British Empiricist

Everything that we know is based on sense knowledge.

Idealist

The universe is made up of minds and ideas in those minds.
Everything is immaterial.

Compare this to Descartes who was a dualist and thought that the universe was made up of immaterial minds and material bodies, and with Locke who was a materialist and thought that there was a material world and that minds were also material.

Questions for class: What problem does Descartes face that Berkeley doesn’t? (Hint: Locke doesn’t have this problem either because he things that everything is made up of matter.)

Answer: Descartes has to explain how there can be causal relationships between immaterial and material things, how our minds can make our bodies move. But since Berkeley thinks that everything is immaterial he doesn’t have this problem (Locke doesn’t have this problem either because he thinks that everything is material).

Ideas

Berkeley thinks that there are three object of knowledge:

1. Sense ideas – passive ideas that we have as a result of our senses.

2. Inner sense – ideas that we gain from casting our mind over what is inside our thought bubbles.

3. Memory and imagination – this is just recalling or recombining (1) and (2)

An idea is an immaterial thing that exists either in a person’s thought bubble or in god’s thought bubble. We have direct 1^st person access to our thought bubbles. We can be certain about them.

What we perceive directly and are certain of is the content of our thought bubbles or our ideas.

Minds

Minds are active. We can imagine things and have some control over our thought bubbles. We could all choose to bring an image of Jennifer Lopez’ dress into our thought bubbles if we want to. This is an example of our minds being active.

Minds are the things that perceive ideas. Ideas only exist when they are being perceived by minds.

Things in the external world (the world outside of our thought bubbles) exist, but are immaterial, are ideas, and they exist when they are being perceived by minds, either ours or god’s.

Question for class: When we all leave this room and there is no one here perceiving it, do you think Berkeley would argue that it pop’s out of existence? What could Berkeley say, given what we know about his theory so far, to convince you that even though none of us are in this room, that it continues to exist?

Answer: god is busy perceiving everything.

Things (stuff in the world: apples, binders, desks, your body,…)

If there is no matter, then what would Berkeley say that a thing is?

It is a collection of ideas that occur together. For example, an apple is a collection of the ideas of round and red and tart.

Locke would say that a thing is a chunk of matter or substance that has a particular set of primary qualities. The primary qualities are stuck in the matter in the same way that the eyes and noses and mouth are stuck on a Mr. Potatohead Doll.

There is the possibility of a problem for B. here because we can ask what is it that makes a thing cohere or stick together. For Locke, the qualities of a thing stick together because they are all stuck on the same chunk of matter. Berkeley has to worry about why the idea red and the idea of round and the idea of tart all stick together.

Question for the class: How could Berkeley explain this?

Answer: think it through for yourself.

Berkeley wants to claim that there is no absolute existence without minds.

Here are two big arguments that Berkeley has against Locke, that B. thinks supports his Idealism:

1) the similarities of primary and secondary qualities

a. Remember that Locke thinks that primary qualities are in the material thing in the world and secondary qualities are in observers Also remember all of the reasons why Locke thinks that secondary qualities are in the observer (The arguments about orange juice and bath tubs)

b. Berkeley argues that there is no real difference between primary and secondary qualities:

i. The impossibility of colourless shapes.

1. Locke says that a primary quality is something that you cannot even imagine something existing without. He points out that you cannot even imagine something existing without a shape.

2. Berkeley responds that he cannot imagine something existing without a colour either. Again, he challenges you to try to come up with an idea of a colourless shape, and he thinks that you cannot do it.

3. So, Berkeley concludes that there is not a principled difference between primary and secondary qualities.

ii. Perceptions of shape are as dependent on the condition of the observer as are perceptions of colour.

1. Locke argues that colours and other secondary qualities are not in the object because they are different to different people or to the same person in different circumstances.

2. Berkeley points out that the same is true of shapes. Two people looking at a circle or a rectangle from different angles will have perceptions of different shapes.

3. In this respect B. argues that there is no principled difference between shape and colour, and hence between primary and secondary qualities.

iii. B. concludes that if we think that secondary qualities exist only in the minds of observers, and if we are convinced by either i. or ii. then we should conclude that primary qualities exist only in the minds of observers also.

2) Conflicts between empiricism and materialism.

a. B. points out that Locke claims to be an empiricist, which means that sense experience is the basis for everything he knows.

b. But Locke talks about two things that he has no sense experience of:

i. Atoms: Locke talks about wishing that he had “microscopial eyes” so that he could see these wonderful things, atoms, that he thinks explain so much about the world, but he has never seen an atom.

ii. Matter/substance: When we, including Locke, look at something all that we see are qualities, we never see matter. When I look at the text I see blue and I see a rectangle, but I never see matter.

c. B. thinks that there is an incoherence in Locke’s view. B. thinks that an empiricist ought not talk about atoms or even matter.

	Aristotle	Descartes	Locke	Berkeley
Source of ideas	Better to ask about source of knlg: observation	Rationalist: reason	Empiricist: sense experience	Empiricist: sense experience
Metaphysics (what is the universe made of?)	Form and matter	Dualism: immaterial minds and material bodies	Materialism: Material minds and material bodies	Idealism: Immaterial minds and immaterial bodies
What is the relationship between what we know and the world?	Observation	Representational theory of mind
	Observation	Material things somehow cause immaterial ideas and visa versa	Material things physically cause ideas in material brains	Immaterial ideas cause ideas in immaterial minds
Causation	The four causes	Efficient cause
Causation	The four causes	Problem of causal relationship between matter and immaterial ideas	Physical causation: There is a physical interaction between atoms and our sense that cause our ideas.	Mental causation: Since we know our own minds we can understand mental causes
Skepticism	N/A	-Methodic doubt -certain that there is an external world -not sure that ideas of physical things are representations of them.	Ideas of primary qualities are representations of the world Ideas of secondary qualities aren’t	Not a skeptic: we know the contents of our thought and that is all there is

The bottom lines for Berkeley:

1) He is not a skeptic. He thinks that skepticism is very very bad: it might lead people to doubt god. In effect, he has traded in the material world in order to crush skepticism.

2) Many people have considered B.s work to be a big proof for the existence of god. If you are an empiricist (and there is good reason to be since this is the basis for modern science) then if you are going to have intellectual integrity you ought to be an idealist, But if you are an idealist you come up against all sorts of problems ( How do our ideas of a thing stick together, how do you explain why things don’t poof out of existence when you leave a room, how do you explain how you and you friend have similar ideas of similar things,…). The only way out of these problems is that there must be a good god.

3) Parsimony (principle of simplicity): make up the smallest amount of stuff possible in order to explain your experiences. Berkeley can explain all of your thoughts and experiences without referring to matter at all, and so why should he make up such a complicated concept.