A History of Philosophy | 44 George Berkeley's Idealism

we want to get acquainted with George Burkley 18th century British philosopher and with his idealism idealism in the metaphysical sense that is to say that all that exists is of the nature of mind immaterial spirit in order to get a handle on what he is doing and why let me say something first of all about his overall philosophical project and let me start that by indicating that he was a very practically minded man a bishop in the Anglican Church in Ireland he tried to establish a school for American Indians on the islands of Bermuda which never got off the ground because of financing and because he didn't realize they have no natural water supply depend on rainwater so instead he settled in Newport Rhode Island and to this day you can see his house there where the local Berkeley Society will provide you with tours that will tell you all you ever wanted to know and far more besides about Berkeley his life and his doings and his vegetable garden he was interested in developing some sort of a medical panacea from tar water such was the state of Medicine in his day but I say those things to indicate that he was a man of affairs something of an activist with all sorts of socially related projects and now I go on to tell you that he denies the existence of matter in fact one person a member the name of Jo wisdom has tried to do a posthumous psychoanalysis of George Burkley in a book called the unconscious origins of Berkeley's philosophy in which he sees the venture with Tarwater and his idealist metaphysic as equally delusive attempts at finding a panacea for our physical woes treatment with medicine and deny the existence of materiality due to some pathological aversion that he had to dirt and excretion such as the psychoanalysis posthumously of George Burghley take it with all the pinches of salt that it deserves in reality yeah Berkeley was very much concerned about the world of ideas in his time his was a day in which materialism was on the rise not always the more religiously benign materialism of Thomas Hobbes but often associated with atheism and in addition the deism of the day was built upon a foundation of Newtonian physics for a if nature operates according to its own fixed mechanical laws then a god actively involved and imminent in nature becomes superfluous and Saudi ISM was the major religious alternative to Christianity in his day and all this concerned the learning Bishop his project was related to that now how is he going to do something about that tar water is no solution so what George Burkley did was to consider carefully John Locke's epistemology John Locke's epistemology you know the story that the mind has as the object of its thinking what it is the only thing the mind thinks ideas ideas of sensation and reflection ideas of sensation involving primary and secondary qualities primary qualities having some objective reality in the matter who sub stratum is according to Locke something we know not what but the point is that ideas are some of them at least representations it's a representative theory of knowledge representations of material objects now seeing this scheme Berkeley's strategy becomes relatively simple namely to deny that there is any objectively real representation of our ideas of primary qualities yes a to deny that you can break through this this cognitive barrier and get to what is extra mental outside of the mind Locke thought you could do it by causal inference what's the cause of my sensations and that's the sort of thing they are fought at Berkeley questions so that whereas Locke is a realist about materiality Berkeley is what nowadays we would call an anti realist about matter is he denying the independent reality of matter that's characteristic of course of metaphysical idealism because by definition if an idealist says that all that exists is immaterial then there is nothing material that exists so idealism is a kind of anti realism about matter and will run across other views that question the reality of matter that become known as phenomenalism phenomenalism that is they assert that all we know are appearances of things like material but whether in reality there is matter is another question phenomenalism now if you like idealism is one subset of phenomenalism let us say the ideal it says all we have is the ideals the appearances there is no manner as such it's a kind of phenomenalism but there are other kinds of phenomenalism besides idealism and we'll see that Immanuel Kant is some sort of a phenomena list and characteristically all of 19th century German idealism is phenomenal and the idealist movements which blossom throughout Europe and America in the leap Yesi in fact if you think back to the ancients Clos Thainess yeah really he's a phenomenal this - because matter has no independent existence there are souls world of ideas but as you sink lower and lower on the chain of emanations the hierarchy of being you get down towards non being and there is no substratum of reality down there called manna it's not me and so the Platonic tradition likewise is potentially a kind of idealism it's certainly a kind of phenomenalism now go one step further with Berkeley's project the thing which has encouraged the rise of materialism and with it the rise of deism the rise of atheism is unintentionally on the men's part Newton's physics because what Newton is asserting in the mechanistic physics that he systematized in his day what he is asserting is the independent reality independent of whether we're aware of it or not the independent reality of matter a force causal power of uniform absolute space a uniform absolute time those are the key essential formative concepts for Newtonian physics for mechanistic physics Newton assumes that all four of these are objectively real Berkeley argues that all four of them are objectively unreal now if you can pull matter physical force space and time out from under the materialists feet he can't stay standing anything so essentially what Berkeley does is to pull the rug out from under their feet and materialism collapses that at least is his project that's his strategy the the cause of the difficulty is the mechanistic science that emerged