinct sensory modalities acquire distinct kinds of objects or properties and share no common idea (NTV 127). The doctrine, however, is distinct from Berkeleys in application, focused not on attacking abstract ideas (NTV 122) or the claims of the optic writers (NTV 6), but rather on the problem of distal attribution.Attributing externalityto visual experiences, however, did not entail for Smith that the properties were attributed externally in the same way as tactile experiences of resistance.A colored line and a felt solid line remained, for Smith, categorically distinct kinds of properties (ES 50). Set in the novel context of Smiths attribution heterogeneity doctrine,Molyneuxs questionprompted the query as to how the experiences of sight and touch are attributed to the same external object, asking:would the newly seen shapes be externally attributed as the previously touched ones?xxviiiAs discussed above, Smiths alternative explanation of Cheseldens patient (ES 65) based on a missed critical period and confirming evidence from infant observations (both animal and human) suggested that somehow non-tactile senses indirectly result in external attribution. However, this empirical basis for an affirmative answer to Molyneuxs question was at best speculative and required a reconsideration of Berkeleys own negative answer. We can get a sense of Smiths interaction with the basis of Berkeleys own negative answerbyconsidering his hesitant use of Berkeleys infamous language analogy to the senses, that like learning a second language, the visual language would require learned association with ones first tongue, touch (ES 68). Smith, however, tookthere to be a much closer correlation between sight and touch than the analogy would allow: There is evidently, therefore, a certain affinity and correspondence between each visible object and the precise tangible object represented by it, much superior to what takes place either between written and spoken language. (ES 62) The perceivedinstability of Berkeleys language analogywas, for Smith, due to the possibility of instinctual mapping rules of perspective between the objects of sight and touch.Those shades and combinations of [Colour] suggest those different tangible objectsaccording to rules of Perspective. (ES 50) Because of these rules of perspective, the visual shapes themselves are better fitted than others to represent certain tangible objects. A visible square is better fitted than a visible circle to represent a tangible square. (ES 61) Smith concluded, There is evidently therefore, a certain affinity and correspondence between each visible object and the precise tangible object represented by it, much superior to what takes placebetween spoken language and the ideas or meanings which it suggests. (ES 62) Berkeley himself acknowledged that there were better matches between some shapes over others across sensory modalities. This did not, according to Robert Schwartzs intriguing analysis, present an inconsistency in Berkeleys heterogeneity thesis as visual and tactile experiences of shape are both non-spatialsets of points that apply both in cases of sight and touch but neither of which resemble an independent and external world.xxix Schwartzs analysis provides one explanation for why Smith took fitness correlations to be problematic 6

for the heterogeneity thesis when Berkeley did not,as touch experiences were automatically attributed as external for Smith. In the same breath that Smith argues for aheterogeneity doctrine of attribution, he refers to the empirical evidence from infant animals and humans, which suggest that subjects need not ever associate or infer from the prior tactile experiences to determine which shape is which at first sight. Infant animals, [A]ntecedent to all experience (70) and thus having no tactile familiarity with the objects they are seeing yet recognize, or at least anticipate, their external significance. Additionally, as is implied by the example of both animal and human infants, the lack of cognitive aptitude had by mature human subjects is no hindrance to this attribution ability, and so they would not infer or reason from the prior tactile experiences even if they had these experiences to reason from.xxx This provided empirical support against both Berkeleys claim that these associations between sight and touch are learned and also against others who would argue that reason is the basis for this association.xxxi The quick progress observed in the recognition abilities of the animals and infants is far too steep to be based on learning or thought.It appears that Smith thought that though the senses are heterogeneous with respect to externality, some underlying mechanism enabled a mapping correlation between them. Smiths continued discussion of the rules of perspective, particularly in ES 67, however, might seem to suggest that his account included a rational or at least tacitly learned basis for this correlation. After all, the bases of the painters technique are the learned rules of perspective. However, Smith distinguished two types of perspective rules, the feeble perspective of Painting; andthe strong perspective of Nature. (ES 68) Only the latter provoke a strongly determined expectation of resisting objects, in consequence of the visible ones which had been presented to him. In other words, this strong perspective of Nature or what he also refers to as, the great principles of Vision, bridges the gap between external and internal attributions in a way that visible objects are seen as external, rather than thought or taught to be external. Eliminating these possible bases for external attributions to non-resisting experiences led Smith to conjecture a third instinctive alternative. IV. Instinctive Mechanisms of Attribution Smith invoked an instinctive mechanism, what he usually called instinctive suggestion, only in cases of audition and sight, as when he describes how animals react to surprising sounds: This effect, too, is produced so readily and so instantaneously that it bears every mark of an instinctive suggestion of an impression immediately struck by the hand of Nature, which does not wait for any recollection of past observation and experience.xxxii (ES 87) And regarding the ability of young birds to depart from the nest and visually experience the outside world without previous experience of it, Smith wrote: As soon as that period arrives, however, and probably for some time before, they 7

