To be is to be perceived. What exactly does Berkeley mean by this? Assess his reasons for believing it. Assess Berkeley�s objections to matter.

Greg Detre

@ 11.30 on Thursday, 1 February 2001

Lucy Allais, History of Philosophy III

Berkeley is notorious for his �immaterialism�, the view that the world exists only as ideas in our minds. This idealism denies that there is such a thing as �matter�, by which he means �an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist�. In the Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I (1710), he established the bulk of his system, reiterated in highly readable form in the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713). In this dialogue, the two speakers agree that remaining as close to the dictates of common sense, especially in avoidance of scepticism, should be the aim of their reasoned argument. Indeed, Berkeley was well aware how open his immaterialism is to �gross misinterpretation�, though rightly understood, he held it to be common sense to a �thinking reader�.

Berkeley�s main argument rests on what we can know about the material world on the basis of our senses. He is not strictly an empiricist though, since he allows evidence from the senses and the intellect, and employs both. Following Locke�s distinction, he first discusses the secondary qualities: heat; taste; smell; sound; and colour. He argues that in each case, we have no reason to believe that there is a material substrate of which they form a representation. That they can be seen as subjective and not giving us a stable, faithful representation of the object is largely the reason they are labelled �secondary� qualities. Where Berkeley goes further is to attempt a similar attack on the primacy and objectivity of the �primary� qualities, namely: extension; figure; motion; solidity; and gravity. Using similar techniques, he convinces Hylas that there is no reason to believe that we can know anything about the cause of these ideas, or immediate perceptions.

The burden of proof now lies with the materialist to demonstrate why we should believe in an extended, material world mediated by our senses. He rejects Hylas�s attempt to reformulate matter as �the cause of our ideas� as misusing and twisting language unconstructively.

He later expressed this by re-formulating existence in this way: �to be�, said of the object, means to be perceived; �to be�, said of the subject, means to perceive.

This led to a bizarre theory that the world around me exists only as I perceive it. One might use an analogy with a torch - as we hold it up in front of us, we perceive a tunnel leading to objects in the world around us, but as we focus our attention (i.e. torchlight) elsewhere, the rest of our surroundings are bathed in darkness, and might as well have ceased to exist. Without a perceiver, there is nothing to be perceived. Berkeley wrote, �You may hold, if you will, that objects of sense have only an 'in-and-out' existence, that they are created and annihilated with every turn of man's attention; but do not father those views on me. I do not hold them.� But how is this view escapable?

Berkeley brings God onside at this point. God, as the infinite perceiver, vouchsafes the stable world of common sense. With a sigh of relief, we can say that even though �existence is percipi or percipere � the horse is in the stable, the Books are in the study as before�.

There are certain issues that Berkeley would have to address to satisfy the modern reader. Berkeley is clear that he is trying to avoid the representationist theory of perception that most materialists have to accept, where we assume that our senses mediate between mind and matter. This presents certain problems. If ideas present themselves directly to our mind, i.e. they are �immediately perceived�, and that these ideas are caused by the will of an omnipotent, good God, then how can we be subject to error, hallucination and subjective discrepancies? Certainly, Berkeley is happy to say that small animals and especially sharp-sighted people are in some way better perceivers. Indeed, the fact that the perception of size will be so different for a mite than for a man is an argument that he uses, though he has to defend it against the conception of an absolute extension that Hylas raises after. Perhaps Berkeley would say that the ideas are fixed and absolute as they exist in the mind of God, but in their projection onto our minds our perceptual mechanisms mangle them in some way. But this is little improvement on the material representationist theory of perception. Perhaps Berkeley would want to say that God presents the ideas to us each individually � so there is no mistake being made, only that everyone�s subjective world is subtly different, since God effectively creates a slightly customised world for every one of us. This seems somewhat farfetched, and at odds with the idea of a good God, who we have to trust not to deceive us in slight ways every moment of our lives. Indeed, this answer is very reminiscent of Descartes, and there are further parallels, as we will see below.

Berkeley treats hallucinations differently from error. Hallucinations occur when we allow our will to actively create perceptions. Only God�s will can cause �real� objects � when we cause our own perceptions, we hallucinate. Hallucinations can be distinguished from �real� perceptions on the basis of their steadiness, coherence and vividness. In this respect, Berkeley too depends on Descartes� ultimate Archimedean point, his faith in �clear and distinct� perceptions, later echoed by the thorough-going �empiricist�, Hume�, with his dependence on the criteria of the �force and livelinesss� of an idea.

Berkeley addresses all five senses with admirable ingenuity, but he neglects all of the internal senses. Among these, we might include: balance, proprioception, hunger and thirst, heart rate etc.

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what does Berkeley say about error + hallucinations???

why do we have a sense of bodies and internal senses, e.g. proprioception, vestibular???

how scientific is the world of ideas???

what about causation???

what about time/space???

why is there a sense of time (and space)???

berkeley as following descartes

world of ideas as an indistinguishable linguistic parallel to the world of ideas

what�s the difference between materialist and immaterialist monisms???

how different is this to a materialist who believes only in the world of appearances???

idealism vs phenomenalism

the difference between the two (real vs imaginary) becomes unimportant in a theistic world, doesn�t it???

does it work as a proof of God�s existence???

is there an objective world???

why does he reject relational properties???

is it a RTP???

do we perceive with our intellect or senses???

why do we have a sense of self???

monist � spirits vs ideas??? immaterial dualist

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