George Berkeley - The Great Idealist

hello in his life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell recalls a conversation that 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 barkless 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 of ireland who became one of them are celebrated thinkers of the 18th century in a series of philosophy philosophy called work she 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 our 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 masse 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 um 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 these developments and in fact his first major publication was a new theory of vision on optics she was educated in Ireland at college I went to Trinity as Trinity College Dublin and so what would he be reading literary classics as we all would expect or did he read it was he reading contemporary philosophy the biggest influence on barclays to be a single influence is John Locke whose essay concerning human understanding was published in 1690 and that towered over the future the 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 um 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 a 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 are 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 now I'm whether 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 so think that this tree is a 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 locked 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 it Tom sternum he was born in Ireland as has been mentioned Berkeley um and he it is late thirties became a bishop so most of the time he was known as it was a nobleman son and known as a scholar and can you give us some idea a little more idea of his his life his background yes of course um 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 period the big boom of publication of the first major work 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 principles then he goes travelling he becomes chaplain to the Earl of Peterborough who is sent as a 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 Jorge ash carries on traveling in Europe until about 1720 when he comes back to it to Britain via London goes back to Dublin uh he goes back to his fellowship briefly but mainly to seek a job in the church he gets pointed 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 are in 1734 he becomes Bishop of Cloyne and he becomes dedicated to his church work well thank you that very comprehensive and very very admirably brief we talked about Locke or rather Peter Milligan is given an introduction to Locke which other were there any other put thinkers as important to Berkeley as Locke was I think there were definitely Locke's the one he mentions most but 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 a 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 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 male' branches 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 year's remember us oh absolutely and as a fellow Trinity he was teaching Greek and teaching Plato he said he's a excellent Plato's scholar um Michaela his first major workers as we mentioned by by tom was an essay towards the new theory of vision what would he 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 Bartlett's work on the theory of vision and 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 M human beings are born hardwired to perceive a distance in 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 the 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 the object so in new theory of vision Berkeley refers to a very famous problem at the time called Emily no problem this was a problem that William Molino raised in 1688 to Locke and it's the following problem imagine a human being born blind then 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 combine with ideas of touch and barclays answer to the problem was that the two areas are very different in nature a thorough 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 through the world by perception and what we perceive are ideas different kinds of ideas so by touch I may get ideas of rough or smooth by seeing again ideas of colors red and blue smelling gives me orders and by hearing I get 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 that you're sweet to them have by smelling the Apple that you have crunchiness Amer by tasting the Apple and this is the view that came to be known as idealism is the view that came to be known as idealism because 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 to consist 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 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 Barclays ideas yes certainly and Berkeley presents his arguments in the principles very vigorously he 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 other 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 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 noting that even resembles such an idea could possibly exist outside of mind we can't even conceive of something like that so let's just pause reciting because this is so this cannot exist outside of mind the smell of like can only exist in the mind yeah it doesn't go on spelling if the mind isn't turning it into an idea with 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 that sensory quality 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 am EOS Li si s Percy P meaning to exist is to be perceived actually more than hope you don't mind if I contrary it is a anti-science I choose me up no end it means I learn of it he didn't ever actually write that he didn't oh well in that case it's a standard MIT 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 go he showed at the beginning because I kind of tossed that up what most of what is he saying that you shall for work how were not 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 its 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 you 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 would it would 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 savage on Samuel Johnson yeah 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 had 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 trying to take that up Peter no that's that's fine I mean I could I can add more arguments that he uses it uses against Locke I mean he he uh that there is a a well-known a 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 interpretation of Berkeley but it's perhaps worth reciting it comes from 1924 from Ronald Knox I'll read it for the trial Marina together 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 MercyMe to take this forward he was ordained in his 20s north became a bishop in his late thirties so God played a part in his life in how did it play about Peters begun to hinted it all began 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 a the best antidotes against the spread of atheism that is so as at work in the cart mechanical philosophy in the materialism of the time in the attempt to reduce the physical world to a 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 in news on physics it was a great admirer of Newton Frankie bein in 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 a being potentially dangerous in spreading this idea that God is God eternity and gold omnipresence is nothing but absolute space and absolute time so idealism of the best antidotes against the spread of atheism and more / 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 are not corpuscles or muhtaram oceans 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 on our mind and matter belongs a kind of different realm and here Tama may contradict me that matter belongs a different realm from the realm of the mind so matter can affect other matter but matter 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 and 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 they would say the smell of lavender they just appeared to us so it's not something that we have produced or constructed in our mind so the question is ok 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 is also the grantor that those ideas irregular they're ordered they follow laws of nature they're not erotic as the ideas remember having hallucinations or dreams so and Berkeley in a way needed God as as the ultimate cause of the reality of the ideas that we do form so idealism is the best argument for the existence of God do you want to take that I know but would you like to take that on top I'm sure no problem 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 if 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 route 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 idea is these passive ideas exist only by being in the minds of spirits but briefly Torrio's 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 the 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 his world sir Michaela um obviously interested in science and he wrote a major work is a work entitled on motion and as it were can we get to the cut to the chase as to what he objects to in what let's stick with u9o saliva it's as well but it's I'm afraid a bit easier for me if we stick to Newton and how I stick to you what is he objecting to right so the text called the motor and was published in 1721 and was originally designed for the Paris Academy of Sciences that was running an essay competition for the best essay motion it offers a