evidently enjoy all the powers of Vision in the most complete perfection, and can distinguish with most exact precision the shape and proportion of the tangible objects which every visible one represents. In so short a period they cannot be supposed to have acquired those powers from experience, and must therefore derive them from some instinctivesuggestion. (ES 71) This same mechanism is used to account for the numerous kinds of animal that, without prior experience, interact with their visual world: That, antecedent to all experience, the young of at least the greater part of animals possess some instinctiveperception of this kind, seems abundantly evident. (ES 70) When comparing Cheseldens subject with human infants, Smith suggested that both made use of an instinctive power to correlate visual and resisting experiences, the former of which had it to a lesser extent because of his missing the critical period: But though it may have been altogether by the slow paces of observation and experience that this young gentleman acquired the knowledge of the connection between visible and tangible objects; we cannot from thence with certainty infer, that young children have not some instinctiveperception of the same kind. In him this instinctive power, not having been exerted at the proper season, may, from disuse, have gone gradually to decay, and at last have been completely obliterated. Or, perhaps, (what seems likewise very possible,) some feeble and unobserved remains of it may have somewhat facilitated his acquisition of what he might otherwise have found it much more difficult to acquire. (ES 69, my emphasis) The exclusive use of these terms to visual and auditory experiences suggests that they operated as a mechanism for correlating distal or spatialnon-resisting experiences to resisting objects. This aligns Smiths use of the term suggestion withthe use made by his predecessor Berkeley. Both understood thesuggestion mechanismas in service of spatially organizing sensations: providing a sort of blueprint for classifying experience: drawn by nature for Smith, convention for Berkeley.xxxiii The suggestion mechanism organizes sensory information into a spatial structure, which, in doing so, provides grounds for external attribution. There was, of course, a sharp contrast between how Smith understood the nature of this mechanism and Berkeley. For instance, consider Berkeleysuse of the term suggestion, Just as upon hearing a certain sound, the idea is immediately suggested to the understanding, which custom had united with it. (NTV, 12) For Berkeley, suggestion is learned, or acquired as Thomas Reid would later describe. Smiths own use of the term shows there to be no role for previous experience and thus anticipates Reids subsequent use in his account of original perception.xxxiv Nature hath established a real connection between the signs and the things signifiedso that previous to experience, the sign suggests the things signified, and creates the belief in it.xxxvSmiths use of the terms instinctive perception, and instinctive suggestion further distances him from Berkeleys own conceptual resources for handling the general problem of externality. If it is the suggestion mechanism which structures non-resisting sensations, Smith is left with 8

