Welcome to our topic on George Berkeley! George Berkeley is the second of the British empiricists who believed that there was nothing in the mind that did not come through the senses. Empiricism is brilliant opposition to the equally brilliant rationalism dominated the 17th century thought in the same manner rationalism dominated 16th century mind. So, hang on as we discover how George Berkeley provided a check and balance to the empirical doctrine set by John Locke. Enjoy!
“Esse est percipi, – to be is to be perceived.” ~ George Berkeley
Intended learning outcomes
At the end of this topic, you should be able to:
- Explain the epistemological ideas of George Berkeley; and
- Cite specific contributions of George Berkeley to various fields of endeavor.
Who is George Berkeley?
George Berkeley (1685-1753) is an Irish philosopher and a teacher at Trinity College in Dublin who eventually became the Anglican Bishop of Cloyne. As a member of the clergy, he was a great follower of William of Ockham who claimed “that between two explanation, the simpler and clearer is preferable over the complicated and vague,” which is popularly known today as Ockham’s razor. As a philosopher, he was very impressed by Locke’s work on empiricism and wanted to correct what he took to be its errors and inconsistencies while remaining true to the basic platform of empiricism. In fact, he applied Ockham’s razor to the idea of material substance so scrupulously that he shaved it clean away and was left with a type of subjective idealism–the view that only minds and ideas exist.
“To be is to be perceived”
Early in his book Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley attacked Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Recall that the former (primary qualities) were said to inhere in material substance that existed independently of the mind, whereas the latter (secondary qualities) existed only in the mind (or, as Berkeley put it, their esse is percipi — their “being” is “to be perceived”).
Berkeley pointed out that our only access to so called primary qualities is through secondary qualities. The only way we can know the size, shape, location, or dimensionality of an object is by feeling it or seeing it (i.e., through the secondary qualities of tactile or visual sensation). Berkeley’s conclusion was that descriptions of primary qualities are really only interpretations of secondary qualities—different ways of talking about colors, sounds, tastes, odors, and tactile sensations. Therefore, primary qualities too exist only in the mind. Their esse is also percipi.
To explain how this translation of secondary qualities into primary qualities is possible, Berkeley drew a distinction between direct perception and indirect perception. Direct (or immediate) perception is the passive reception of basic sense data (Locke’s secondary qualities and simple ideas). Indirect (or mediate) perception is the interpretation of those sense data.
Consider the process of learning to read. The small child confronts a written page and sees only black “squigglies” on a white background. (This is direct perception.) Through a process of acculturation, the child eventually learns to see these markings as words loaded with meanings. (This is indirect perception.) It is an interesting fact that once we’ve learned to read, it is very difficult to recover the child’s “innocent eye” and see the words again as mere squigglies. This distinction explained to Berkeley why we adults perceive the world as groupings of things rather than as sense data. Nevertheless, claimed Berkeley, the things we see in the so-called external world are really only collections of ideas, philosophically analyzable into their component sense data. George Berkeley said:
“As several of these [sense data] are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain color, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name “apple”; other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things.”
What’s true of the component parts of a stone is true of the whole stone. Its esse is also percipi.
Subjective idealism
Notice that the notion of material substance (Locke’s “something, I know not what”) has simply disappeared in Berkeley’s system. And the role played by the rationalists’ innate idea of substance in explaining how we come to know the world as a concatenation of individual physical objects has been taken over by language. We teach our children words, which organize the ideas in their minds into “things.” Berkeley’s subjective idealism holds that each of us lives in his or her own subjective world composed of the sense data of the five senses. This is the same world we entered into as infants. But we were taught a language, which is to say, taught to “read” our sense data. Language is also the cement of inter-subjectivity. I am able to bridge the gap between my private world and yours through the shared use of conventional symbols. Without language I would be stuck solipsistically in the echo chamber of my own mind. George Berkeley believed that with these two categories (sense data and language) he could account for all possible human knowledge—all except the knowledge of God. God’s existence can be deduced from the regularity and predictability of sense data.
If the so-called physical world’s “being” is to “be perceived” and hence is dependent on the mind, then why is it that when I return to an empty room that I had vacated earlier, everything is just as I left it? Why didn’t the room disappear when I stopped perceiving it? Because God was perceiving it while I was out. God is the guarantor of the laws of nature. When the Bible says that God created the world, it means that he created sense data and minds (spirits, selves) to perceive them. God did not cause there to be some unperceivable, mysterious stuff—“material substance”—which in turn causes ideas.
In asserting the existence of something beyond the bounds of all possible human experience, Locke was breaking the fundamental principle of empiricism. Believing in the existence of such a “stuff” was the error of Locke’s representative realism. Locke failed to see that the representation is the reality. Berkeley has merely eliminated the “middleman.” His theory explains everything that Locke’s does but is more economical; hence, according to Ockham’s razor, it is better than Locke’s. So Berkeley believed.
References
- Dorling Kindersley. (2011). The Philosophy Book. New York: DK Publishing.
- Stumpf, Samuel Enoch. (2008). From Socrates to Sartre and Beyond. New York: McGraw Hill Publishing.
- Palmer, Donald. (2006). Looking at philosophy:The unbearable heaviness of philosophy made lighter 4th Edition. New York: McGraw Hill Companies.
- Ramos, Christine Camela. (2004). Introduction to Philosophy. Manila: Rex Bookstore.
- Gaarder, Jostein. (2004). Sophie’s World. Great Britain: Phoenix House.
- http://www.plato.standford.edu