systematic critique of the two main dynamical theories of motion of the time precisely new donor and live in it and in particularly offers a criticism of what some scholars like Lisa downing has called the dynamic realism so dynamic realism is the 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 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 there really probably stretches back to Aristotle in thinking that it is the job of in taste and is 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 sin Germany made exactly the same point I published a short essay called the special men dynamical and in special men dynamical men 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 mode is reacting against that view that says there are forces their real causal agents in nature that can explain a variety of motion from non inertial motion to every every other kind 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 national science but they should not be regarded as real causal agents in nature and anyone sorry and it was raising these two different arguments one against the Newtonian gravity was basically unfairly accusing Newton of resorting to again occult qualities this was a classic charge against Newton and the pool Newton was a pain to defend himself from from this accusation and against lie beneath so 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 is endowed with some sort of a living forces Peter Milligan who's taking on the great beast wasn't they I mean nor can Newton and sailing in with his own ideas which at the time and particularly in America later then it back for a while obtained quite strongly they hit 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 the 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 mind 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 that 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 does he think that mind is matter in a way that a tree is matter but he doesn't actually believe that there is such a thing as a true know such a thing as matter it can we start again so yeah so we've got this I think the easiest way to think of this is he thinks there's 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 the book that he was going to explain this in was never written but to have it just gets more into it down put it up but I think as Pete's Peters making clear he's a kind of duelist he thinks that there is a deep divide in the world between mines and things 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 ah Micaela his last major work was a book called Cirrus started off as an advert for the medicinal properties of diluted tar we love porscha and then a weighted finding to religion understanding of philosophy outside the properties of diluted tar to improve your health I'm sure all our listeners are rushing out to anyway never mind what's she after in that book that's important right so and this was Berkeley last book in 1743 and he was probably one of the most popular at the time he went through six edition in six months it was published at the end of an epidemic in Ireland where Tarwater was obviously in need and Berkeley himself as far as understand was able to produce salmon to provide it to his own operation errs um so um the the goal of the book is really a chain of logical 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 Gordon now what's the link between those two are very innovative genius topics that it covers the link is the ether and this is where things get really twisting 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 the optics was one of the most important texts of the time and probably some historians have rightly said that more than the pinky biya 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 added 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 but in Britain and the continent in particular Herman bharathan Laden who in 1732 wrote a text called elementa camión 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 burrata in saris as a way of explaining bogus presence in nature and the medical virtue Tarwater american what are the impacts did how great was the impact of art 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 there were philosophers like malla brash and his followers who were occasionally there viewing 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 Hume 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 indexes where he has an index reference to Bishop Berkeley a skeptic which Berkeley of course 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 dahm dahm turn was it thought at the time that is 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 is the clarity and beauty of his arguments and the incisiveness of the criticism of the the materialist views that he's attack 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 you haven't got time to go into it gave his note all of the great universities in America of course they of course yeah and endowed quite a lot large endowment to Yale yes why did it why briefly Michaela um I'm sorry why did he fall so my childhood favor Peters use the word really cool why did he for so much other thing I think its first 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 should not litter air people accused the berkeley of a sliding into some dangerous former pantheism and believing that everything exists in god's mind or that somehow the world reduces to a custom sort of spiritual entity in 1733 andrew baxter for the nests 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 his 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 70 years later one of the greatest philosophers of of his time in monmouth county per day for the text called the critical few reasons where he proposed the view that he called the transcendental idealism and transient Rhodesians very different from Berkeley's idealism but it's just to say that thanks to Berkeley that the word idealism was became common currency in the early modern period well thank you very much Michaela Masumi peter Milliken and Tom Stern one next turn up next week we were talking about the Protestant work ethic as proposed by Max Weber and thank you very much for listening the inner time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests what do you think we missed in that little bit more of news that's also likely only missed abstraction it's and why why you might think he's not an empiricist yes the but we probably wouldn't have time for that no I know the problem is we got 43 minute not the problem with some time but do you think the missing a mutant was a you would have liked to talk more about you would you had a chance to look though a couple of questions in the way you could is something upon you the but there was a lot more to be said about his criticism of Newton so for example the philosopher of science Karl Popper and so Berkeley as a precursor of Ernst Mach and host Mark Breaux the text at the end of the 19th century that is regarded as anticipating somehow Einstein relativity in some key ideas so there's a famous criticism of Mac the Mac launches against new tune in 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 operator important for the history of physics so the other sighs what do you think we got over you got over you three got over what did you manage to say that you thought was important to say nice nature it'll be a lot yeah I think I think and some of some of your your puzzlement Melvin was was because of the radical nature of you 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 job if you see him if he starts as a criticism of Locke 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 Locke 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 usually think of is an idea how would you describe an idea and I felt oh I'm a bit more solid ground if I'd know what you meant by idea it's a famously ambiguous term yeah and lock is hidden in get to ambiguity which is we just get to me feeling where am i with this notion of the idea the idealist but bet 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 controversial called Maslin evil now probably would not have much truck with that but at the time it was absolutely a standard view I mean I think there's a good question and Berkeley does appear occasion 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 those 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 a marvel all the superlatives your system of mathematics but to imbue it with further meaning is 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 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 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 mysterious that's not intelligible that looks occult the term 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 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 uk

Channel: Philosophy Overdose

Views: 19,172

Rating: 4.8947368 out of 5

Keywords: Philosophy, Subjective Idealism, Phenomenalism, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ontology, History of Philosophy, Berkeley, George Berkeley, Anti-Realism, Philosophical Realism, Empiricism, Immaterialism, Perception, Philosophy of Perception, Theory of Knowledge, Philosophy of Mind, Analytic Philosophy, Skepticism, Materialism, Descartes, Panpsychism, Relativism, Subjectivism, Solipsism, Consciousness, Thing-In-Itself, Sense Data, Metaphysical Realism, Nominalism, Abstraction, David Hume, Idealism, John Locke

Id: OLMxY1v9zwA

Length: 47min 19sec (2839 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2015