The Philosophy of Berkeley

Write a short essay on the following topic. The essay should be no more than a page long.
-How would Berkeley answer the following objection? If ideas exist only in the mind, then they are qualities of the mind. For instance, if extension is a quality of the mind, does it not then make the mind extended, and if extended, a physical object?
The essay should be based on the lecture note attached. No other resourses needed.

BERKELEY

GENERAL REMARKS

Most of what Berkeley writes is a criticism of Locke’s philosophy, and by extension, a criticism of the view that holds that there exists a world out there independently of someone perceiving it.  To the old conundrum, “if a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one there to hear it fall, does it make any noise?” Berkeley replies with a definite “no.”  I have heard this discussed by people who are ignorant of philosophy and are shocked when they hear arguments like those Berkeley adduces in support of his answer because they think that the his arguments are good.

1.  Locke had said that the mind combines simple ideas and divides complex ones.  In addition, the mind, he says, is capable of creating abstract ideas.  It does this by concentrating on some quality which different objects might have.  For example, three different things may have the same color: a golf ball, a sweater, and a wall might be white.  Of course, they also have other qualities.  What the mind does is to disregard these other qualities and concentrate on the color, a process which Locke calls abstraction; this is why they are called abstract ideas.  General names, then, are names of abstract ideas.  Berkeley contends that there cannot be such ideas.  He claims that such ideas cannot be separated from other ideas.  Is it possible to separate the white in a golf ball from its shape?  Is it possible to think of the color white without thinking of the other qualities that a white object has?  Berkeley does not think that this is possible and, therefore, does not believe that there are abstract ideas.  In order words, Berkeley is being an empiricist: if an idea is not given in experience, then It is a fictitious idea.


2. Berkeley goes on to criticize Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities.  If is not possible to separate the color white from the other qualities, then it is not possible to distinguish primary qualities from secondary ones.  Some commentators say that Berkeley misunderstood Locke on this point.  We need not be concerned with that here.  Berkeley understands Locke to be saying that primary qualities exist independently of the mind, while secondary qualities do not.  If Locke held this view, then Berkeley’s criticism is the following.  Let us take motion as an instance.  Locke claimed that motion is a primary quality, while quick and slow are secondary ones.  Berkeley then asks, is it possible to think of motion without thinking whether it is quick or slow.  If it is not possible, these qualities must exist in the same “place.”  Now, if secondary qualities exist in the mind, Berkeley concludes that primary qualities must do also.  This conclusion can be generalized: the argument applies not only to quick and slow, but to other qualities as well. 


3. Locke had argued that ideas of secondary qualities change in relation to the perceiver, but ideas of primary qualities do not.  Berkeley counter that the same is true of ideas of primary qualities.  The shape of an object, which is a primary quality, for example, changes from different points of view. From one point of view a table may look square, from another it may look like a rhombus. 

1. Berkeley has an additional argument which refers to some of the issues we covered in class.  If there are primary qualities which are external of our minds, how could we know them? The only thing we are directly acquainted with are the ideas in our minds.  Why, then, posit the existence of qualities which we can never experience?  This seems to violate the important principle of empiricism that all our knowledge is derived from sense experience, otherwise it does not qualify as knowledge.  Furthermore, if primary qualities are qualities of physical objects, they must also be physical.  But if they are physical, how can they cause ideas, which are not physical?  We are back to the mind/body problem.  External bodies are postulated in order to explain sensation, but how do external bodies cause sensation when sensation itself is not physical?


2. These unanswered questions lead Berkeley to conclude that physical objects, matter in general, do not exist; there is not reason, he thinks, to postulate their existence.  In fact, he thinks that the very concept of physical matter is incoherent.  For, the only things we are aware of are mental things, but then we go on to postulate non mental ones.  Remember that Locke had some reservations about the existence of matter, but he thought that it would have been absurd to think that there are qualities without something having those qualities.  Before we think as philosophers, we think that there are objects in the external world existing independently of a perceiver.  But when we think philosophically, Berkeley says, we must come to the conclusion that the existence of the objects of perception consists in their being perceived; In Latin:  esse is percipi, to be is to be perceived. If there is not one conscious being to perceive an object, then that object does not exist, for the object is an idea and an idea cannot exist without being perceived, without a mind perceiving it.  Does this mean that we have banished things from the world?  Berkeley denies that his philosophy implies such a conclusion.  What his philosophy implies, he thinks, is that the nature of the world around us is not what we thought it was when we were not thinking philosophically.   If we go back to our original example of the tree in the forest, we can now see the reasons why, according to him, there is not noise occurring until someone has heard it.


3. Suppose we all go out of a classroom and there is no one left to perceive the desk and the chairs, does it mean that they go out of existence, and then when we go back into the classroom, they come into existence again?  Berkeley says that so long as at least one perceiver perceives an object, then the object exists, and if no human being perceives an object, in order for the object to exist God must perceive it.  He then generalizes this view and states that all of what we call physical nature, physical objects, if it is not perceived by us, it must be perceived by God.  It is not the case, then, that things are banished from the world if no human being perceives them; God is always there to perceive them. We do not even have to change our language to convey some truth about nature. We do not have to say there were ideas in the room, when we left the room some of those ideas went out of existence (for instance, our perceptions of them) but God kept on seeing some of them, and so on.  We now know, he says, that the sun does not set at night (Copernicus has told us that), but we still use the unscientific language and describe the sun as setting at night, even though it is the earth rotating on its axis which gives us the impression that the sun is setting.  

In other words, Berkeley contends, that he has not taken away natural causes from the world. The system of causes we are familiar with remains the way it was before we began to think philosophically; it is our interpretation of this system that changes once we understand the nature of the world around us. But could the entire world have been mistaken?  If we think of the Copernican revolution, before which, with the exception of a couple of individuals, the entire human race thought that the sun was going around the earth, then it is not impossible for few individuals to be right and the rest of humanity wrong.  In other words, many false things have been believed to be true.

1. What about the nature of the soul?  If we do not postulate the existence of matter, why do we have to postulate the existence of the soul or the self?  Berkeley thinks that the issue is different with respect to the soul.  Ideas in themselves are passive, they cannot cause other ideas or anything else.  If they are passive, they need a cause, and that cause is either a finite mind or an infinite one.  In perception, then, God directly causes us to have the ideas of the world that we actually have.  He thinks that in Locke’s system there is an extra ingredient which there is not in his philosophy, this is the reason why he thinks that his theory is simpler than Locke’s.  In other words, the concept of matter does not explain anything and is not needed.  God can communicate directly into our minds the ideas which constitute the world around us.  We should also not forget, he says, that the concept of matter is logically incoherent, while the concept of mind is not.


2. In the light of this reasoning, Berkeley thinks that God is needed to explain our experiences.  First, ideas of the external world must have a cause.  Secondly, they do not depend on us, for whether we like it or not when we open our eyes, for example, we see the things we see.  But since matter cannot cause ideas, they must be caused by another mind:  a mind infinitely more powerful than ours, especially because of the regularities with which the world appears to us, enough regularities to allow us to have scientific knowledge of such a complex and varied universe.  

ASSIGNMENT

Write a short essay on the following topic.  The essay should be no more than a page long.

How would Berkeley answer the following objection?  If ideas exist only in the mind, then they are qualities of the mind.  For instance, if extension is a quality of the mind, does it not then make the mind extended, and if extended, a physical object?