a further open question; is the externality of felt resistance the same as the externality of visual and auditory experience? In other words, is the structure provided by the mechanism of instinctive suggestion the same structure as that provided directly by felt resistance?xxxvi Smith answered that the external object felt to resist or seen or heard were in fact the same. The mechanism of instinctive suggestion used felt resistance as a mediator for the external attribution of visual and auditory experiences. For instance, Smith describes the visual experiences of infant foals and calves as having the shape and proportion of the tangible objects which each visible one represents. (ES 72)Furthermore, in some cases he used resistance and externality interchangeably. Do any of our other sensesinstinctively suggest to us some conception of the solid and resisting substances which excite their respective sensations? (ES 75) This suggests that for Smith sight and touch are spatial only insofar as they connect with the objects of resistance and do only insofar as they avail themselves to a mechanism that makes this correlation. A further question presents itself; do non-spatial senses such as smell and taste invoke the same kind of external attributions as touch, sight, and sound?Smith has little patience for this possibility, The sense of Taste certainly does not (ES 76) He clarifies why with the following suggestion: But all the appetites which take their origin from a certain state of the body, seem to suggest the means of their own gratification; and, even long before experience, some anticipation or preconception of the pleasure which attends that gratification. (ES 79) Smithsdenialofnon-spatial senses invokingfeelings of resistance suggests further that they do not invoke the suggestion mechanism. Rather, Smith claims that they make use of a distinct mechanism, preconception: an anticipation and vague idea of something external. This ability to pre-cognize is neither learned, nor rational, butis rather foundas part of ones natural constitution. The terms explicit use is limited to a set of conjectures at the end of ES in which Smith discusses how smell, taste, and (non-resisting) feeling sensations like felt temperatureresult in an attribution of externality. Preconception is both anticipatory, as in the case of an infant that suckles even without an object in its mouth as some anticipation or preconception of the pleasure which it is to enjoy in sucking (79), and protoconceptual, as such sensations must suggest at least some vague idea or preconception of the existence of that body; of the thing to which it directs, though not the precise shape and magnitude of that thing. Preconception invokes vague appeals for internal satisfaction by a source from without.This explains, for instance, how newborn animals self-regulate their bodily temperature with movement toward and away from heat sources: But the very desire of motion supposes some notion or preconception of externality; and the desire to move towards the side of the agreeable, or from that of the disagreeable sensation, supposes at least some vague notion of some external thing or place which is the cause of those respective sensations. (ES 85) Preconception clearly serves the satisfaction of felt bodily need. Furthermore, this term is only used in cases of non-visual, non-auditory, and non-resisting experiences of either internal anticipations, such as hunger and thirst or those with external significance like smelling, tasting, and felt temperature. In other words, preconception appears to function as 9

a non-inferential mechanism for processing bodily sensations, and in this sense it is at best a vague and merely anticipatory satisfaction from the pangs of the most basic requirements of human survivalnourishment and protection. But if sensations are all that are covered by the mechanism of preconception, what of other sensory experiences, particularly vision? In particular, what of the ability for newly hatched chicks to visually experience a food source, walk to it, and peck directly at it? This example suggests that the vague and merely anticipatory mechanism of preconception would fail to guide such complex interactions. In other words, the structure, or lack thereof, provided by the mechanism of preconception, in contrast to the mechanism of instinctive suggestion, cannot provide a correlation with the same resisting objects as that provided directly by felt resistance or indirectly by visual or auditory experiences that instinctively suggest resisting objects. The distinction featured here between the kind of external attributions engendered by instinctive suggestion and the external anticipations summoned by preconception is good evidence that Smiths account operated with two kinds of externality: external attribution and external anticipation. Diagram 1: Categories of Mechanism and Externality External Attribution TactileResis tance Sight, Audition Smell, Taste, Feel External Anticipation

Suggestion

Preconception

Description: All the senses invoke some kind of externality: either anticipation by smell, taste, and temperature feeling through the mechanism of preconception or attribution by sight and audition through the instinctive mechanism of suggestion, which indirectly arrives at attribution through simulated feelings of tactile resistance. Tactile feelings of resistance are directly correlated with external attribution. This proposal invites further questions: Can external anticipations afford any cognitive tasks, such as shape recognition? Are there cases where visual experiences invoke external anticipations? Are there cases where smell experiences invoke external attributions?xxxvii While interesting in their own right, Im not sure Smith considered these questions, as his primary interest was to establish how the senses instinctively presuppose externality. Once doing so by the mechanisms of suggestion and preconception, Smith suggests why these mechanisms are so crucial, yielding bodily interaction with resisting objects. V: Bodily Interaction and Non-Resisting Experiences 10

