Bishop Berkeley (In Our Time)

this is the BBC this podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK thank you for downloading this episode of in our time for more details about in our time and for our Terms of Use please go to BBC co dot uk' / radio 4 i hope you enjoy the program hello in his life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell recalls a conversation the two men had about the work of the philosopher George Berkeley and his theory that objects do not really exist except as ideas in our minds Boswell observed to dr. Johnson as although Berkeley's theory was obviously wrong he was also impossible to report to refute he later wrote I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone till he rebounded from it I refuted thus he said Berkeley was an anglican bishop from ireland who became one of the most celebrated thinkers of the 18th century in a series of philosophy philosophical works he outlined a theory that he called a materialism which argued for the in existence of matter like John Locke and David Hume Berkeley is often described as a British empiricist although his ideas differ from those in many important aspects with me to discuss the life and work of Bishop Berkeley are Peter Milliken Gilbert Ryle fellow and professor of philosophy at Hartford College Oxford Tom sternum professor of philosophy at the University of York and Michaela Massey me senior lecturer in philosophy and in the philosophy of science at the University of Edinburgh Peter Milliken Berkeley was born in 1685 thirty-five years after the death of Descartes two years before Newton's masterpiece Principia would you give us a sense of European thought at that time yes certainly and he needs to be understood very much in the context of that scientific revolution that started really with Galileo back in 1609 and took up pace later on through Descartes and Newton and Boyle and as you said Newton published his Principia in 1687 he also published his optics in 1704 another very influential and famous work and Berkeley was a talented mathematician and took a lot of interest in the developments and in fact his first major publication was a new theory of vision on optics so he's educated in Ireland at college I went to Trinity Trinity College Dublin so what would he be reading da classics as we all would expect or did he read it was he reading contemporary philosophy the the biggest influence on Berkeley to be a single influence is John Locke whose essay concerning human understanding was published in 1690 and that towered over the future generation Locke as you've said was an empiricist he thought that all our ideas are derived from experience and Berkeley followed in that tradition this has this theory has the implication that thought is seen as being very much like perception the materials of our thought are copied from perception so when we think it's something like replaying perception now Berkeley now can you just say that again in different words so we got it completely sure okay so so Locke wanted to argue against particularly Descartes who had thought that some of our ideas like the idea of God like the idea of extension and material extension are innate and Locke wanted to say no all of our ideas are taken from experience and in particular from since experience so the experience of the external world yeah and and that has the implication that if the ideas that of the materials of our thought are like copies of our perceptions then to think of read say is rather like seeing red except it's less vivid no I'm with you I'm just holding on here okay so so Locke is what's called the representative realist he wants to say that the things that of width of which we are directly aware in perception are these ideas in our minds but we suppose that there are physical objects which cause those out ideas in our minds so Locke believes in matter in material substance they think that this tree is the tree out there that's right we see the eye we receive an idea which is our perception of the tree but we suppose that there is a tree which in some way resembles our idea but very importantly here we need to distinguish between properties which the tree is supposed to have in itself like its size and its shape and properties which appear to us in a certain way notably for example its color or smell or taste and so forth and Locke wanted to say that that there is nothing resembling those ideas in the tree itself but what there is in the tree is something we know not what that causes those ideas in us so the mind turns the thing into an idea and the idea matches the thing the thing has a causal impact on our sense organs which generates an idea in the mind and we suppose that there is something real out there which in some ways at least resembles our idea of is Tom sternum he was born in Ireland as has been mentioned Berkeley and he it is like thirties became a bishop so most of the time he was known as it was a nobleman son is known as a scholar can you give us some idea a little more idea of his his life his background yes of course I think it's best to think of his life in kind of four main periods this the first period is the Dublin period he enrolls at Trinity College Dublin in 1700 Texas degree in 1704 becomes a fellow in 1707 and then we get the the the period the big boom of publication that the first major work of the new theory of vision in 1709 the principles of human knowledge in 1710 working on the second part of the principles and the three dialogues in 17 after 1710 and working as a fellow in the college and then in 1712 he takes leave of absence and goes to London and this kind of is the second phase in his life he's still to publish the three dialogues his plan is to publish that in London once he's made a reputation for himself so he starts moving in literary circles in London trying to build up a reputation and spend about five months doing this writing for popular papers especially the Guardian Richard Steele's Guardian and then publishes the three