with the Scientific Revolution it is a difficulty that we've seen emerging long long time before methodologically with bacon in terms of the philosophical position built on it with Hobbes the Descartes Spinoza yes a line Mnet's was one who fought it denying that matter in the Newtonian sense is the ultimate real the basic stuff substrate him yes he because the line it's um the the basic stuff what he calls monads a units of force units of energy he was proposing a kind of realism but a realism not about matter but about what we would call in gistic physics not mechanistic physics but energetic physics is it well Berkeley then is facing this kind of situation his strategy is obviously is suggested to him by Locke's epistemology obviously so so that we usually think of the history of British empiricism as moving from Locke to Berkeley and then on to David Hill his method therefore is going to be thoroughly empiricist with Locke he's going to insist that the only resources we have a natural knowledge is the ideas that comprise experience simple ideas and with Locke and with Descartes he's going to affirm that the empirical faculties which God has given to us a quite trustworthy if we use them a right if we confine our assertions to that for which we have evidence so Berkeley if you like is an evidential Locke's kind of an evidential isten your beliefs to the evidence the difference between Berkeley and Locke is that Berkeley doesn't think there is evidence sufficient evidence for the existence of matter physical force absolute space absolute time why not well that's where we make the transition from his project to thinking about the principles on which his case rests let me pause so any any comments questions about the project right sir excellent yes that's right yes okay let me clarify yeah what we had done was to diagram this way the development of continental rationalism from Descartes Spinoza and Leibniz until the point where can't round 1800 is forced to bring to bear the thinking of David Hume as well awakened from those rationalist slumbers as he puts it by reading David Hume bacon Hobbes Locke Berkeley Hume is he now I I just said that oh you just said rather that that empiricist trend continues in the phenomenalism of the 19th century yes and my reference there is to people like the french philosopher Auguste account and John Stuart Mill you say and subsequently 20th century logical positivism yes they're all the continuation of that British empiricism but lo and behold what we find in 19th century German thought French as well is the development of a metaphysical idealism out of the the roots of continental rationalism and you find that a little bit confusing understandably because Berkeley is also an idealist but he's in the empiricist tradition so what you know you can be an idealist with two different epistemological traditions you can be a rationalist who's an idealist you can be an empiricist is an idealist no problem there if you're ingenious enough what you do in it but the other thing that that confuses you is that there are two kinds of phenomenalism so what yeah you can have phenomenalism and on empirical basis and phenomenalism on a rationalist basis yeah yes ii now - however respond to your curiosity how come the rationalists become idealists well rationalism is talking about the intellectual resources this kind of rationalism the intellectual resources in Neath within the human mind innate knowledge a priori knowledge now you move from the Age of Reason into the 19th century and the emphasis is upon innate resources not for knowledge but for creative self-expression Yesi so what you get here is an idea is an idealism that is more of the romanticist sort than of the Enlightenment sort you see an idealism that that depends upon the the recognition of the the inner realities the springs of activity and action and thought which there are within the human spirit whereas for Berkeley as an empiricist no his idealism doesn't stress the creative resources of the human spirit it stresses the passivity of the human mind as a recipient of certain kinds of sense stimuli very different picture does that help okay that's a jump ahead an anticipation but don't be confused by the fact that you can sometimes hold similar positions for different reasons yeah they yeah there's not always just one line of argument for a position there might be two utterly incompatible lines of argument but for the same position take republicanism as an example are all sorts of incompatible arguments for a position like that to make the position right or wrong just that if you're starting at one point you may happen to come out at the same conclusion David Berkeley's position is an idealist is that matter does not exist all that exists is minds and mental states ideas yeah the phenomena list may not be as assertive as that the phenomena smait say all we know is phenomena yeah and that's more characteristic of John Stuart Mill yeah yeah you see if it turns out that there is no evidence for the existence of matter then our ideas of sensation must come from another source and in brief what he's going to tell us is that since ideas are mental things they must have mental causes the cause must be like the effect if my mind is not the cause of my ideas of sensation another mind must be the cause of my ideas of sensation and since we all have essentially the same ideas of sensation about the same objects viewed from the same viewpoint under the same conditions there must be some supreme mind giving us all those ideas of sensation and he has a causal argument for the existence of God is he and God has to do this all the time so it has to be theism rather than deal oh it's clever clever you know the initial problem getting a hold on Berkeley that students have in introductory courses in 101 particularly is crediting the fact that somebody could deny the existence of math yes a I'd like to think that you're beyond that and I do think that you're beyond saying you mean my hand is an illusion no Berkeley never says it's an illusion yes I think it was the the famous essayist Johnson who said he was going to refute the lunate bishop and kicked a rock and went away holding his toe and said that pain was