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Much of the debate over the Puzzle of Immediacy concerns what exactly Berkeley means by ‘perceive’ when applied to sensible objects and, somewhat less so, about what it means to perceive something immediately. So it seems to be agreed on both sides that to perceive an idea immediately is to perceive it without the aid of an intermediate idea—that is, without the idea being suggested to the mind by some other idea—and without any kind of inference.95 _{And it seems agreed on both sides that some perception—in particular,}

perception of some members of collections—is immediate.96 _{What is in dispute, then, is}

whether the immediate perception of some members of a collection of ideas (that is, a

94 _{The list is extensive. See, for example, NB 427a; TVV §§9, 11; PHK §38, 95; Dialogues pp. 174-5, 180, 183,}

194, 203, 209, 215, 230, 262.

95 _{Both Pappas and Atherton seem to understand immediacy in this way. Moreover, they share a similar view}

about the membership of collections. Yet they differ on the question of whether collections are immediately perceived. See, for example, Pappas (2000, 11) and Atherton (2008, 110-1). I will discuss the

mediate/immediate perception distinction more fully shortly.

sensible object) is sufficient for the immediate perception of the collection (object) itself, since it is universally accepted that such collections contain as members more ideas than those which are immediately perceived at a given time, by a given mind.

Pappas thinks immediate perception of some sufficient number of members of a collection is sufficient for immediate perception of the collection itself; or rather, that immediate perception of some members is enough to count as immediate perception of the collection.97 _{For Pappas, “if S immediately perceives a cluster of ideas O, and the ideas in the}

cluster are constituents of the physical object R, then S will also immediately perceive R.”98

So, even though right now I am only immediately perceiving the front of my computer monitor, since the ideas I perceive immediately are constituents of the entire collection that is the computer monitor, I am thereby immediately perceiving the monitor itself.

Atherton, however, has given good reasons to think that nothing is immediately perceived beyond what Berkeley calls the “proper objects” of perception. Proper perception is invoked by Berkeley primarily in his works on vision in order to distinguish the ways in which we can be said to see, for example, colors and distance. “The proper immediate objects of vision,” Berkeley writes, “is light, in all its modes and variations, various colours in kind, in degree, in quantity.”99 _{A man born blind and made to see as an adult—one of}

Berkeley’s favorite tropes—would perceive these colors immediately but would not perceive them as being at a distance or as being signs of tangible objects at a distance; “he would neither perceive nor imagine any resemblance or connexion between these visible objects

97 _{See Pappas (2000, p. 176). See also Pappas (1985, p. 204) and (1982, p. 7).} 98 _{Ibid., p. 12.}

and those perceived by feeling.”100 _{These connections he would only learn later through}

repeated experience. The proper objects of perception then are those that would still have been perceived by some sense had that sense been “first conferred on us.”101 _{But since we}

only learn through experience that the proper objects of perception are reliably connected with other sensible ideas—that is, since we only learn through experience that the ideas immediately perceived are constituents in larger collections of ideas—we do not immediately perceive physical objects.102

It is hard to be satisfied with either interpretation. Atherton’s account, though subtle and almost certainly correct about the objects of immediate perception being the proper objects of perception, runs directly afoul of too many texts where Berkeley asserts unambiguously that sensible objects are immediately perceived. Pappas’s account is superior on that point, but only by an ad hoc extension of immediate perception according to which immediate perception of some members of a collection counts as immediate perception of the collection. Unfortunately for Pappas, Berkeley nowhere says that one’s immediate perception of some members of a collection is sufficient to count as immediate perception of the whole collection (most of whose members one does not perceive immediately, if at all).

Unlike Atherton and Pappas, however, I think the solution to this puzzle is not to be found by looking into what Berkeley means by ‘perceive’ when applied to sensible objects, but by looking more closely at what Berkeley means by ‘sensible objects.’ As Jonathan Bennett notes, if we go by an ordinary understanding of ‘perceive’ and ‘collection’, we’re led

100 _{Ibid. See also NTV §§110 and 128 and DHP 204.} 101 _{Atherton (2008, p. 113). See DHP 204.}

102 _{Atherton (2008, p. 114-5). The term “physical object” is Atherton’s, which I gather she intends to be}

to the answer that to perceive a collection is to perceive every member of it; likewise, to

immediately perceive a collection of ideas is to immediately perceive every member of it.103 _Of

course, neither Bennett nor Pappas nor Atherton is prepared to accept that as Berkeley’s view. Both Atherton and Pappas agree, “even the most dedicated realist does not suppose that we are perceiving absolutely all of a physical object whenever we look at it.”

I want to argue, however, that Berkeley is just such an über-dedicated realist about sensible objects, at least when we properly understand what he means by ‘sensible objects’. We should not take Berkeley’s claims about immediate perception as a hurdle over which an account of Berkeleian sensible objects must pass, but as a guide to what Berkeley thinks “sensible objects” are in the first place.

What I propose and defend in the remainder of this chapter is an alternative view neglected by both Atherton and Pappas: that sensible objects are both collections of ideas

and immediately perceived in the strict sense. That is, the collections of ideas that are sensible objects are collections of just those immediately perceived ideas—those ideas, in particular, that are signified by particular sensible object name-tokens.