Smithsfollowing observation suggests a final problem of external attribution: Visible objects, Colour, and all its different modifications, are in themselves mere shadows or pictures, which seem to float, as it were, before the organ of Sight. In themselves, and independent of their connection with the tangible objects which they represent, they are of no importance to us, and can essentially neither benefit us nor hurt us. Even while we see them we are seldom thinking of them. Even when we appear to be looking at them with the greatest earnestness our whole attention is frequently employed, not upon them, but upon the tangible objects represented by them. (ES 53) How is it, Smith might be read to ask, that the innocuous colors of sight (and the related experiences of the other senses) take on the harm or benefit to our bodies that are associated with resistance? This problem, as with those above, funnel into a single response based on naturalmechanisms of the mind, suggestion and preconception, to make this correlation. Yet, in answer to the bodily interaction problem, the natural origin is supplied with a natural benefit: The benevolent purpose of nature in bestowing upon us the sense of seeing, is evidently to inform us concerning the situation and distance of the tangible objects which surround us. Upon the knowledge of this distance and situation depends the whole conduct of human life, in the most trifling as well as in the most important transactions. Even animal motion depends upon it; and without it we could neither move, nor even sit still with complete security. (ES 60) Smith further suggeststhis survival function of the senseswhen writing that the exactness of ones ability to judge the size, shape, and distance of an object by sight is in proportion to their continued existence. Men of letters, who live much in their closets, and have seldom occasion to look at very distance objects, are seldom far-sighted. (ES 52) In another instance, Smith discusses a converse profession with its opposing skill.xxxviii It often astonishes a land-man to observe with what precision a sailor can distinguish in the Offing, not only the appearance of a ship, which is altogether invisible to the land-man, but the number of masts, the direction of her course, and the rate of her sailing. (ES 52) Tying the function of the sensesall of the senseswith survival, though not original with Smith,xxxixanswers the question of why non-resisting experiences that engender their shadowlike experiences of colors and sounds enablebodily interaction with resisting objects.Smiths answer to this problem of the external world, however, remains inconclusive with respect to how the mechanisms themselves function. What is the operational basis for suggestion and preconception? I conclude with a suggested answer. VI: Sight by Sympathy

11

In his workTheory of Moral Sentiments,xlSmith employed a complex mechanism as a basis for moral attributions called sympathy. For a subject to feel sympathy for another is for them to put themselves in the othersshoesto pre-reflectively grasp what it would be like for them to be in the circumstances of another. As Smith describes: By the imagination, we place ourselves in his situationwe enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker to a degree, is not altogether unlike them. (Smith 1994, 2) In the case of external attributions and anticipations, our sensory experiences place us in the context of what it is like to be directly affected by the respective resisting object. Hence, it is tempting to articulate instinctive suggestion and preconception as mechanisms of sympathy. For Smiths account of sympathy to be useful to hisaccount of perception, it must serve an external attribution functionit must serve to relate the sympathizing subjects sensory experiences to its objects possible resisting properties. It is plausible not only to think of these mechanisms as employing a kind of sympathybutto think that Smith himself may have had such aspirations. Smith makes such an allusionin TMS: In my present situation an immense landscape of lawns, and wood, and distant mountains, seems to do no more than cover the little window which I write by and to be out of all proportion less than the chamber in which I am sitting. I can form a just comparison between those great objects and the little objects around me, in no other way than by transporting myself, at least in fancy, to a different station, from whence I can survey both at nearly equal distances, and thereby form some judgment of their real proportions. (Smith 1994, 134-5, my emphasis.) The imaginative transporting myself, at least in fancy is suggestive of a sympathetic mechanism, which in this case is aimed at securing the tactile size of objects seen. This allusion also occurs in a passage from ES: It is because almost our whole attention is employed, not upon the visible and representing, but upon the tangible and represented objects, that in our imaginations we are apt to ascribe to the former a degree of magnitude which does not belong to them, but which belongs altogether to the latter. (ES 54, my emphasis.) These ascriptions that we give to our sense of sight are attributions of externality. In this sense, we automatically sympathize with what it would be like to feel resisting objects correlated to our spatial and bodily experiences. On such an account, when we experience objects by senses other than touch, we produce a representation of these objects as if they were the proper objects of touch. In other words, we implicitly bring to mind all of the resisting experiencesupon our non-tactile experiences of objects. For instance, when seeing a cup in front of me I instinctively perceive it as external because the visual experience brings to mind what it would be like for me to be touching the cupwrapping my hands around it, for instance.xli Similarly when we smell an 12

odor, though the smell is merely anticipatory, it brings to mind satisfaction of simple bodily needsit pre-conceives a vague resistingthing. Smiths allusion to sympathys role in external attribution might be developed into an explanation of how we attribute externality to non-resisting experiences. The possibility that our visual experiences lead to a simulation, to use the present term of art,xliiof resisting experiences offers a very suggestive response to the problems of externality presented above, and deserves further exploration.xliii