real yes he to which Berkeley replied yes it's what we call quote real because it was an involuntary kind of pain now at the same time there are voluntary kinds of pains as you imagine the idea yeah but that was one cause the only question is what's the cause of the pain what's the cause of this involuntary idea of pain that you have and so it's not a silly position it's a well measured serious position I still don't like it but as you know religious thinkers not only in the judeo-christian tradition but in Eastern traditions of often adopted metaphysical idealism as they were they find to be the best way for talking about the ultimate reality of the divine is immaterial being yeah in fact when Spinoza said that everything is God and God is everything weren't you wishing he would say that it was immaterial he's going to be a Pentheus come on be an idealist and maybe he disappointed you and being more a materialist but there are natural affinities between metaphysical idealism and theism pantheism religions in those traditions so there's a long tradition particularly in in British thought of Christian idealism particularly of a platonic sort well you remember I mentioned the Cambridge Platonism of the 17th century and that sort of thing has kept recurring ever since okay what about Berkeley's principals then on which this kind of argument rests well keep in mind what the problems are which he is addressing that he's trying to work with Locke's epistemology to other conclusions than Locke's conclusions and so his first move is to argue against John Locke's theory of abstract ideas okay that's why we were careful to take time to spell out Locke's theory of abstract ideas comes crucial this of course is dealing with the philosophy of language and so in the open introduc in the opening introductory section of the material that we have from berkeley he talks about language and he talks about abstract ideals and he argues for a nominalist position in opposition to John Locke's conceptualist position now his point is that language gets thoroughly abused we we tend to think that wherever there is a general term there must be some real object corresponding to it we tend to assume that all nouns and names they name things so if there are general nouns they must name general things and if there are no real objectively real universals what the general nouns common nouns name they name abstract general ideas the conceptualist substract ideas but that berkeley is convinced is a mistake language can do many other things besides naming not all words name is a not all language is referential pointing signifying denoting many other things that we can do with language there is necessarily any one-to-one correlation between words and ideas like a locker thought that was words often have no fixed meaning in any case but in addition to referring to things words can be used to comfort to encourage to exhort to blame all sorts of things we do with language now when you read that section in Berkeley you may think it sounds very much like VidCon Stein if you've run across into the 20th century VidCon Stein or the Oxford ordinary language philosophy as it was called in the 1950s and the 1960s because there were a group of philosophers then whom VidCon Stein was very significant one this group of philosophers at Oxford Cambridge other places who were applying to the positivism of the nineteen thirties and fourties that insisted that all language must have reference signify who said there all sorts of other things we do with language and vinton Stein called them other language games yes the other language games sure we do all sorts of social activities using language yeah it has all sorts of functions what Berkeley recognizes them and so he thinks that we've been misled in supposing that all words must refer to something out there and consequently the general terms must be names for abstract general ideas no and some of the examples and arguments that he gives a helpful I think he says for instance that according to Locke we have an abstract idea of motion or an abstract idea of color or an abstract idea of extension now take the notion of extension because that means primary qualities size shape density and so forth these are properties which put together amount to what we call spatial extension spatial occupancy spatial extension yes well do you have an idea of spatial extension in general Burghley asks no you have idea of a particular shape a particular size a particular area that is occupied that extension what about color that's secondary qualities color do you have an abstract idea of color in general oh no you have an idea of the shade of blue that my shirt has I was careful to put a blue t-shirt on today the shade of blue my tie has the shade of blue my eyes have and so on and so forth but you have an idea of blue in general no the word is simply a catch-all for all of these shapes and Hills classified in certain ways so he denies then that there are such things as abstract ideas now bring it home to roasts do you have an idea of matter abstract well even Locke didn't he said it's something I know not what oh that comes on to roast no you don't have an idea of matter you have an idea of a particular Apple particular tree a particular rock a particular chair they're not matter in the abstract do you have an idea of space in the abstract no certain spatial relationships of distances of areas occupied in particular and not in the abstract do have abstract idea of time same problem do you have an abstract idea of power remember Locke had a long section about that oh no you you have a general term power that refers to certain felt experienced forces but not par in the abstract you can feel the tension in your muscles as you lift a heavy heavy weight you feel the force the power well that's particular it's not an abstract idea so he denies that the Rebs direct ideas and there are times when his his rhetoric on the subject is very persuasive when for instance he says this whether others have this wonderful Faculty of abstracting their ideas they best can tell but for myself I find I have a Faculty of imagining of representing to myself the ideas of particular things I've perceived and of compounding