It is indeed the description of eyes and lenses and light and receptive fields. Berkeley would agree with that entirely. Because that is not a description of a material substance.

Objectivism - the idea that the world consists of 'mind-independent objects' - must insist that the rock, the dress, or any other object, really does have an appearance, that is not a function of the perception of the viewer.

But Berkeley is saying: you look at an object under a certain light, it looks a certain way; under other light, another way. Which is the 'real' way? How does it really look?

This can go a lot further also. If you analyse the object, you will find it is composed of parts. Science will generally assume the parts are more fundamental than the whole - this is reductionism. But again, is the dress really a dress, or really a set of threads? Or is it really a combination of a number of smaller pieces of cloth? Or is it really atoms?

What is it really?

Kennethamy is right about that point. Berkeley denied the reality of material substance. That was his claim to fame.



Question: one point that Berkeley makes about the object is that to beings with different types of visual systems, the object appears differently.

How does it REALLY appear?

The problem is that Berkeley saw the foundation of reality in the ideas and images of the mind, especially the mind of God. But you see, he didn't deny the appearance of materialism, only that it was a fundamental reality. I'm quite sure about this.

Samm

Ir seems to me that to believe that unless an object looks the same under all conditions of perception, that some one of its appearances is not how it really looks, has no merit. There is no reason to think that an object ought to (damn well) look the same no matter under what conditions it is perceived.

How does it really look? Is there a 'real' appearance that causes the 'apparent appearance' (spot the tautology) and if so how do you differentiate the real from the apparent.

Berkeley's answer: you can't. The appearance is all we have. He asks if we perceive:

• by sight, anything besides light, colours, and shapes;
  
• by hearing, anything but sounds;
  
• by the palate, anything besides tastes;
  
• by the sense of smell, anything besides odours;
  
• by touch, anything more than tangible qualities.
  

He says "the senses perceive
only what they perceive immediately; because they don't
make inferences. So the deducing of causes or occasions
from effects and appearances (which are the only things we
perceive by sense) is entirely the business of reason".

Which seems reasonable to me.

Not how it really looks, but how it really is. Of course, inferences are "the business of reason". That's a tautology. The appearances are not all we have (whatever that means). We have what we infer. But, more importantly, what makes Berkeley think that what appears to us is not real? Something might not only look like a cigar, it might really be a cigar. Berkeley simply assumes that we never see cigars, but only appearances of cigars. What is the argument for that assumption? Is it to be supposed that because when we see a cigar, we see what appears to be a cigar, that what we see is only the appearance of a cigar and not a cigar. Is there any reason to think that what appears to be a cigar is not a cigar?

It doesn't matter what object you refer to - cigar, rock, dress, whatever. The question is always the same. Are there two things, or one? If there is an object, and the perception of the object, how can they be separated? You are inferring on the basis of appearance that there is a real object 'underneath' or 'apart from' or 'prior to' the appearance of the object. But in fact, however you engage with the object - from near, far, from this or that angle, or microscopically, you have a perception of the object. If you touch it, you have a tangible perception. There is nothing separate from each of those elements of perception.

There is a whole other line of argument as well. What is a cigar? Well in English, it is called Cigar. It has other names in other countries. Here we smoke it. In Quito (let's say) they are so numerous, that they stick 'em in the holes that appear in their mudbrick homes to keep the mosquitoes out. So there, a cigar is not something you smoke. You might say cigars are really only made out of tobacco. In Shanghai (say) they are making them out of corn husks, and calling them Smokeroons. Are they really cigars, or not?

Examples could be multiplied, but the principle is always the same. None of this would be news to deconstructionism, either.

The object is a thing. The perception of the object is not a thing, so it is not another thing. There is only one thing, the thing. The perception of the thing is the way the thing appears to us. But that does not mean that the appearance is also a thing. It is the reification of appearances which causes all the trouble.

. What would make you think that what people in Quito stick into holes are cigars, for heaven sake? What would they have in common with what are called "cigars"?

He is very clear about denying the existence of material substance. He says this in exactly those words at the beginning of the Dialogs.

As I pointed out several pages ago, the meaning of the word 'substance' is key in this. Substance is the underlying stuff in which 'accidents' inhere (accidents being the characteristics of the object). Berkeley is saying there is no substance apart from the accidents, and the accidents are given in perception, and don't exist outside perception. He explicitly addresses, and rejects, Galileo's distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and says that all such qualities are given in perception.

