George Berkeley: From Empiricism to Idealism by Leonard Peikoff

our subject this evening is Bishop Berkeley and David Hume both of these are 18th century philosophers both our British empiricists both our derivatives of the trend developed by John Locke both are typical of the final epistemology offered by the period known as the Enlightenment the 17th century as you know is called the age of reason generally in the 18th as a result the Enlightenment but the Philosopher's of the age of reason as you also know put forth deeply platonic and/or skeptic notions of what reason consisted of and the result was that the dominance of reason of the explicit advocacy of reason had to come to an end and the two philosophers of the Enlightenment period with whom it does come to an end are Berkeley and Hume now both of these men I hasten to add are in their own view staunch advocates of reason but when you see what their systems are you will see why other contemporary and later philosophers said reason has had its chance and has failed and the result was the offering in of an era of avowed mysticism and rationalism starting in the late 18th century and intensifying without exception to the present day let us then start with Berkeley 1685 to 1753 so he was about nineteen when Locke died now as a bishop berkeley needless to say is a deeply religious man one of the main goals of his philosophy was to combat what he regarded as a major obstacle to religion namely matter that is to say the concept of an external independent physical reality this he believed was always a thorn in the side of religion religion preaches that God created matter ex nihilo out of nothing and there were always skeptics around and not simply skeptics to ask how can you get something out of nothing the belief in matter always gave way periodically to people like Hobbs who said we can explain everything simply in terms of matter and thereby deny the soul deny God deny immortality the belief in matter gave rise to mechanism the idea that the laws of mechanics the laws of physics explain everything that happens when we can dispense therefore with God's purpose with God's plans with God's miracles but things Barkley if we can get rid of the material world if we can show that there is no external physical world we will once and for all have cut the base out of the materialists the skeptics and the atheists in the most profound way and of course is correct here the material world is the philosophic enemy of God so he knows what to attack now Berkeley as I said is an empiricist he agrees with not laughs that all knowledge comes from experience there are no innate ideas we can only acquire knowledge on the basis of experience but he is much more consistent the Locke was as you'll see he accepts all of Locke's basic premises and uses them to demonstrate the non-existence of the physical world he is therefore classified of course as an idealist in the technical philosophic sense we end up with Berkeley with a world of individual Minds presided over of course by God each contemplating its own experiences and that's we have a universe very similar to Leibniz only now we reach this kind of idealism not lie the rationalist root of live nets but via the empiricist root of Berkeley and because empiricism was much more influential in the anglo-american world and rationalism ever was Berkeley is the first really influential modern empiricist now I want to devote our time to barkleyz arguments against the existence of an independent material world you must understand of course when we talk about an external material world we mean anything external to the mind and therefore that includes your brain and your body your arms and legs and liver all of that goes when the physical world goes now let's first of all get clear what Berkeley is driving at before we hear his arguments consider the example of a toothache and ask yourself the question can you have a toothache without experiencing it can a toothache not a tooth now but a toothache exist or be real if you in no way perceive it experience it or wear it suppose I appointed you for instance taking someone at random and say to you I'm sorry that you have such a raging searing painful toothache this evening and you say to me what do you mean I don't feel any toothache at all I'm not aware of any such thing what if I came back with well what's the difference whether you're aware of it or not after all facts are real whether or not people are aware of them as they don't facts exist independent of consciousness you'd say to me well look this is a very special kind of existence you're talking about and toothache is an experience it's something that exists only in the mind it is a lot an external fact you would say the very reality or being of a toothache consists in its being perceived if nobody experiences the toothache that toothache is unreal now if you were prone to use Latin to express this viewpoint you would say if the expression made famous by Bishop Berkeley si s pair keep e es s EE that's Latin for to be est which is Latin for is PE r CI PI which is Latin for to be perceived in the case of a toothache you would say si s perky P it's being consists of it's being perceived if it weren't perceived it would not exist it would be nothing now badly proposes to argue that matter every kind of matter at every quality of matter is in the identical metaphysical position as the toothache not only colour sound taste temperature but extension three-dimensionality solidity size shape motion everything pertaining to matter is simply a set of experiences simply a set of ideas