dialogues to much more acclaim than the the principles then he goes travelling he becomes chaplain to the Earl of Peterborough who is sent to the special ambassador to the coronation of the King of Sicily so this takes him to Italy he travels with the other Peterborough for a few years then becomes tutor to George ash carries on travelling in Europe until about 1720 when he comes back to it to Britain via London and goes back to Dublin he goes back to his fellowship briefly but mainly to seek a job in the church he gets appointed dean of Derry which is very lucrative and this is uses this as a platform for his big project which is to found a college in Bermuda goes to America in 1728 comes back having failed to found the College in 1731 and we get the fourth final stage which is when in 1734 he becomes Bishop of Cloyne and he becomes dedicated to his church work well thank you that's very comprehensive and very admirably brief we talked about Locke or rather Peter Milliken has given an introduction to Locke which other were there any other thinkers as important to Berkeley as Locke was I think there were definitely Locke's the one he mentions most well in his notebooks which we do have was very lucky to have we see that he's discussing reading and discussing Descartes malla branch hobbes Spinoza sergeant who's a critic of Locke's and he's also through most of his life completely obsessed with a group of thinkers he calls the free thinkers who are largely materialists largely arguing against revealed religion and against the Christian mysteries he rarely mentions them by name he doesn't want to advertise them but he treats them as a group and these are all very important influences on him especially perhaps Descartes and as positive influences though he's critical Hobson Spinoza asks archetypal enemies so he's drawing in is drawing in an immense part of the Western tradition of the last two three hundred years oh absolutely and as a fellow Trinity he was teaching Greek and teaching Plato he said he's a excellent Plato's scholar Nicola his first major work is has been mentioned by my Tom was an essay towards the new theory of vision what would you attempted to do in this work the new theory of vision was published in 1709 Berkeley at the time was only in age 24 and it was regarded at the time of one of his really best work we know for sure Thomas Reid one of the key figures of the Scottish enlightenment was a great admirer of barclays work on the theory of vision there were two goals in that book the first one was to discuss how we learn to distinguish the distance shape and magnitudes of objects and to examine the difference between different kinds of sensory ideas such as ideas of sight and ideas of touch following pretty much the empiricist lines that peter has already mentioned so the target of the book is really the cart and the cart optical geometry so the cart believed that human beings are born hardwired to perceive a distance and magnitudes of objects so I can tell the distance between the glasses sitting in front of me and the bottle sitting over there just by looking at the different angles that those objects and the ray of light form on my retina and Berkeley was pretty much objecting against their form of innate optical geometry so Berkeley believed that we learn by experience and by perception to recognize the distance of shape and magnitudes of objects and in particular we learn to combine different kinds of sensory ideas ideas that we may get by touching objects or by seeing objects so there is an obvious problem there because the visual field is two-dimensional and obviously by touching we may get the three dimensionality of object so in new theory of vision Berkeley refers to a very famous problem at the time I called Emily no problem this was a problem that William only know raised in 1688 to Locke and it's the following problem imagine a human being born blind that by touching is able to recognize the difference between a cube and a sphere imagine that person can regain sight later on in his life will the person be able to tell just by seeing the difference between a cube and his fear so how do visual ideas combined with ideas of touch and partly answer to the problem was that the two ideas are very different in nature a fellow genius and it's only by a process of trial and error that we are able to combine those ideas and form it can fully-fledged view about the distance and shape of objects he's probably best known for his work treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge the following this is take on the argument that you've developed pretty much so the principles of human knowledge was published just one year after the new theory of vision in 1710 and it continues exactly the same empiricist lines so the the goal of the principles of human knowledge is to spell out in a systematic way Barclays view about how we come to know the world and Berkeley believe that we come to know the world by perception and what we perceive our ideas different kinds of ideas so by touch I may get the ideas of rough or smooth by seeing again ideas of colors red and blue smelling gives me orders and by hearing again different sounds and different tones and by combining those different kinds of sensory ideas and by labeling them we come to know what objects are so an apple is nothing but a collection or a bundle of the idea of red that may have by seeing the Apple there you're sweet to them ahead by smelling the Apple that you have crunchiness I may have by tasting the Apple this is the view that came to be known as idealism is the view that came to be known as idealism be it says the world is not a world of material objects as Peter was saying but for all we know and for all we can say the world consists in bundles of sensory ideas that we form by combining those different kinds of sensory impressions that that we get so most of the principles was dedicated to spelling out the arguments in support of such a bold radical philosophical view