VISION AND TOUCH     Berkeley 
argued that touch educates 
vision so that eventually we 
seem to experience visual 
distance directly. He made the 
same argument with respect to 
other visual properties, such as 
size, orientation, and even 
shape (which he referred to as 
"figure"). Some might say that 
Berkeley could hardly have 
argued that touch educates 
vision if his central thesis was 
that the two senses were totally 
distinct, separate, and 
incommensurate. However, 
because vision and touch occur 
together, Berkeley was able to 
maintain that, despite their 
distinctness, associations 
could be formed between the 
two, just as is possible between 
words and things, despite their 
distinctness. "Visible figures 
are the marks of tangible 
figures and ... it is plain, that 
in themselves they are little 
regarded, or upon any other 
score than for their connection 
with tangible figures, which by 
nature they are ordained to 
signify."

    What Berkeley meant was 
that, while a square and a 
circle might in some sense look 
different from one another 
(because, he hints, the square 
has “parts” and the circle 
doesn’t), their particular 
shapes do not arise in 
perception until we have 
learned to identify each image 
with the way each object feels 
when it is grasped.