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1. ADAM SMITH AND THE PROBLEM OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD
BRIAN GLENNEY
Gordon College
abstract
How does the mind attribute external causes to internal sensory experiences?
Adam Smith addresses this question in his little known essay ‘Of the External
Senses.’ I closely examine Smith’s 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 Terms: perception, sensation, distal attribution, sympathy, simulation,
Molyneux’s Question, William Cheselden, George Berkeley
Adam Smith’s consideration of the problem of the external world is found in his
essay entitled ‘Of the External Senses.’1
Though a juvenile work,2
and perhaps for
this reason an underappreciated one,3
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,4
The Journal of Scottish Philosophy 9.2 (2011): 205–223
DOI: 10.3366/jsp.2011.0016
© Edinburgh University Press
www.eupjournals.com/jsp
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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).
Smith’s problem might be best articulated as the ‘psychological’ problem
of the external world – the problem of ‘distal attribution’ as it is called in
current literature in psychology.5
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.’6
Though related to the
epistemological problem of the external world – how we justifiably make such an
attribution of objects, Smith’s concern was how our minds make this attribution of
externality. Neither was Smith’s issue the related problem of perception brought
about by illusions and hallucinations,7
nor the more contemporary issue of
intentionality – of what it is to direct our thoughts externally.8
Smith’s problem
concerned how it is that we take sensory experiences as caused by things outside
us, ‘. . . as external. . . and as altogether independent. . . ’ (ES 3).
When considering Smith’s problem of externality, it is difficult not to bring
Hume’s own query on ‘the doctrine of the independent existence of our sensible
perceptions’ (Treatise 1.4.2, 44) to mind.9
Smith, however, neither mentions
Hume, nor his account.10
Though such a contrast would be fruitful and worth
consideration in its own right, very little discussion of Hume will be taken up here.
Berkeley’s Towards a New Theory of Vision11
was the overt provocation for
Smith’s interest in the problem of externality.12
Yet for Berkeley, externality
was inextricably linked to the problem of seeing distance.13
Seeing distance and
attributing externality are, however, distinct problems. We have to, for instance,
refer to an object as being ‘out there’ in 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 problem – how we see
distance when distance lines are a point directed endwise – as problems of external
attribution. These specific cases, which included Cheselden’s report of a boy
recovering from cataract surgery, Molyneux’s question regarding the kind of
experiences had by the newly sighted, and Smith’s 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 internal objects 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.
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3) The experiences conjoined with senses indirectly related to resisting objects
are not interactive with our bodily movements, and are as like shadows,
failing themselves to cause harm or health to our body.
These problems, which I will discuss individually below, led Smith to appeal to
two inborn mechanisms of perception: ‘preconception’, a mechanism triggered
by bodily sensations like smells or pains and ‘instinctive suggestion’, triggered
by visual and auditory experiences. Smith’s surprisingly nuanced responses
based on these mechanisms anticipate many current findings in developmental
psychology. One wonders after reading Smith’s 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 of the
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? Berkeley’s ‘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 sensible. . . that 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.’14
The internal objects of perception constitute a specific problem for how
one attributes externality to non-tactile senses: given the organ-based existence
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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 properly attributed as
the cause of the effect.
b) The most immediate object of non-tactile experience is an internal
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’ fallacy. . . the great snare of the psychologist.’15
Descartes, for
instance, infamously portrayed (or is often depicted as portraying) vision as a
process akin to a blind man’s ‘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.16
Thus, 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.17
The 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 Smith’s own description of the problem of internal objects guilty of this
fallacy?18
Smith’s worry was not prompted by optics but rather the famous case
study by William Cheselden of a blind boy’s visual experience after cataract
surgery. The report infamously stated that the subject saw the objects as ‘close
upon his eyes.’19
Smith’s interpretation is as follows:
When the young gentleman said, that the objects which he saw touched his
eyes. . . he 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 Cheselden’s 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 Smith’s concern. The anecdotal evidence of Chesleden’s
patient alone suggested to Smith the possibility that initially we all visually
experience objects as in the eye.20
Cheselden’s report was taken by Smith to suggest that all initial sensory
experiences are naturally attributed internally because they are experienced as
internal and that only with experience and maturation are these experiences
attributed externally.21
This suggests another formulation of the central premise of
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the problem: b) The immediate object of non-resisting experiences is experienced
as internal. 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 the interpretation 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 Cheselden’s cataract patient suggested 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 subject’s 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).