that Berkeley was putting forward could we check thank you could you take that up Peter Milligan and and can you bring back the Locke's philosophy and if you choose to so that we see the way he's opposing himself to Locke and how Locke is generating his spark his ideas certainly and Berkeley presents his arguments in the principles very vigorously got the whole battery of arguments directly against Locke now as michaelis said he takes the view that objects are collections of perceptions he gives the example of an apple and now remember Locke thought that the direct object of perception the thing that we directly perceive the Apple is the idea itself but Locke thought that the some material object that's causing the ideas in us now what Berkeley wants to say is we directly perceive the object itself it just is the bundle of ideas now one way of cities gives a battery of arguments he wants to say that it's quite impossible for an idea or anything that resembles an idea to exist outside of mind and I think one way of making this vivid is to think of something like a smell take the smell of lavender say and you imagine not the chemical that causes it in the air but that the actual sensation we sniff and we get a characteristic idea in our mind could that idea possibly exist in anything other than a mind and Berkeley wants to say no it is intrinsically sensory it requires the awareness of it so nothing that even resembles such an idea could possibly exist outside of mind we can't even conceive of something like that let's just pause we're saying because this is so this cannot exist outside of mind the smell of lamb lick can only exist in the mind yeah it doesn't go on smelling if the mind isn't turning it into an idea but the point is that the idea is itself intrinsically something that requires a mind to perceive it whatever there might be in the outside world there's no way that that could resemble the the sensation of lavender except by actually being sensed and the same goes for the color of red and Berkeley wants to say that the same goes also for the primary qualities the shape and size and so forth because he wants to argue that we can't actually conceive of those without giving them sensory qualities we can't conceive of something round without thinking of it as colored or having some other sensory qualities such as the qualities of touch could you want to take that on Thomas tonin because he summed up much of his thinking in the Latin phrase if I hope I'm a Rasta si esta Percy P meaning to exist is to be perceived actually mobile I hope you don't mind if I country choose me up no and it means I learned a bit he didn't ever actually write that he didn't oh well that quotation what he wrote was of these ideas that we perceived that there sa is per Kippy and what he was trying to say he was referring back there to the Scholastic doctrine of being or si that their nature their very essence is to be perceived and and he wasn't trying to be sure at the beginning because I kind of fostered up what most of what is he saying that's usable for work how we trying to drive this through so if we kind of take the two thoughts that Michaela and Peter have put forward there so Michaela was talking about how he describes the object the Apple as this collection of qualities color taste smell and Peter was pointing out how he thinks that each of those individual qualities is something that is essentially perceived it's its very nature to be an object of perception it's not something that could have any other kind of existence and then what he needs to do is to say that's enough that means we have apples as he said later I'm not for turning things into ideas rather ideas into things so he wants to say these ideas that Peters been describing these sensory experiences they are what make up the real world because they're all that matter to us they're all that we experience so an apple just is tastes smells feels and those are things which are essentially perceived by someone and so what did you say to people who said hold on these things are existing you know that I'm about to say without you having a Johnson yeah clicking the boulder and saying look that's an object well of course the Johnson point that's just another sensory experience Johnson bruises his toe and he has another sensory experience he hasn't proved anything beyond sensory experience there but the people who say well they must have some existence when no one's perceiving them he has lots of responses he thinks that it's very unlikely no one is perceiving them including no animals or God but he also thinks that if something really really was unperceived by any mind at all it wouldn't matter it wouldn't matter whether it existed or not it would have no practical purpose it would make no practical difference so if it's a consequence of his philosophy that things really don't perceive in don't exist entirely unperceived that's not a bad consequence no one's going to be worried about that don't take that up Peter no that's fine I mean I could I can add more arguments that he uses it uses against Locke I mean he there is a a well-known parody of Berkeley which suggests that he brings in God in order to ensure the continued existence of things when they're not perceived but it's it's rather dubious his interpretation of Berkeley but it's perhaps worth reciting it comes from nine in 24 from Ronald Knox ready for the trial Murray's again the once was a man who said God must think it exceedingly odd if he finds that this tree still continues to be when there's no one about in the quad how can the tree continue to exist in the quad if nobody's perceiving it and then the answer is dear sir your astonishment sod I am always about in the quad and that's why the tree will continue to be since observed by yours faithfully God now there are some hints in Berkeley that he is using the continued continuity of things when unperceived as an argument for God but they're not very strong hints and it's very debatable whether that's