in the mind in the case of matter he is going to argue si s pair keeping and there is therefore no independent external material world at all now this will be according to him therefore the triumphant proof of what objectivism would call the primacy of consciousness physical existence is going to become simply a series of subjective mental experiences and thus Barclays philosophy is referred to as subjective idealism idealism because it believes that true reality is something more basic than the material world subjective to contrast it on the one hand to Platonism which believes that true reality is the non material unconscious world of forms and to contrast it on the other hand to the later view of Hegel which believes that there is one cosmic consciousness the absolute which constitutes true reality barky believes that separate individual lines are real each individual subject is real and reality consists of these your minds and their content and that viewpoint is known as subjective idealism how does Berkeley defend a viewpoint like this well he gives a great many arguments in his work on the principles of human knowledge and also in a famous series of dialogues between two characters Hylas and fellow loose pilots deriving from the Greek word huele for matter so Hylas is the man who believes in matter and fellow noose to man who has fellow for noose that is to say de mine lover the idealist in the technical sense and of course Phil unders wins all the arguments now I'm going to give you two of the major sets of arguments that Berkeley gives there's many more but these two will be ample for our purposes one sector arrives from the causal theory of perception the causal and representative theories of perception which I have stressed many times in this course the second set to rise from the primary secondary quality distinction let's look first at the argument from the causal theory of perception this is the viewpoint as you recall accepted by Hobbes de cartes but no it's alive that's lap that all that we directly perceive as the experiences in our own mind not reality did you remember their reason our senses obviously process the data we get there are we at the end of the chain perceiving only the end effects on us therefore we don't directly perceive reality only its effects on us but they all claim reality must exist to be the cause of our experiences and thus the name the causal theory of perception and they went on although we don't directly perceive reality we can know something about it because some at least of our experiences represent or coffee or resemble reality Locke had taken that view now here's where Berkeley takes off and begins to slaughter both the causal and the representative theories of percent and in the process annihilate the material world well let's start with the representative theory of perception Berkeley begins at least in the order that I'm giving you his arguments while asking lack how can a sensation or an idea or an experience which is what you say we directly perceive how could any one of those things resemble or copy or be like something that is not a sensation and idea or an experience consider the sensation or experience for instance of a shape like a triangle now says Locke that sensation of the shape is just like the real shape out there in reality now this is Berkeley what does it mean to say my experience of a shape is just like the real shape in reality my experience is certainly not triangular my experience doesn't occupy space at all my experience has no size but the real triangular entity has size the real triangle might be moving at the rate of 30 miles an hour my experience is certainly not moving at the rate of 30 miles an hour it is therefore entirely gratuitous to talk about a similarity between a mental experience and a physical object a sensation or an idea ASIS can resemble only another sensation or idea what does it mean to say that mental contents resemble or copy reality it doesn't mean anything legitimate so much for the representative theory of perception now we go on still within the same overall argument a few for a moment that there was some meaning to say that our ideas resemble or represent reality how can Locke say that any of his sensations or experiences resemble reality even assuming it we're meaningful to say so know whether his experiences resemble reality or not he would have to do what he has to have some access to reality and then compare his experience on the one hand with reality on the other and see whether they were similar or not but according to Locke this is impossible to do because he never comes into any contact with reality now suppose for instance I open one hand you and show you a quarter and my other hand is closed behind my back and you have no access whatever to what is in my other hand if anything and now I say do you does the thing that I have in my open hand the quarter resemble or not the thing in my other hand well your obvious answer would be I have to know what's in your other hand but suppose I say you never can perceive what's in my other hand well your obvious conclusion would have to be you haven't the faintest idea whether what I have in my hand does or doesn't resemble the other because you have no access to indeed if you never could come in contact with the content of my other hand you'd have to say it was unknowable to you and that is precisely says Berkeley the position that Locke is in with regard to the material world if we only perceive our own experiences we have then got no way to go outside of our experiences and compare them to reality and