Smith’s interpretation of Cheselden’s 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 is required in order to trigger
normal development of functional areas of the brain.22
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Smith’s 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 Smith’s 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 powers of vision straight from shell and
nest.23
The cow, horse, puppy, kitten, and ‘beasts of prey. . . come 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 Smith’s 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:
Children. . . appear 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 kind. . . it has a tolerably distinct apprehension of the ordinary perspective
of Vision, which it cannot well have learnt from observation and experience
(ES 74).
Smith’s 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.24
This evidence strongly
suggested to Smith, coupled with the explanation of a critical period of
development missed by Cheselden’s 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 Berkeley’s analysis that the senses were
heterogeneous.
iii. affirming molyneux’s question
The nature of one’s experience at ‘first sight’ was considered by many
philosophers of the modern period in terms of a thought experiment known
as ‘Molyneux’s Question,’ whether a man born blind would recognize shapes
known by touch at first sight were his sight restored.25
As most philosophers of
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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, Molyneux’s question with
a ‘yes.’
Smith’s heterogeneity thesis was based on the fact that tactile experiences
of resistance immediately invoke external attributions whereas non-resisting
experiences do not.26
‘[T]he thing which presses and resists I feel as. . . external to
my hand, and as altogether independent of it’ (ES 3). In other words, attributions
of externality are a precondition for experiences of resistance – are intrinsic to
resistance.27
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 generate
external attribution.
Smith’s claim of a difference in kind between sensory modalities, particularly
between sight and touch, is in step with Berkeley’s own heterogeneity
doctrine – that distinct sensory modalities acquire distinct kinds of ‘objects’ or
properties and share no common idea (NTV 127). The doctrine, however, is
distinct from Berkeley’s 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 externality to 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 Smith’s attribution heterogeneity doctrine,
Molyneux’s question prompted 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?28
As discussed
above, Smith’s alternative explanation of Cheselden’s 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
Molyneux’s question was at best speculative and required a reconsideration of
Berkeley’s own negative answer.
We can get a sense of Smith’s interaction with the basis of Berkeley’s own
negative answer by considering his hesitant use of Berkeley’s infamous language
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analogy to the senses, that like learning a second language, ‘the visual language’
would require learned association with one’s first tongue, touch (ES 68). Smith,
however, took there 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 perceived instability of Berkeley’s language analogy was, 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 objects. . . according 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 place. . . between 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 Schwartz’s intriguing analysis, present an inconsistency in Berkeley’s
heterogeneity thesis as visual and tactile experiences of shape are both non-
spatial – sets of points that apply both in cases of sight and touch but
neither of which resemble an independent and external world.29
Schwartz’s
analysis provides one explanation for why Smith took fitness correlations to
be problematic 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 a heterogeneity 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. . . ’ (ES 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.30
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9. Smith and the Problem of the External World
This provided empirical support against both Berkeley’s 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.31
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.
Smith’s 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 painter’s
technique are the learned rules of perspective. However, Smith distinguished two
types of perspective rules, ‘the feeble perspective of Painting; and. . . the 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 experience32
(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 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 instinctive suggestion (ES 71).
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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
instinctive perception of this kind, seems abundantly evident’ (ES 70). When
comparing Cheselden’s 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 instinctive perception 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 ‘spatial’ non-resisting
experiences to resisting objects. This aligns Smith’s use of the term ‘suggestion’
with the use made by his predecessor Berkeley. Both understood the ‘suggestion’
mechanism as in service of spatially organizing sensations: providing a sort
of blueprint for classifying experience: drawn by nature for Smith, convention
for Berkeley.33
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 Berkeley’s use
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. Smith’s own use of the term shows there to be no role for
previous experience and thus anticipates Reid’s subsequent use in his account
of ‘original perception.’34
‘Nature hath established a real connection between
the signs and the things signified. . . so that previous to experience, the sign
suggests the things signified, and creates the belief in it.’35
Smith’s use of the
terms ‘instinctive perception,’ and ‘instinctive suggestion’ further distances him
from Berkeley’s own conceptual resources for handling the general problem of
externality.
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If it is the suggestion mechanism which structures non-resisting sensations,
Smith is left with 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?36
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 senses. . . instinctively 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).
Smith’s denial of non-spatial senses invoking feelings 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, but is rather found as part of one’s natural constitution.
The term’s 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 temperature result 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 proto-conceptual, 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
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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 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 survival – nourishment 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 Smith’s account operated with two kinds
of externality: external attribution and external anticipation (see Fig. 1). 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?37
While interesting in their own right, I’m 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.