a major plank of his theory and I don't know Mikayla to mercy me to take this forward he was ordained in his 20s came a bishop in his late thirties so God played a part in his life and how did it play a part Peters begun to hinted it all begin to talk about in his philosophy yeah there is no doubt that God plays a central role within Berkeley system in two different ways first of all idealism was proposed as the best antidotes against the spread of atheism that is Oh as at work in the cart mechanical philosophy in the materialism of the time in the attempt to reduce the physical world the world of material objects consisting of Kapaa Souls mastering motions and nothing but matter in motion but he saw the threat of atheism surprisingly also in Newton Newton physics it was a great admirer of Newton Frankie I mean several places he refers with great esteem and admiration to Newton but it was also the one that in a way so Newton's theories about for example absolute space and time as being potentially dangerous in spreading this idea that God is God eternity and God only presence is nothing but absolute space and absolute time so ideally the most best antidotes against the spread of atheism and moreover idealism was the best argument for the existence of God so Berkeley provided an argument for the existence of God granted the premise which is a big concession to make that we accept idealism so if we accept that the physical world consists of objects and those objects are not Material objects they're not corpuscles or matter emotions but they are bundles or collections of ideas then the obvious question to ask is where does idea come from so they cannot come from material objects because we just said the whole point of idealism is to deny that there are material objects as the causes of our sensory ideas because they don't have thoughts yeah because he basically claimed that a matter cannot impart ideas in our mind that a matter belongs a kind of different realm and here Tama may contradict me that matter belongs to different realm from the realm of the mind so matter can affect other matter but mother cannot affect the human mind so and ideas cannot come can originate from material objects they cannot come from our own mind there are no figment of our imagination our mind does not because of power to produce those kind of ideas in a way they come to us sensory ideas ideas of smell or touch or SP that was said the smell of a lavender they just appear to us so it's not something that we're produced or constructed in our mind so the question is okay where do they come from if they don't come from the lavender they don't come from our mind that they should come from somewhere and the answer is in a way there has to be a benevolent God that imparts ideas on us and it's also the grantor that those ideas irregular they're ordered they follow laws of nature they're not erotic as the idea that we may have in Allison Asians or dreams so and Berkeley in a way needed God as as the ultimate cause of the reality of the ideas that we do forma so the Elysium is the best argument for the existence of God do you want to take that would you like to take that on top yeah I mean I think that's a very nice expression of the argument for Berkeley and the beauty of this argument is that the real world consists of these ideas of the sentences and those are directly caused by God so we're directly in contact with God and you talked about Newton's absolute space and time as Berkeley seeing this as a threat to religion and it was partly because it distanced God from humanity and for him the great attraction of the idealist tree to God is that it brings God into our everyday lives and we have this direct awareness even though most people aren't aware that that's what it is of God Buddha it's one important point here as well is that Berkeley doesn't think that there's a way out in Locke's direction saying oh the explanation for all this uniformity in nature for all the systematic patterns of things is that there are material objects because he wants to say that minds are quite unlike anything that we perceive Minds are active spirits are active and that is us of course in God whereas ideas the things we perceive and therefore the objects that we perceive we see them to be clearly and visibly passive they cannot do anything and it was a slight embarrassment for Locke that he he couldn't explain how physical objects cause ideas in the mind he accepted that it's completely mysterious why say light bouncing off a particular surface texture should produce in our minds the idea of red so it's a complete mystery for the materialists whereas Berkeley can appeal to the active mind of God directly generating that and because our experience shows us that minds are active he wants to say that it's a much more satisfactory explanation so basically you've got a world which consists entirely of spirits and ideas and the ideas these passive ideas exist only by being in the minds of spirits like briefly it obvious yeah I just want to add to that point that it's not merely that he thinks the material world couldn't cause ideas in our own minds he challenges that competence of physics to explain how matter causes effects in matter as well so he doesn't really think that science and physics have explained the causal relation between material objects so it's matter is it inert for him as well he moves from religion philosophy to science quite easily and seamlessly in this world so Micaela obviously interested in science and he wrote a major work is a work entitled on motion and he as it were can we get to the cut to the chase as to what he objects to in what let's stick with you I know saliva it's as well but it's I'm afraid it's a bit easier for me if we stick to Newton and I mistakenly what is he objecting to right so the text called Emoto was published in 1721 and was originally designed for the Paris Academy of Sciences that was running an essay competition for the best essay on motion it offers a