References Atherton, Margaret (1990) Berkeleys Revolution in Vision,Ithaca: Cornell University Press Auvray, Malika, Sylvain Hanneton, Charles Lenay, and Kevin O-Regan (2005)There is Something Out There: Distal Attribution in Sensory Substitution, Twenty Years Later,Journal of Integrative Neuroscience4, (4): 505-521 Ben Zeev, Aaron, (1989) Reexamining Berkeleys Notion of Suggestion, Conceptus 23: 21-30 Berkeley, George (1975)Philosophical Works; Including the Works on Vision edited by M. Ayers,London: Dent (1860)The Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained, Edited by Cowell, H.V.H. Macmillan and Co. Bolton, Martha Brand (1994) The Real Molyneux Question and the Basis of Locke's Answer, inLockes Philosophy: Content and Context edited by G.A.J. Rogers,Oxford: Oxford University Presspp. 75-99 Brown, Kevin (1992) Dating Adam Smiths Essay Of the External Senses, Journal of the History of Ideas, 53: 333-337 Degenaar, Marjolein (1996)Molyneux's problem : Three Centuries of Discussion on the Perception of Forms,Translated by Michael J. Collins,Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers Eilan,Naomi (1993)Molyneux's Question And the Idea of an External World in Problems in the Philosophy and Psychology of Spatial Representation edited byNaomi Eilan et al, Oxford: Oxford University Press Evans, Gareth (1985) Molyneuxs Questionin Collected Papersedited byJohn McDowell, Oxford: Oxford University Press Gibson, J.J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception,Boston: Houghton Mifflin Gordon, Robert M. (1995) Sympathy, Simulation, and the Impartial Spectator,Ethics 105 (4): 727-742 Hacker, P.M.S. (2003) Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, by M. R. Bennett and P. M. S. Hacker,Oxford: Blackwell Hubel, D. H., Wiesel, T. N. (1970)The period of susceptibility to the physiological effects of unilateral eye closure in kittens,Journal of Physiology 206: 419-436. Hume, David (2000) Treatise on Human Nature, Edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Jorton, Oxford: Oxford University Press James,William(1981) The Principles of Psychology, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Loomis, Jack M. (1992) Distal Attribution and Presence,in Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1: 113-119

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Malebranche, N. (1980)The Search after Truth, Translated byT. M. Lennon and P. J. Olscamp, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Morgan, Michael J.(1977)Molyneux's question: vision, touch, and the philosophy of perception,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Penfield, W. and Roberts,L. (1959)Speech and Brain Mechanisms, Princeton:Princeton University Press Putnam, H. (1975) The meaning of meaningPhilosophical Papers, vol. II inLanguage, Mind and Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Reid, Thomas (1997)An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, Edited byDerek R Brookes, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Sadato, N. et al. (2002)Critical Period for Cross-Modal Plasticity in Blind Humans: A Functional MRI Study, inNeuroImage 16, 389-400 Schwartz, Robert (2006) Visual Versions, Cambridge, MA:MIT Press (1994) Vision: Variations on Some Berkeleian Themes, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Smith, Adam (1982) On the External Senses in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, Edited by W.P.D Wightman and J.C. Bryce, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (1984) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Edited by D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Smith, A.D.(2002) The Problem of Perception,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Streri, Arlette, Gentaz, Edouard (2003) Cross-modal recognition of shape from hand to eyes in human newborns, inSomatosensory & Motor Research 20, (1): 11-16 Wolf-Devine, Celia (1993)Descartes on Seeing: Epistemology and Visual Perception, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press