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13. Smith and the Problem of the External World
Figure 1. Categories of Mechanism and Externality. 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.
v. bodily interaction and non-resisting experiences
Smith’s following 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
natural mechanisms 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
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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 suggests this survival function of the senses when writing that the
exactness of one’s 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 distant objects,
are seldom far-sighted’ (ES 52). In another instance, Smith discusses a converse
profession with its opposing skill.38
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 senses – all of the senses – with survival, though not
original with Smith,39
answers the question of why non-resisting experiences
that engender their shadow-like experiences of colors and sounds enable
bodily interaction with resisting objects. Smith’s 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
In his work Theory of Moral Sentiments,40
Smith 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 other’s shoes’ – to 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 situation. . . we 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 Smith’s account of sympathy
to be useful to his account of perception, it must serve an ‘external attribution’
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15. Smith and the Problem of the External World
function – it must serve to relate the sympathizing subject’s sensory experiences
to its object’s possible resisting properties.
It is plausible not only to think of these mechanisms as employing a kind of
sympathy but to think that Smith himself may have had such aspirations. Smith
makes such an allusion in 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 experiences
upon 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 cup – wrapping
my hands around it, for instance.41
Similarly when we smell an odor, though
the smell is merely anticipatory, it brings to mind satisfaction of simple bodily
needs – it pre-conceives a vague resisting thing.
Smith’s allusion to sympathy’s 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,42
of resisting experiences offers a very suggestive response to the
problems of externality presented above, and deserves further exploration.43
219

16. Brian Glenney
references
Atherton, Margaret (1990) Berkeley’s 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 Neuroscience 4(4): 505–21.
Ben Zeev, Aaron, (1989) ‘Reexamining Berkeley’s Notion of Suggestion’, Conceptus 23:
21–30.
Bennett, M. R., and P. M. S. Hacker (2003) Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience,
Oxford: Blackwell.
Berkeley, George (1975) Philosophical Works; Including the Works on Vision, ed.
M. Ayers, London: Dent.
—— (1860) The Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained, ed. H. V. H. Cowell,
Macmillan and Co.
Bolton, Martha Brand (1994) ‘The Real Molyneux Question and the Basis of Locke’s
Answer’, in G. A. J. Rogers (ed.), Locke’s Philosophy: Content and Context, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, pp. 75–99.
Brown, Kevin (1992) ‘Dating Adam Smith’s Essay “Of the External Senses” ’, Journal of
the History of Ideas 53: 333–7.
Degenaar, Marjolein (1996) Molyneux’s Problem: Three Centuries of Discussion on
the Perception of Forms, trans. Michael J. Collins, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
Eilan, Naomi (1993) ‘Molyneux’s Question and the Idea of an External World’, in Naomi
Eilan et al. (eds), Problems in the Philosophy and Psychology of Spatial Representation,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Evans, Gareth (1985) ‘Molyneux’s Question’, in John McDowell (ed.), Collected Papers,
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): 727–42.
Hubel, D. H., and T. N. Wiesel (1970) ‘The Period of Susceptibility to the
Physiological Effects of Unilateral Eye Closure in Kittens’, Journal of Physiology 206:
419–36.
Hume, David (2000) Treatise on Human Nature, ed. 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’, Presence: Teleoperators and
Virtual Environments 1: 113–19.
Malebranche, N. (1980) The Search after Truth, trans. T. 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 L. Roberts (1959) Speech and Brain Mechanisms, Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Putnam, H. (1975) ‘The Meaning of “Meaning” ’, in Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2, in
Language, Mind and Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reid, Thomas (1997) An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense,
ed. Derek R. Brookes, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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17. Smith and the Problem of the External World
Sadato, N. et al. (2002) ‘Critical Period for Cross-Modal Plasticity in Blind Humans: A
Functional MRI Study’, NeuroImage 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, ed.
W. P. D Wightman and J. C. Bryce, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
—— (1984) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. 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, and Edouard Gentaz (2003) ‘Cross-Modal Recognition of Shape from Hand
to Eyes in Human Newborns’, Somatosensory & Motor Research 20(1): 11–16.
Wolf-Devine, Celia (1993) Descartes on Seeing: Epistemology and Visual Perception,
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
notes
1
Hereafter ES. Citations of ES refer to the paragraph number provided by the editors.
2
ES’s editor, W.P.D. Whightman makes a strong case that ES was written around 1737,
before Hume’s 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 Smith’s 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.