systematic critique of the two main dynamical theories of motion of the time precisely newton and leibniz and in particularly offers a criticism of what some scholars like lisa downing as called the dynamic realism so dynamic really is a mister view that the world is a world populated by forces and forces are real causal agents to explain motion different kinds of motion so take Newton and Newton mechanics take newton's second law F equals MA in that case the metaphysical assumption is that there are forces in nature impressed forces there are the causes of acceleration if you impress the force on a body the body will change motion into an accelerated motion even more evident Newton's gravity as an example of a universal force that is the cause of a variety of phenomena from the Hubble falling from the tree to planetary motions and tides and so forth so it was pretty much part of a tradition that really probably stretches back to Aristotle in thinking that it is the job of scientist and it's the job of philosophers to investigate the causes of motion and those causes can be identified with the Scientific Revolution into forces into into dynamics lie beneath in Germany made exactly the same point I published a short essay called the specimen dynamical and in special and dynamical man lie beneath defended elasticity or repulsive force as a fundamental force of nature and defended the view that in elastic collisions between bodies say two billiard balls colliding forces have to be conserved so the amount of force at the beginning has to be the same as the amount of force at the end of the process so Berkeley in the motor is reacting against that view that says there are forces there are real causal agents in nature that can explain a variety of motion from non inertial motion to every every other kinds of motion like elastic collisions and it was defending some in line with his idealism was defending the view that well because motions are just appearances again bundles of ideas forces similarly should be regarded as such so there are useful tools or instruments that we can use in our natural science but they should not be regarded as real causal agents in nature and anyway sorry and it was written these two different arguments one against Newtonian gravity was basically unfairly accusing Newton of resorting to again occult qualities this was a classic charge against Newton and the Pugh Newton was a pain to defend himself from from this accusation and against lie beneath he was a branding anti vitalist arguments so it was attacking lie beneath view about what is called now living force which is the ancestor or concept of kinetic energy and claiming that we shouldn't really regard the matter as endowed with some sort of a living forces Peter Milligan who's taking on the great beast wasn't there me nor can mutant and sailing in with his own ideas which at the time and particularly in America later and blended for a while obtained quite strongly they had also the theory of the human mind itself can you tell us what that was his theory of the human mind okay so Barkley remember thinks that everything that we perceive out in the world consists of ideas but then there is a question how can we know about the existence of our own minds we can't actually form a full-blooded idea of our minds because we don't perceive our minds in the way that we perceive ideas but rather what he wanted to say was we can form something called a notion of our mind so by experiencing the operations of our mind for example willing perceiving and thinking we are aware that there is in us a power to do these things and that gives us knowledge of ourselves and one can argue about exactly what kind of knowledge he thinks this is whether it's a matter of inference that I see various ideas coming I'm aware of those ideas and therefore I infer that there is something that is aware of them or whether he thinks there's some kind of intuitive awareness of myself and that's not absolutely clear in the text but he he thinks we know about ourselves in a very different way from the way we know about external things I think that mind is matter in a way that the tree is matter well he doesn't actually believe that there is such a thing as a tree no such a thing as matter so we've got this I think the easiest way to think of this is he thinks that this absolute divide between spirits ie mind and the contents of minds and the contents of minds are ideas and they're purely passive whereas minds are active and the we are aware of the existence of minds by being one but not in the way that we are aware of external objects so he doesn't have a that's as clear as you can get about what he thought the mind was like Tom stamens waggling an index finger maybe this is the US Cavalry well we can't get that clear because the book that he was going to explain this in was never written but just gets more intrigue but I think Peter Peters making clear he's a kind of duelist he thinks that there is a deep divide in the world between mines and things and the things that are tables trees and they're composed of these sensory qualities that we experience the colors the shapes the smells the tastes and then there's the experiencing mind and they're completely different categories of item in the world it's not a Cartesian dualism the things that the mind is a substance not a material substance a mental substance but the ideas there and the objects that they compose aren't substances they're just bundles or collections of qualities like colors taste smells in so it is a kind of dualism his last major work was a book called Sirius we started off as an advertisement for the medicinal properties of diluted tar when the pause here and then went into religion understanding of philosophy outside the properties of diluted tar to improve your health I'm sure all our listeners are rushing out - anyway - what's she after in that book that's important right and this was Berkeley last book in 1743 and he was probably one of the most popular