Hereafter ES. Citations of ES refer to the paragraph number provided by the editors. ESs editor, W.P.D. Whightman makes a strong case that ES was written around 1737, before Humes Treatise (1739) was published and while Smith, who was 15 or so, was at Glasgow University. Yet, as Kevin L. Brown (1992) observes, this date has significant problems, particularly Smiths reference to content from Linnaeus Systema Naturae 10th ed., published in 1758. Though this gives Brown some basis for his suggested later date of composition, between 1758-9, another, perhaps simpler suggestion is that Smith initially composed the work in his youth and made small edits to it throughout his life. iii ES warrants less than a paragraph in I.S. Rosss twenty page introduction (Smith, 1980). Moreover, there is no full length philosophical treatment of its content by any philosopher. This may be partially due to W.P.D. Whightmans dismissive commentary, of all the essays it is the most difficult to assessit is perhaps best to regard it as literally an essai or attempt to set out the authors ideas on a subject that remained of central concern throughout his lifetime. () it would pass for a very fair rsum of the contemporary state of knowledge of the external senses, such as might have provided an encyclopedia articleas such it is no more than competent. 133-4. iv As Smith writes, The objects of Touch always present themselves as pressing upon, or as resisting[which] necessarily supposes externality in the thing which presses or resists. (ES 3) v An overview of contemporary work on distal attribution is found in Loomis (1992). vi Auvray, (2005), 508
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Smith, (2002) Putnam, (1975) ix Hume 2000, hereafter Treatise. x This neglect supports the claim that ES was a juvenile work, written before the Treatise made its appearance. Humes account of the psychological basis of externality is based on the felt continuation of the existence of objects, found in the Treatise 4.2.2 xi Berkeley (1975), hereafter NTV. Citations of NTV refer to paragraph number. xii Smith prefaces his final section in ES, Of the Sense of SEEING, with praises to Dr. Berkley (sic), is his New Theory of Vision, one of the finest examples of philosophical analysis that is to be found [on] the nature of the objects of Sight: their dissimilitude to, as well as their correspondence and connection with those of Touch. () Whatever I shall say upon it, if not directly borrowed from him, has at least been suggested by what he has already said. (ES 43) xiii According to Margaret Atherton (1990), no commentator has discussed at length Berkeleys treatment of distance, depth, and externality as three separate issues. Atherton has some brief words in pp. 74-77 and cites Robert Schwartzs (2006) paper Seeing Distance from a Berkeleian Perspective pp. 13-26, but this later work focuses on the distinction between distance and depth. xiv See ES 22-24 for Smiths discussion of taste, smell, and hearing. He uses the phrase principle of perception throughout ES as a placeholder for that operation which transforms the physical impression in the organ to the sensory experience felt in the mind. xv James (1981) p. 195 xvi For an interesting overview of Descartes mechanistic account of vision found throughout his writings, see Celia Wolf-Devines (1993) monograph, which shows a more nuanced treatment of Descartes account than the infamous figure of the blind man seeing with crossed sticks, apparently added posthumously, would imply. See pp. 68-9 xvii W.P.D. Wightman, the editor of ES, also points out this problem as a Confusion between seeingand the inference from analysis. P. 148 fn. 16 xviii Given the intellectual climate of the period in which Smith is writing, we should find this doubtful. Philosophers of Smiths time often noted the tendency of the vulgar to misidentify the location of the objects of perception (Berkeley 1975, The Principles of Human Knowledge Sec. 4, Hume 2000, 129). This placed a demand of care and attention to their own philosophical analysis of the true location of the objects of perception. The surrounding attention would itself be sufficient to suggest Smiths facility in avoiding the fallacy in his own account. Thanks to Eric Schliesser for this point. xix Some 18th Century interpretations took this statement by Cheseldens patient quite literally. A survey of these interpretations, including Adam Smiths, Dugald Stewarts objection to Smiths, Mr. Baileys agreement with Smith, and J.S. Mills poking fun at the controversy as a whole can be found in H.V.H. Cowell edition of Berkeley (1860). xx This led Smith to further speculate that other senses prompt similar initial internal attributions of sensory experiences, writing, A deaf man, who was made all at once to hear, might in the same manner naturally enough say, that the sounds which he heard touched his ears, meaning that he felt them as close upon his ears, or, so to speak, perhaps, more properly, as in his ears. (ES 65) xxi See ES 57.
