For SASless. Yes, there was something about illuminated objects but as far as I can remember that was for the purpose of assessing the visibilty at night for weather reporting purposes, not for determining if you were VMC/IMC/VFR/IFR.
You can be VMC at night with nothing visible outside the cockpit window solely due to darkness. VMC refers to the weather conditions not whether you are able to fly "visually" or not. In these conditions i would log time as "Instrument flying" even althought it may be CAVOK. If you can't fly the aircraft by reference to external visual references due to the darkness, you must fly by reference to instruments.
At night outside controlled airspace, you are however required to comply with the Instrument Flight Rules therefore you must operate IFR irrespective of your flight conditions.
But you needn't fly "by sole reference to instruments" when operating IFR. The weather conditions and illumination by the moon/stars/surface objects (or indeed by day) may allow flying by external visual references. In this case you may be flying "visually" but still operating IFR.
I did not notice on the original post that the reference was to FAR's. I have been talking UK rules. Apologies if i have gone "off topic"