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It is like looking at the sun setting, and trying to persuade oneself that the earth appears to move and not the sun, a feat I have never been able to accomplish. Even when the eyes are shut, the darkness of which one is conscious, carries with it the notion of outness. One looks, so to speak, into a dark space. Common language expresses the common experience of mankind in this matter.
The consideration of this difficulty it was that gave birth to my 'Essay towards the New Theory of Vision, which was published not long since, wherein it is shown that distance, or outness, is neither immediately of itself perceived by sight, nor yet apprehended, or judged of, by lines and angles or anything that hath any necessary connection with it; but that it is only suggested to our thoughts by certain visible ideas and sensations attending vision, which, in their own nature, have no manner of similitude or relation either with distance, or with things placed at a distance; but by a connection taught us by experience, they come to signify and suggest them to us, after the same manner that words of any language suggest the ideas they are made to stand for; insomuch that a man born blind and afterwards made to see, would not, at first sight, think the things he saw to be without his mind or at any distance from him."
The sense of touch gives rise to the idea of "outness," in the sense of localization. The sense of touch gives rise to the idea of resistance, and thence to that of solidity, in the sense of impenetrability. The sense of touch gives rise to the idea of "outness," in the sense of distance in the third dimension, and thence to that of space, or geometrical solidity.
In speaking of touch he seems to employ it indifferently, both for the localization of a tactile sensation in the sensory surface, which we really obtain through touch; and for the notion of corporeal separation, which is attained by the association of muscular and tactile sensations. In speaking of sight, on the other hand, Berkeley employs "outness" to denote corporeal separation.
How from sensations do we get what Berkeley called 'outness'? We get it, says Brown, from the sense of resistance or 'impeded effort. That reveals to us the fact that there is something independent of ourselves, and the belief in such a something is precisely what we mean, and all that we mean, by the belief in an external world.
he refers to that notion of solidity which may be obtained by the tactile sense, without the addition of any notion of resistance in the solid object; as, for example, when the finger passes lightly over the surface of a billiard ball. Yet another source of difficulty in clearly understanding Berkeley arises out of his use of the word "outness."
What can be plainer than to say: the understanding is the medial faculty or faculty of means, as reason on the other hand is the source of ideas or ultimate ends. By reason we determine the ultimate end: by the understanding we are enabled to select and adapt the appropriate means for the attainment of, or approximation to, this end, according to circumstances. But an ultimate end must of necessity be an idea, that is, that which is not representable by the sense, and has no entire correspondent in nature, or the world of the senses. For in nature there can be neither a first nor a last: all that we can see, smell, taste, touch, are means, and only in a qualified sense, and by the defect of our language, entitled ends. They are only relatively ends in a chain of motives. B. is the end to A.; but it is itself a mean to C., and in like manner C. is a mean to D., and so on. Thus words are the means by which we reduce appearances, or things presented through the senses, to their several kinds, or 'genera'; that is, we generalize, and thus think and judge. Hence the understanding, considered specially as an intellective power, is the source and faculty of words; and on this account the understanding is justly defined, both by Archbishop Leighton, and by Immanuel Kant, the faculty that judges by, or according to, sense. However, practical or intellectual, it is one and the same understanding, and the definition, the medial faculty, expresses its true character in both directions alike. I am urgent on this point, because on the right conception of the same, namely, that understanding and sense (to which the sensibility supplies the material of outness, 'materiam objectivam',) constitute the natural mind of man, depends the comprehension of St. Paul's whole theological system. And this natural mind, which is named the mind of the flesh, [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs], as likewise [Greek: psychik
CLAIRE: I want to get away from them! HARRY: Rest easy, little one you do. CLAIRE: I'm not so sure that I do. But it can be done! We need not be held in forms moulded for us. There is outness and otherness. HARRY: Now, Claire I didn't mean to start anything serious. CLAIRE: No; you never mean to do that. I want to break it up! I tell you, I want to break it up!
What if the rain be falling, and the wind blowing; what if we stand alone, or, more painful still, have some dear one beside us, sharing our outness; what even if the window be not shining, because of the curtains of good inscrutable drawn across it; let us think to ourselves, or say to our friend, 'God is; Jesus is not dead; nothing can be going wrong, however it may look so to hearts unfinished in childness. Let us say to the Lord, 'Jesus, art thou loving the Father in there?
From resistance, or the sensation produced when something 'resists our attempts to grasp it, we get the 'outness. Then perception is 'nothing more than the association of this complex notion with our other sensations the notion of something extended and resisting, suggested by these sensations, when the suggestions themselves have previously arisen, and suggested in the same manner and on the same principle as any other associate feeling suggests any other associate feeling. The odour or colour of a rose recalls the sensation of touching and of resistance to our grasp.
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