at the time he went through six addition in six months it was published at the end of an epidemic in Ireland where tar water was obviously in need and have Barkley himself as far as I understand was able to produce some and to provide it to his own operation heirs so the the goal of the book is really a chain of philosophical reflections about the therapeutic properties of tar water in treating a variety of diseases such as asthma a small pox up to lifting the mind and the soul to God now what's the link between those two very innovative genius topics that he covers the link is the ether and this is where things get really interesting this is where Barclays engagement with the sciences of his own time becomes all the more important Barkley believed that both the therapeutic virtue of the water and the general goal of explaining how we can lift our mind up to God had something to do with the substance subtle imponderable substance called the ether there was the matter of light but also the matter of fire and in that sense it borrows elements from Newton once again in particular from Newton's optics so Peter mentioned the D optics was one of the most important texts of the time and probably some historians have rightly said that more than the pinky bhea the optics really shaped the national philosophy but in Britain and in the continent in the first half of the 18th century and in the queries the to the Latin edition of the optics and the second English edition of the optics Newton went back to the topic that he speculated about before the pink even namely the existence of this imponderable either diffused through all space being the medium of light but also the medium of electrical phenomena thermal phenomena and so forth the view was picked up by several people put in Britain and the continent in particular Hermann bharathan Laden who in 1732 for the text called elementa Kenya and in that text but I believe Indy either as the matter of light and the matter of far so we find exactly that kind of tradition the speculative experimental tradition of Newton and Barada in saris as a way of explaining bogus presence in nature and the medical virtue of the water what are the impacts did how great was the impact of battle in his own time well one point that has briefly been mentioned earlier is that Barclays ideas were rather in the air you had other immaterial ists as well a chap called Arthur Collier for example wrote an materialist treatise shortly after Barclays and and there were philosophers like malla Brosh and his followers who were occasional ists their view in many ways rather similar so Berkeley and I think his most distinctive influence during his lifetime because he was often seen as a an object of ridicule in Britain as we saw with with Samuel Johnson I think his biggest influence was on David Hume David Hume used quite a number of barclays arguments in particular the argument against abstraction he wanted to say it's not possible to abstract away from your experience of say a red rectangle it's not possible to think of the rectangularity without the redness and therefore since the redness is acknowledged on all hands to be something in the mind not in the object therefore the rectangularity can't be in the object either now human uses this argument quite quite a lot but his reaction to it is rather interesting and that there's an amusing thing in one of his in indexes where he has an index reference to Bishop Berkeley a skeptic which Berkeley with goth would have hated and he says Barclays arguments admit of no answer but produce no conviction so his attitude towards Barclays argument seems to be rather ambivalent but he he was clearly impressed by the logical force of Berkeley Tom Thomson was it thought at the time that his with the with the increasingly non religious nature philosophy and that his religious religion was getting in the way of his thinking I don't think so at the time I think most of the respect he had in his own time was for his religious writings and his defense of Christianity I think later as philosophy became more secularized people have struggled to find ways of interpreting the philosophy with less religion in it and in particular we mentioned earlier the arguments for the existence of God whether those really get you to a Christian God or something more de istic but I think his legacy as a philosopher is that it's the clarity and beauty of his arguments and the sigh sickness the criticism of the the materialist views that he's attacking his work on vision continued to be influential and was influential in the Scottish enlightenment with Thomas Reid and the other Scottish enlightenment philosophers so there was a continuing influence and by another route which we haven't got time to go into it gave his name to one of the great universities in America of course of course and endowed large endowment to Yale yes why did why briefly McKellen sorry why did he fall so much out of favor Peters use the word really good why did he fall so much other thing I think it's fair to say that the reception of his work was really twofold as well as we just heard that the reception of his scientific work was actually very positive but the first reviews of the principles of human knowledge were scathing and in the journal the Savannah and journal it's rare people accused Barkley of a sliding into some dangerous form of pantheism and believing that everything exists in God's mind or that somehow the world reduces to some sort of spiritual entity in 1733 Andrew Baxter for the next say where he basically said that if God is the source of our sensory ideas therefore God should be also the source of our sins and wrongdoings so there were some serious allegations being brought forward the to its view at the same time I think it's probably fair to say that unwittingly Barkley put on the table a view called idealism that was bound to stay for philosophy and seventy years later one of the greatest philosophers of of his time Immanuel Kant wrote it for