therefore if the causal theory of perception is correct the material world must be unknowable but now says Berkeley except this much which he does if there were a material world it would be unknowable because we never perceive it we only perceive our own experiences now he simply adds another premise to this which which other premise is perfectly logical he says the idea of an unperceivable material world is a contradiction in terms the idea of an unperceivable unknowable world material world is a contradiction in terms what do we mean by a material object well if you go by common sense you mean by a material object something which can be seen something which can be touched in appropriate circumstances something which can be tasted smell heard etc and I suppose I hold up this hand for the benefit of the people on the tape there is nothing apparently on it and I tell you take a look at this Apple and you say to me what Apple I say well this is a special kind of Apple it happens to be unperceivable unknowable you can't see it you can't taste it you can't touch it well you'd say to me how do you distinguish that kind of Apple from nothing whatever if it's a physical Apple it must be perceivable a material thing is a thing capable of being perceived or experienced which is obviously true now we simply combine these two premises if you're taking the argument down it's a simple syllogism with two premises leading to a conclusion premise one and material thing is a thing capable of being perceived premise two the only things were capable of perceiving are experiences in our own minds that's the premise of walk all we perceive as experiences of our own minds well that follows from those two premises just think about it a material thing is a thing we can proceed the only things we can perceive our experiences in our own minds the conclusion must be a material thing is a collection of experiences in our own minds therefore it's true that we can perceive material things directly but that's because material things are simply experiences in our own minds in other words says Berkeley I'm simply combining two premises which no one can contest on the one hand a premise of the common man on the street with this good common since the other the premise that all philosophers grant the common man says the material thing is a thing capable of being experienced I agree all the philosophers contribute the second prince the things we experience are the ideas in our own mind I put the two together and my conclusion is therefore a material thing is a set of ideas in our own mind now of course we move in for the kill an idea a sensation an experience in the mind is in the same category as the two thing it can only exist when it is being experienced an unsent sensation an untaught idea an unperceived perception an unexperienced experience is a contradiction in terms unless the mind experienced its own experiences those experiences wouldn't exist the very being of an experience consists in its being perceived but matter as I have demonstrated he claims is simply a set of experiences final conclusion matter only exists insofar as it is being experienced therefore in the case of matter si s parrot keeping to be is to be perceived so much for the external world QED how do you like that one now I quote from Berkeley quote it is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among men that houses mountains rivers and in a word are sensible objects have an existence natural or real distinct from their being perceived by the understanding this is a strange opinion but well how great an assurance so ever this principle may be entertained yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may if I mistake not perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction so what are the aforementioned objects but the things we perceive by Saints and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these or any combination of them should exist unperceived unquote notice Berkeley says he's a champion of the senses he as an empiricist he believes the senses are perfectly reliable they give you reality only reality is the experiences in your own mind the fact says Berkeley I'm the one real assured champion of the validity of the senses you can be sure your senses aren't deceiving you and that your experiences are correct because they are only what you experience them to be as long as you believe in an external material world he says there's always the question how do you know your experiences are giving of that world as it really is but if all there is is your mind and it's experiences then you can be sure your experiences are correct because your experiences have no nature other than what you experience them to be your toothache is only however you feel it to be and since matter is all in that category you can rest assured with your experiences of matter because it's whatever you experience it adds now you see that on the premises of lack this argument is unanswerable you see the disasters implicit in the causal and representative theory of perception the question therefore for anyone who wants to retain the physical world is how to answer the Cartesian Lockean argument and remember their argument is we must perceive reality by its effects on us that seems unanswerable and those effects seem to be in some way a function of our particular sensory Constitution if we had a different Constitution would produce different effects aren't we then inevitably pushed back into our own consciousness each of us experiencing his own private experiences cut off from access to reality out of which point