and dividing them I can imagine a man with two heads or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse a fairy giraffe with butterfly wings I can consider the hand the eye the nose each by itself separated from the rest of the body but it must have some particular shape and color I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea described it's equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body that's moving neither Swift nor slow curvilinear nor rectilinear and the like to be plain I own myself unable to abstract in one sense as when I consider some particular parts of qualities separated from others etc etc but I deny that I can abstract those qualities and frame a general notion by abstraction and then he goes on to talk of a certain distinguished philosopher who thought you could and proceeds to disagree specifically with paragraphs than he cites so in effect Berkeley is saying whether you guys can do it I don't know you'll have to say but I certainly can't I can't think of Strack me about abstract general ideas now what sort of an argument is that you think it's an empirical argument he's telling luck of all people that he's not sufficiently empirical he's telling luck that he's not sufficiently empirical on this matter of abstract ideas and I suppose if Locke wants to reply if Locke the empiricists wants to reply the only response he can give as an empirical response what is there in our experience of using general terms which relates to thinking abstract ideas thinking abstract ideas well I put the question that way so I suppose I should pause and suggest how you might try to answer it how others try to answer it you have to think of words not as names but as symbols not as names that point to objects but as symbols which build into a whole language where symbols relate to other symbols so when you think of strictly what you think is in terms of a language and within the framework of that language thinking that language you are thinking an abstraction from particular objects yeah the way it is in mathematics square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides now don't try to picture that it won't be accurate you're not thinking about in particular you've got to think in the language of mathematics so I think the point is that it's some language seen as symbol rather than a D notating device the denoting device language seen as a system of symbols which is a vehicle for abstraction well that that's something which of course gets going in the 19th century and it's the kind of idea that has been picked up in all sorts of literary theory so alright any any questions comments about Berkeley's nominalism oh yeah I'd rather hold that until we get to his replies to objections but two things perhaps one he doesn't write a treatise on ethics did you say it was a bishop well Bishop's don't always write treatise on ethics they preach so perhaps the question is how did he preach how did he come from how does a nominalist do ethics you see that's the question isn't it well go back to William of Ockham what did he do about ethics go back to Thomas Hobbes what did he do about ethics go back to Luther who was a nominalist what did he know about ethics and there's a twofold formula that you find running through that whole nominalist tradition and on into some conceptualist s' Calvin as well right reason and the Word of God what's right reason yes a right reason it's thinking in terms of consequences a breakdown of the medieval synthesis with its metaphysically grounded ethic it's natural law ethic that's why the breakdown of that medieval synthesis bred utilitarianism consequentialist ethics and the Word of God yes divine command too so justice is what God says and my guess is though I don't have any place in Berkeley that says that that he's tuned in enough to the nominalist tradition you see which is very very real very powerful in the 17th and 18th century that he would follow along in that that tradition yeah yeah I think that's yeah I think that's the case I was pausing for a moment to ask myself what about any influence of Cambridge idealism unbury what I've read I I don't see much influence of Cambridge idealism on Berkeley if the were it would involve more of moral intuitions you see an immediate mental awareness of some moral truth because the Cambridge clay dannis believed in innate ideas in neat moral ideas but that's you know innate moral ideas is so alien to Berkeley's empiricism I don't see nothing ok take the second step then and ask ourselves more directly alright what about his argument against materialism he's argument against materialism and here his attention is turned to the theory of ideas and he argues for a position that has become known as mentalism mentalism and the view that only minds and their ideas exist only minds and their ideas that is to say what goes on in minds only minds and their ideas exist oh and if you want to know how he thinks mind exists how does he know any mind exists he'd pull a book pull a date card on you I don't know about you we might say but I think there were I exist so at least one mind exists but why only minds and their ideas where's his argument for that what's his argument related to the theory of ideas well basically you see his argument is that if ideas are indeed the initial stuff out of which knowledge is composed sure simple ideas compound ideas related to each other with affirmations or denials that's the stuff of which knowledge is composed if that's the case and if ideas are mental things mental events then if the cause must be like the effect then ideas must have mental causes so the ideas that flood through my mind must be caused either by my mind or by other mind or minds like cause like effect now right away you see that he has realized the awfully difficult problem Descartes had posed for himself with his mind-body dualism and causal interaction yeah how can bodily changes produce mental changes how can physical stimuli to the senses producing brain processes cause changes in them that immaterial soul what's the causal connection and by Berkeley's time nobody took pineal gland seriously moreover there there was a tradition which had developed in Europe known as occasional ISM