the text called the critical period where he proposed the view that he called the transcendental idealism transient religion is very different from Barclays idealism but it's just to say that thanks to Berkeley that the world idealism was became common currency in the early modern period well thank you very much Michaela Misumi peter Milliken and Tom Stern one next so next week we were talking about the Protestant work ethic as proposed by Max Weber and thank you very much for listening the in our time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his gas what do you think we missed in that abstraction and why why you might think he's not an empiricist yes the but we probably wouldn't have time for that no miss we got 43 minute not the problem at some time but you think the missing of Newton was a you would have liked to talk more Bunyan would you had a chance to look a couple of questions in there was a lot more to be said about his criticism of Newton so for example the philosopher of science Karl Popper so Berkeley as a precursor of Ernst Mach and host mark for the text at the end of the 19th century that if the regarded as anticipating somehow Einstein relativity in some key ideas so there's a famous criticism of Mac the Mac launch is against Newton a bucket experiment that you can find actually already in a way with suitable caveats and qualification in Berkeley so it's all reaction against Newton absolute space and absolute time has been read by someone operas are important for the history of physics so the other side's what do you think we got over are you good over you three got there i what did you manage to say that you thought was important to say i think and some of some of your your puzzlement melvin that was was because of the radical nature of the view it's very difficult to to get your head around you know this because it looks like he's saying which kind of trapped in our minds this jump if you see him if he starts as a criticism of log who says material objects cause these experiences he drops out the material objects it looks like we just trapped in in the subjective and it's trying to trying to see that he's he's got a bold of you than that that he wants to say actually those those things that lock thinks of as merely subjective experiences are actually the elements of the real world i would have liked the sort of description of what you you three think of is an idea how would you describe an idea and i felt i'm a bit more solid ground if i know what you my idea it's a famously ambiguous term yeah and lock you didn't even get to ambiguity which is we get to me feeling where am i with this notion of the idea of the idealist but bear in mind that if you're an empiricist again you are going to equate thinking with perception it's going to be like a kind of weaker less vivid perception and that means that it's not so inappropriate to use the same term for perception that you use for thinking this very controversion of called mentally border now probably would not have much luck with that but at the time it was absolutely a standard view I mean I think there's a good question and bulky does appear occasionally to reflect on this why he uses the word idea at all and I think as a young man he did it because it engaged with a tradition that everyone had been writing about the objects of experience as ideas and he wanted to tap into that tradition of thought so using the big the big thing was not because he's saying about gravity as I understand it the gravity is marva all the superlatives your system of mathematics but to imbue it with further meaning he's not on it's an instrument for understanding well not the understanding of the way the world works yes but does he's not he's not a religious objection or does it come out of what we what you've been talking about above is idealist objection which not is it right I'd say I'd say it's actually just pure philosophy of science he's thinking what is the purpose and function of all this scientific inquiry and why do we build scientific theories we build scientific theories like the theory of the universal gravitation in order to help us do things to make things to predict things and so that's where all the reality lies in those experiences we predict in those objects we make and the rest is just a theory to get us then one interesting point here with gravity incorrect gravity was considered a real problem in the early model period because you had philosophers going back to Galileo Descartes Hobbes and Boyle very notably who thought that mechanical interaction one thing bashing into into another and making it move was uniquely intelligible to us and then along comes Newton and postulates this gravitational force and everybody says well that's mysterious that's not intelligible that looks occult the term that that harks back to Aristotelian theories if the moon is attracted towards the earth then the moon would have to know where the earth is and that's spooky so we don't like that now the the interesting thing is that Newton's reaction to this um was to say well the equations work it produces useful results I'm not going to worry about what the cause is I'm going to use it as a theory to do my science and in a way Berkeley is exactly in that spirit except he applies it to all of science there are many more radio for arts and discussion programs to download for free find these on the website at BBC co dot uk' radio for

Channel: BBC Podcasts

Views: 1,392

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: berkeley, idealism, philosophy, george berkeley, perception, john locke, metaphysics, immaterialism, empiricism, skepticism, epistemology, new, lord, worship, mix tape, religion, religious music, live music, mime, spiritual, top, ministry, youth, pastor, gospel, faith, praise, shouting, saved, hits, holy, temple, bethlehem, burns, marcus, holiness, apostolic, word, teaching, preaching

Id: K5OIgSw8mi8

Length: 47min 38sec (2858 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 10 2018