Berkeley comes along and says if you're cut off there is no such thing and simply wipes it out and yeah we're back all the way to Protagoras his original argument against the senses which has now blossomed in full no I may say that there are many people who disagree with Berkeley vigorously and having the faintest idea how to answer him there was a school of materialists in France for instance who declared that Barclays viewpoint was an insane delusion but unfortunately irrefutable alright let us look now at the second argument that I will give the last deceiving of Barclays the argument from the primary secondary quality distinction while this no longer depends on the causal theory of perception so let's not assume the causal theory of perception let's start afresh nevertheless says Berkeley I will still show you that matter is a set of ideas in the mind this time is taking off point is the traditional standard distinction which goes all the way back to Democritus although the terminology is lost between primary and secondary quality now you remember that the Philosopher's traditionally distinguished between these two qualities on the basis of two main arguments the conceivability argument and the variability argument the conceivability argument says I can't conceive matter without primary qualities but I can easily conceive it without secondary qualities and therefore that goes to show that one set of qualities is intrinsic in matter the other is dispensable and the variability argument is certain qualities the secondary ones vary from perceiver to perceiver and that proves they are subjective a function of the sensory Constitution of the perceiver whereas others the primary are invariant constant the same for all perceivers and that goes to show they are contributed by the real physical object now Berkeley simply says I intend to wipe out both of these arguments and ruin the material world thereby he doesn't use the word ruin but that's the idea well let's first consider the conceivability art well he says maybe Locke can conceive of matter which has primary qualities and no secondary qualities hi bishop Berkeley cannot can you he asks ever imagine a shape to take that example of a primary quality can you ever imagine the shape without a color go ahead right now try visualize the shape for instance a big triangle without a color well of course as soon as you obliterate the color in your mind what happens to your image of the shape disappears now of course you might do it with some other secondary quality if you were blind you might imagine running your hands over this triangular shape and getting some sensation of warmth surface but if you obliterate that also what is left of the shape a shape that can't be seen a shape that can't be touched a shape devoid of colored texture and every secondary quality well says Berkeley I can't tell the difference between that and nothing at all shape is inseparable from some secondary qualities let us say color and if the core exists only in the mind then the shape that we see must exist only in the mind also or give another example of a primary quality is supposed to be motion now suppose I say over to the left of me here's something moving go on visualizing but stupid of all secondary qualities can you conceive it can you imagine it can you visualize obviously you cannot if you strip it of all secondary qualities it simply evaporates now you can do this with all primary qualities the general point says Berkeley is you perceive the so called primary qualities only by means of the secondary qualities so if the secondary are unreal subjective and exists only in the mind so must the primary be in any event they must be in the same boat metaphysically if they're but one in the mind both in the mind if one in reality both in reality so much for the conceivability argument I'll interject here is simply to call to your attention the fact that I have deliberately been equivocating on one point Berkeley asks can you conceive shape without color and proceeds to answer the question can you visualize or form an image of shape without color now by the fact of switching the question from can you conceive - can you visualize that of course will immediately suggest to you that Berkeley equates an abstract concept with an image and that of course should suggest to you right away that Berkeley is a nominalist which he is an avid full fledged nominalist in this particular part of his argument depends upon his normal ism nevertheless that is not his whole argument and the rest continues even without it let us pick up the rest of it suppose you say all right Berkeley or Bishop you have shown to me that primary and secondary qualities are in the same boat and that I can't say one half is in the mind and one half is reality well I'm going to then go completely in the other direction I will say all of them are intrinsic in physical objects none of them exist in the mind very well since Berkeley now I will prove to you that the very same argument that proves that secondary qualities are only mental and subjective applies equally to primary qualities namely the variability argument remember the reasoning since facts are facts they don't depend upon the perceiver and therefore is something varies from perceiver to perceiver it must simply be mental well since Berkeley I am proposed to show you an obvious fact all primary qualities vary from perceiver to perceiver just exactly as the so called secondary qualities do they are just as dependent upon the conditions of our perception and if such variability proves subjectivity it proves that