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In the case of Cheseldens cataract patient, this critical period likely concerns crossmodal plasticity, where there exists a certain period of time where connections between the senses are needed, connections which obtain by having, for instance, experiences in those senses that are of spatial properties, like shape and number. See Sadato, N. (2002). xxiii See ES 70-72 xxiv Since the 70s, Susan Rose has been testing infants with visual and tactile shape stimuli to determine whether or not there exist implicit connections between them. Some thirty years later, a student of Rose, Arlette Streri (2003)has produced some very persuasive evidence that there are such connections. xxv See Degenaar, Marjolein, (1996) and Morgan, Michael J. (1977). xxvi He reiterates in stronger language that it is necessarily felt as something external to, and independent of, the hand which feels it... (ES 20, my emphasis) But attributing necessity to such attributions suggests a conceptual basis, that it is not conceivable that an object be felt to resist and yet not be attributed with externality. However, Smiths point might best be taken as a purely felt necessity, the kind often referred to by Hume. (Thanks to Eric Schliesser for this point.) xxvii As I argue below, experiences of resistance need no separate mechanism to bring about external attribution. This is what I hope to convey by the term intrinsic. xxviii Naomi Eilan (1993) is the only discussion of Molyneuxs question as a case of external attribution that I have come across. xxix Schwartz (2006) p. 62 Martha Bolton Brands (1994) interpretation of Lockes discussion of sensing a non-spatial circle variously colored to the perceptual judgment of perceiving a spatial single colored sphere parallels Smiths own predicament. Though Smith never mentions this passage explicitly, he does discuss Cheseldens report of his subjects feeling tricked by sight upon viewing paintings. (ES 66-7) xxx Smith never explicitly draws on this argument against a rational basis for associating sense-specific experiences. This is likely due to the fact that Berkeleys criticism of the optic writers in NTV against a similar rational basis for experiencing distance was as white noise in the background. For instance, Berkeleys own mechanism of learned association, which he often termed suggestion, is not inferential as he clarified in a later work, The Theory of Vision or Visual Language Vindicated and Explained: To perceive is one thing; to judge is another. So likewise, to be suggested is one thing, and to be inferred another. Things are suggested and perceived by sense. We make judgments and inferences by the understanding. Berkeley (1975), 42. xxxi Leibniz is often thought to have held a rational basis for his affirmative answer to Molyneuxs question. See Gareth Evans (1985) xxxii Smith also uses this term when he introduces the possibility that other senses besides sight correlate with the objects of touch, Do any of our other senses, antecedently to such observation and experience, instinctively suggest to us some conception of the solid and resisting substances which excite their respective sensations (75) xxxiii I owe this understanding of Berkeleys use of suggestion to Aaron Ben Zeev (1989). xxxiv It is extremely unlikely that Reid had access to ES before its publication or ever conversed with Smith directly. It is even doubtful that Reid read or possessed ES. (Thanks to Paul Wood for this observation in personal correspondence.) So, there is no basis for attributing Reids notion of original perception to Adam Smith. xxxv Thomas Reid (1997). 6.24

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Smith never explicitly discusses the precise kind of mechanism that enables this, but Ill conclude this paper with some preliminary suggestions that for Smith the mechanism of sympathy might play rolethat visual or auditory properties are naturally perceived as if they were properties of tactile resistance and thereby external. xxxvii As discussed above, it seems clear that Smith thinks only sight and touch instinctively suggest to us some conception of the solid and resisting substances which excite their respective sensations (75). xxxviii This point is also developed by Reid (1997) pp. 171-2, 191-2 xxxix Malebranche, who also influenced Berkeley, argued that our senses were not so much grounds for knowledge, given their propensity to error, but are given to us only for the preservation of our body. (Book I, Chapter 20, i), 85 xl Hereafter TMS. xli Of the many ways to understand the mechanism behind this phenomenon, J.J. Gibsons theory of affordances seems again to be the clearest and most productive. xlii Robert M. Gordon (1995) makes this connection explicit for Adam Smiths theory of sympathy. xliii I would like to thank an anonymous referee, Walter Hopp, Janet Levin, Eric Schliesser, Robert Schwartz, and James Van Cleve for commenting on earlier drafts of this paper, with additional thanks to Eric Schliesser for introducing me to Adam Smiths little essay.

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