3
ES warrants less than a paragraph in I.S. Ross’s 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. Whightman’s dismissive commentary,
‘...of all the essays it is the most difficult to assess...it is perhaps best to regard it as
literally an essai or attempt to set out the author’s ideas on a subject that remained of
central concern throughout his lifetime. (...) ...it would pass for a very fair résumé
of the contemporary state of knowledge of the ‘external senses’, such as might have
provided an encyclopedia article...as such it is no more than competent’ 133–4.
4
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).
5
An overview of contemporary work on distal attribution is found in Loomis (1992).
6
Auvray (2005), 508.
7
Smith (2002).
8
Putnam (1975).
9
Hume 2000, hereafter Treatise.
10
This neglect supports the claim that ES was a juvenile work, written before the Treatise
made its appearance. Hume’s 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
11
Berkeley (1975), hereafter NTV. Citations of NTV refer to paragraph number.
12
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
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18. Brian Glenney
shall say upon it, if not directly borrowed from him, has at least been suggested by what
he has already said’ (ES 43).
13
According to Margaret Atherton (1990), no commentator has discussed at length
Berkeley’s treatment of distance, depth, and externality as three separate issues.
Atherton has some brief words in pp. 74–77 and cites Robert Schwartz’s (2006) paper
‘Seeing Distance from a Berkeleian Perspective’ pp. 13–26, but this later work focuses
on the distinction between distance and depth.
14
See ES 22–24 for Smith’s 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.
15
James (1981) p. 195.
16
For an interesting overview of Descartes’ mechanistic account of vision found
throughout his writings, see Celia Wolf-Devine’s (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.
17
W.P.D. Wightman, the editor of ES, also points out this problem as a ‘Confusion between
“seeing”...and the inference from analysis’. P. 148 fn. 16.
18
Given the intellectual climate of the period in which Smith is writing, we should find
this doubtful. Philosophers of Smith’s 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 Smith’s facility in avoiding
the fallacy in his own account. Thanks to Eric Schliesser for this point.
19
Some 18th Century interpretations took this statement by Cheselden’s patient quite
literally. A survey of these interpretations, including Adam Smith’s, Dugald Stewart’s
objection to Smith’s, Mr. Bailey’s agreement with Smith, and J.S. Mill’s poking
fun at the controversy as a whole can be found in H.V.H. Cowell edition of
Berkeley (1860).
20
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).
21
See (ES 57).
22
In the case of Cheselden’s 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).
23
See (ES 70–72).
24
Since the 70’s, 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.
25
See Degenaar, Marjolein, (1996) and Morgan, Michael J. (1977).
26
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, Smith’s
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19. Smith and the Problem of the External World
point might best be taken as a purely ‘felt necessity’, the kind often referred to by Hume.
(Thanks to Eric Schliesser for this point.)
27
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.’
28
Naomi Eilan (1993) is the only discussion of Molyneux’s question as a case of external
attribution that I have come across.
29
Schwartz (2006) p. 62 Martha Bolton Brand’s (1994) interpretation of Locke’s
discussion of sensing a non-spatial circle variously colored to the perceptual judgment
of perceiving a spatial single colored sphere parallels Smith’s own predicament. Though
Smith never mentions this passage explicitly, he does discuss Cheselden’s report of his
subject’s feeling tricked by sight upon viewing paintings. (ES 66–7)
30
Smith never explicitly draws on this argument against a rational basis for associating
sense-specific experiences. This is likely due to the fact that Berkeley’s criticism of the
‘optic writers’ in NTV against a similar rational basis for experiencing distance was
as white noise in the background. For instance, Berkeley’s 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.
31
Leibniz is often thought to have held a rational basis for his affirmative answer to
Molyneux’s question. See Gareth Evans (1985).
32
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).
33
I owe this understanding of Berkeley’s use of ‘suggestion’ to Aaron Ben Zeev (1989).
34
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 Reid’s notion of ‘original perception’ to Adam Smith.
35
Thomas Reid (1997). 6.24
36
Smith never explicitly discusses the precise kind of mechanism that enables this, but I’ll
conclude this paper with some preliminary suggestions that for Smith the mechanism of
sympathy might play role – that visual or auditory properties are naturally perceived as
if they were properties of tactile resistance and thereby external.
37
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).
38
This point is also developed by Reid (1997) pp. 171–2, 191–2.
39
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.
40
Hereafter TMS.
41
Of the many ways to understand the mechanism behind this phenomenon, J.J. Gibson’s
theory of affordances seems again to be the clearest and most productive.
42
Robert M. Gordon (1995) makes this connection explicit for Adam Smith’s theory of
sympathy.
43
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 Smith’s little essay.
223