the primary qualities are just as subjective as the secondary ones and thus that the whole distinction collapses now for instance consider the question of size which is supposed to be a real Orthodox kosher primary quality well is size independent of the conditions of perception well a standard example given by followers of Berkeley here is to ask what is the size of the Sun is it the size that you see if you take an Apollo spaceship and head right straight for the Sun obviously you're going to get a much bigger experience then if you look at the size from the earth which makes it look about the size of a 50-cent piece is the size you see the size with your ordinary eyes or the size under a magnifying glass what if there was a race with magnification built into their eyes they would see everything bigger we do so sighs obviously depends upon your structure of your organs and your distance from the object it's valuable if variability proves subjectivity sighs a subject and what about shape now here the standard thing for a professor of philosophy to do is to take a quarter or a penny and walk into the middle of a class and say so you believe that this has a real shape and the students not yet having been completely corrupted say yes then he proceeds to have each of them describe the shape and of course he is so located that they all perceive it from different perspectives so some people say they see a perfect circle and other people say no they see in a lip slanted in one direction and other people say no they see an ellipse slanted in another direction and certain people see only a tiny little rim etc and they all come up with different descriptions of the shape to which the professor says well you see the shape varies with the perception there is no such thing as these shape any more than there is the color or the temperature or the texture or the size at all varies with the perceiver if variability proves subjectivity shape is just as subjective as color and size now of course as far as motion is concerned we can bring in Einstein and the so-called relativity of motion which is supposed to prove that something can be moving or at rest depending upon the frame of reference of the observer so that even motion is a variable and therefore subjective and even such a hardcore primary quality as a number whether there's one quarter or two it's supposed to be a function of our experience and variable for instance press in your eyeball and you will suddenly see this single quarter multiplied into two go ahead you can try it but don't press too hard or it'll be it'll become zero because you'll go blind now of course it's not normal for people to press their eyeballs in but we don't go by majority rule in philosophy obviously the kind of eyes we have therefore I'm speaking now for the followers of Berkeley determine that quantity we observe and therefore number like shape like size like motion or variable and therefore they are all in the category of the so-called secondary qualities the whole distinction breaks down all qualities are subjective and in all cases therefore si STR keeping now you see the problem that we are in on the one hand you will say we have to make a distinction between primary and secondary qualities because after all our senses contribute something to our experience so doesn't it seem sensible on the face of it to say there's those qualities which derive from the kind of senses we have and those qualities which derive from the object therefore two kinds of quality and that was exactly the reasoning by which the primary secondary quality distinction was arrived at but on the other hand as soon as you make the distinction between two kinds of quality whatever tests you use to justify that distinction baki and his followers come along and prove that whatever argument shows that the so-called secondary are subjective applies just as well to the primary and you end up with no reality at all now what is the answer to this particular problem that's part of the same issue of the census on which we will spend a good amount of time next week the conclusion for Berkeley at any event is therefore the whole physical world with everything in it all the furniture of the earth is nothing but a series of experiences in the mind and would not exist if there were no beings perceiving it now there are people who try to refute this by direct experience I simply point out to you that that is a hopeless proposition to attempt to do you cannot by direct experience refute Berkeley because he will demand that you approve by experience that something exists when you are not experiencing and of course you can't do that whenever you experience it you're experiencing it it's like the story for instance of the drunk who was told after he reached a sufficient stage of intoxication that the street light went out whenever he closed his eyes and came back on whatever he opened his eyes and of course he closed his eyes and opened them as rapidly as he could and I looked up and he said oh it isn't to the light as long and the man told him of course it's on your eyes are open you have to it's only goes out when your eyes are closed no obviously you cannot refute that by experience because you would have to see it when you're not seeing it and therefore the question is how do you refute Berkeley since according to many people the only way to refute him would be to perceive something existing when you're not perceiving it and you can't do that well of course the way to refute him is to refute the premises which led him to this conclusion by the way a camera will not refute you