one representative of which malla brash Frenchman was himself a metaphysical idealist the occasional ism is the view that there is no direct causal connection between mind and body but rather when something physical happens to me that is the occasion on which God cause is a corresponding mental state to occur and when in my mind I decide to do something that's simply the occasion on which God causes the physical action to occur as somewhat attractive sort of position if you're groping for some causal explanation and pineal glands don't do it and Berkeley seems to be somewhat influenced by that although obviously his position is somewhat different but the idea that God is the causal agent you see the thing that the occasional lists were trying to do trying to protect it was a certain strong Calvinist view that when we say God is almighty all-powerful we mean that he has all the power there is and nobody else has any causal power nothing else Oh yes I that's why pineal glands don't work nothing physical has any causal power now that was the occasional astir tempt to avoid the implications of mechanistic science in which natural causal powers sufficiently explain all of nature's processes matter this inert slimy stuff doesn't have any causal power God is the one who has power he's all power so somewhat analogous leader that the berkeley is going to say that it's God that is the cause but in order to get to that he has to deal more closely with John Locke's theory of ideas and you'll find that he's working with I think at least three arguments in this section that runs from 247 to 254 in the ontology three arguments one is that unperceived things some things I know not what unperceived things unknown like Locke's unknown substrate so talk of unknown things has no reference no point of reference doesn't refer to anything so when you're talking of matter that substrate and that supposedly has primary qualities the language has no empirical meaning if it's unknown it's unknown and you're not referring to anything when you talk about it now the same for that matter is true a force space of time of argument the second is the cause effect like cause like effect but the third argument the more subtle has to do with Locke's doctrine of primary and secondary qualities primary and secondary qualities you see the thing which bothers Berkeley about it where Locke is not sufficiently empirical is that Locke seems to speak of primary and secondary qualities as if in our minds we can separate them and think of them separately as if you can think of primary the primary quality without a secondary quality and a secondary quality without a prime requiring Virizion actual experience common sense experience Berkeley's always appealing to common sense in common sense experience I never perceive color that is not spatially extended even a small blob of blue must have extension and if a spatial extension were to be perceived at all it would have to have color something at least which enables me to see it not just empty extension what empty extension empty space what's that nothing nothing empirical so if you never have primary qualities without secondary qualities or secondary qualities without primary qualities where does that lead us well Locke has said that secondary qualities are subjective yeah caused by whatever causes Locke has pointed out that secondary qualities can be somewhat relative to all sorts of observation conditions relative to the perceiver secondary qualities yeah it depends if you wash your ears out how clearly you hear the sound depends if you got your spectacles on whether you see it clearly sure I can't even see to read the alarm clock when I wake up without my spectively gets worse all the time one of these days I guess I just won't bother but okay what you see secondary quality is relative to the condition of your sense organs and all sorts of other observation conditions and therefore he says subjective there's no objective correlate but the same is true of primary qualities associated with those secondary qualities you see and and he points to an old castle keep on the horizon you know those great square norm and castles and it is what shape is it somebody says square no no look what shape do you see from this distance well it's not exactly square it's more like a tiny round blob and then as you get closer what shape does it become notice become what comes huge square it fills the whole horizon obviously primary qualities like secondary qualities are relative and so they must be subjective now if both primary and secondary qualities are relative and subjective what is the left of objectively real matter independent in its existence empirically nothing there's not a trace of empirical evidence for the existence of matter as objectively real substrate oh that doesn't mean to say I don't see a castle sure I see a castle doesn't mean to say the alarm clock isn't something that I see something of course I think something off it's reading it I have trouble with know that the question is not whether we have the experiences we have know empiricists would deny we have experiences of the sort we have the question is whether what we experience has an independently existing material substratum and for that is not a shred of empirical evidence according to Italy so on the theory of ideas his conclusion is mentalism all that exists is minds and ideas if you like it's a kind of phenomenalism about physical objects the thing that keeps him from pure phenomenalism is that he asserts the reality of mind and the reality of God and if God and minds of a real then he's not completely phenomena list he's phenomenal it's just about physical objects so it's unless a kind of phenomenalism than John Stuart Mill is going to get us it okay questions comments well I think we'll hold it at that point this clock runs about five minutes slow I've discovered and will pick it up next time with his third underlying principle his theism and the replies to objection so we should do all we need to do with Berkeley next time and your outlines of Berkeley are also do then

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Length: 59min 59sec (3599 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2015