there are people who say the way to answer Berkeley is to set up a camera in a vacant room and come back and then expose the film and then show the picture and that'll show the room was still there when nobody was experiencing but of course Berkeley would come back it was such a case and say that doesn't prove anything as soon as you left the room the camera disappeared the whole room disappeared nothing existed what you didn't perceive it and as soon as you came back the camera came back and the film came back in with its particular alteration if you want to know why it was altered I'll tell you shortly now that words he has to be answered on philosophical grounds now that's the thrust of Barclays philosophy we can cover a few last points before we leave him some philosophers ask well isn't matter more than simply the sum of the qualities what about the substratum that has those qualities you recall that substrate am the thing underneath the qualities which sticks them all together the thing which has the qualities which Locke described as something I know not what well of course Berkeley has no difficulty whatever disposing of the substrate and in this respect he is perfectly correct the idea of a substrate him is the ID of something without any identity and as a completely invalid idea a Locke was contradicting his own philosophy completely and endorsing it and Berkeley is quite right to throw it out now I might mention that Berkeley being a bishop well it's not a hundred percent consistent with regard to the issue of the substratum he wanted to keep the spiritual substance the soul to self because religion required that and so he said that in the case of the soul there were not only the mental processes we engaged in but also the substrate in which bound and United them together now how could he possibly keep the substrate and in the mental realm having denounced it in the physical well he said it's true that we don't have any clear idea of substratum but we have a notion of it obviously an extraordinarily lame viewpoint and Hume had no difficulty getting rid of it in the spiritual world either it's a hopeless to try and keep it in either realm now you may ask this question if Berkeley truly believes that si s pair keeping does that mean that stars for instance don't exist when you're not perceiving them take the people in the very back role this gentleman in the very back row now don't touch the back of your head so another one is presumably perceiving it can we conclude therefore that it does not exist well what about your apartment if there's no one there now or the famous example was what about the tree out in the park the tree in the quad the quadrangle does it not exist if no one is perceiving it - which Barclays answer is I don't mind you using the terminology that it exists when you don't perceive it so long as you understand that its existence depends upon somebody's perception to exist is to be perceived si STR keeping so to say a thing exists when you are not perceiving it is either to say if you looked you'd see it you know there was a statement about a material object is really simply a prediction about some minds future experiences I'll say a thing exists when you're not perceiving it is to say that some other mind or spirit is perceiving it but you don't have to worry says Berkeley because even if no human mind is perceiving your apartment or the back of your head or the tree in the quad there is always some mind perceiving everything and thereby keeping everything in existence and guess who that is God now there is a famous Limerick if I can remember it which has two stanzas which expresses barkings philosophy on this point the first stanza explains the problem in the second the solution it goes like this there was a young man who said God must find it exceedingly odd that this tree which I see still continues to be when there's no one about in the crowd and the answer is dear sir your astonishment odd I am always about in the quad and that's why this tree still continues to be since perceived by yours faithfully God now that's Barclays viewpoint now his followers of course in later decades abandon God and we were left with the viewpoint that existence goes out of existence when it is not perceived and in this sense si s / KP although they may not know it is the perfect metaphysics for any invader because their premises if you don't look at it it's not there and here is a full-fledged metaphysical demonstration allegedly of this viewpoint now a last point on Berkeley dr. Samuel Johnson is famous for having given allegedly a refutation of Berkeley and his reputation consisted of taking a storm and kicking it by which he wanted to express his exasperation and what he took to be Barclays denial of the reality of the physical world he said in effect aren't you denying reality to our experiences when I kick this stone it's a real solid stone it's not a mental image or a dream or a hallucination or an experience it's reality how can you have such a concept as reality if everything is mental now if you deal with followers of Berkeley and there's quite a number of them today I believe Einstein at one point claimed to be a follower of Berkeley you should know that they are vehement in saying that they're all in favor of reality what they say in reality is not an issue of something existing external to the mind or independent of the mind reality is an issue of the kind of experience that takes place in the mind there are two kinds of experiences and we can separate them on many counts for instance some experiences are involuntary we can't get rid of them by an act of will whereas others can't we can and so for instance obvious fantasies and mental images you can banish by an act of will and by that very fact they are disqualified for being part of reality another account some experiences are vivid sharp clear others are faint pale indistinct blurred vague and of course in this case we normally take the faint blurred ones and say oh that isn't reality that's a dream whereas the sharp clear ones we say that's reality and most important the third criterion of reality some experiences are well-behaved they are connected in a regular manner with previous and subsequent experiences they are orderly they obey what we call scientific laws on the other hand other experiences are wild and bizarre they do not fit nicely into the scheme of the rest of our experiences so for instance what is the difference for berkeley between a pink rat that you see after you drink a lot and a pink rat which is an actual rat only somebody poured pink paint on what's the difference well a normal non follower of berkeley says that the hallucinatory rack exists in the mind and the real rat exists outside of the mind Barkley's has long since both rats exist in the mind but the difference is the hallucinatory rat is not well behaved if you take the real rat and you take the experience of a knife and with that experience you've cut into the experience of the rat you will find another experience Laden whereas if you take the experience of the hallucinatory rat and try and cut into it with the experience of a knife you won't get any experience of what it doesn't mean and therefore it is a badly babe rat and consequently we regarded as a hallucination not as real and therefore the only difference between reality on the one hand and unreality on the other or fantasy is that reality is that set of involuntary vivid lawful mental experiences whereas unreality is either voluntary blurred or at minimum wild and therefore he says to dr. Johnson I don't deny that you kicked the stone but the point is all you had was an experience of a stone followed by an experience of a all followed by an experience of a pain all following one another in a lawful way and therefore the whole thing took place in the mind now if you say but mustn't there be a cause of our experience maybe we make up the voluntary pale ones but what about the lawful vivid involuntary ones we don't make them up since they're involuntary we don't impose law on them but they follow the laws if it's not an external physical world that causes our experiences where do they come from well says Bartley you're right they must have a cause they must be produced in us by something external to us and given the variety and order lawfulness of these experiences we can only infer that they must be caused in us by a being that is quote wise powerful and good beyond comprehension in other words by God God feeds us our experiences directly and imposes a law-and-order upon them the reality therefore is a series of finite minds contemplating their own experiences fed to them all by the infinite mind God you see therefore a reality very similar to wide widths of you so much for Barclays contribution to philosophy the end of the material world Berkeley however is not as extreme as you can get he's still a bishop he believed in God he believed in the soil he believed in cause and effect even if of a divine sort he has taken lacks premises partway to their ultimate conclusion but not the full way that honor goes to David Hume according to Berkeley how can God exist independent of his being perceived while I left on one point for Berkeley there's two ways to exist if it's a soul or mind its existence doesn't consist of it's being perceived but of it's actually being capable of perceiving so in its case si s perky parade to be is to perceive and since God perceives since he has experiences and ideas and so on he exists in the way that a mind or soul exists as a perceiving entity I'm back his premises is enough for an object to be perceived by any mind in order to it for it to exist or must it be by your mind now it can be by any mind he says and since God is always perceiving everything always exists as is sustained by God his followers of course got rid of God and in the process they were left each contemplating only his own experiences which had no source that didn't bother them because they followed him so they dispensed with cause-and-effect well then the question was how did they know that any other human beings existed even any other human minds because their only contact with other human minds was by the experience of their bodies and their bodies were only experiences in their own mind and so they ended up with the idea that all it exists is their own mind and its content and that everybody else was simply a figment of their imagination and that is if you point known as solipsistic I myself alone ISM which is the ultimate upshot of barclays idealism but Berkeley himself of course the bishop would not take this viewpoint

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Keywords: history of philosophy, history, philosophy, history of western philosophy, western philosophy, leonard peikoff, ayn rand, ayn rand institute, objectivism, objectivist, political theory, modern philosophy, ancient philosophy, school of life, crash course, lecture, educational video, secular humanism, george berkeley, george berkeley philosophy, empiricism, idealism, Bishop of Cloyne, John Locke

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Length: 51min 44sec (3104 seconds)

Published: Fri May 01 2020