35. I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend either by sense or reflexion.
That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question.
The only thing whose existence we deny is that which philosophers call Matter or corporeal substance.

9. .......
The ideas we have of these they acknowledge not to be the resemblances of anything existing without the mind, or unperceived, but they will have our ideas of the primary qualities to be patterns or images of things which exist without the mind, in an unthinking substance which they call Matter.
By Matter, therefore, we are to understand an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist.
But it is evident from what we have already shown, that extension, figure, and motion are only ideas existing in the mind, and that an idea can be like nothing but another idea, and that consequently neither they nor their archetypes can exist in an unperceiving substance.
Hence, it is plain that that the very notion of what is called Matter or corporeal substance, involves a contradiction in it.

I have not focused on the Dialogs, but from what i read of his Treatise, Berkley did not deny material objects or matter of materials in general.

Phil: I seriously believe that there is no such thing as what
philosophers call 'material substance'; but if I were made to
see anything absurd or sceptical in this, then I would have
the same reason to renounce this belief as I think I have now
to reject the contrary opinion.

Hyl: What! can anything be more fantastical, more in conflict
with common sense, or a more obvious piece of scepticism,
than to believe there is no such thing as matter?

Here is the twelfth paragraph of the first of the dialogs, wherein Phil represents Berkeley

To which Hylas' response is,

Fairly unequivocal, I would say.

---------- Post added 03-17-2010 at 03:20 PM ----------

I had put a comment here about physics, but it is a red herring.

There is however a critique of Berkeley from the viewpoint of Advaita Vedanta at On Berkeley and Advaita

I have not focused on the Dialogs, but from what i read of his Treatise, Berkley did not deny material objects or matter of materials in general. [emphasis added]

What he denied was the matter of the philosophical realists, i.e. the unthinking substance and unthought matter.
The critical variable here is 'unthinking' and 'unthought'.
He repeated this many times in his Treatise.

What Berkeley deny is this thing called Matter or corporeal substance of philosophical realism. [emphasis added] ...

The argument is that the object and its perception cannot be separated. It is you who are introducing the reification by saying there is a thing, apart from the perception of it. The argument is saying that the 'material substance' is what cannot be demonstrated - but only inferred by reason. Which is what I think you are doing. It may be a reasonable inference, but it is an inference nonetheless.

---------- Post added 03-17-2010 at 11:27 AM ----------



The point is one of identity. The object may be exactly the same, but to one person, they are something you smoke, and to another, something you stick in a hole. So which is it really? There is no definite answer to that question apart from: it depends.

Berkeley's argument is that 'the appearance of the table' is all that is available. We infer a 'material substance' on the basis of the visual and tactile perceptions we have of the object, but there is really nothing beyond the various perceptions that we have. He will always ask, if you assert a real table above and beyond these perceptions, you are inferring something which is not given in actual experience. And experience always has to be in some mind, either yours or the Absolute Mind in which all things are eternally perceived. I think that is his argument in a nutshell. It is an argument about the nature of reality. I am naturally inclined to be sympathetic to it, but I understand why many wouldn't.

The other things that interests me about Berkeley, and where I think a real critique could be made of him in his own terms, is that I think he is nominalist, rather than realist. As he is nominalist, there is no grounds in his thought for universals. As there are no universals, I find it hard to see how he understands the nature of logic and mathematics. That is something I would like to look into.

As regards the separate argument of 'the identity of material particulars' - the point of this argument is to show that what we regard as the identity of a particular thing is very much a matter of conventional designation. The meaning and identity of an object is not directly given in experience, but again is inferred on the basis of what we know about it and how we interact with things of that kind. It can be argued on this basis that nothing has any absolute, real or final identity of its own. (This is actually an argument based on Buddhist logic called "Madhyamika".)
.
Given that there is a conventional agreement as to what things are, then the laws of the excluded middle and the like apply without any problems. As regards all of the hypothetical examples that are discussed in philosophy (the hypothetical chair, the hypothetical apple, and so on) then these conventions are perfectly valid. However when the subject of the discussion is as fundamental as first causes, ultimate origins, or the nature of reality, many of the conventional ways of dealing with objects no longer apply. This, I think, is one of the areas of the very interesting Australian philosopher, Graham Priest, who is a specialist in the topic of dialetheism. I don't understand the technicalities of his thinking, but I do know that the topic of the nature of reality in metaphysics is fraught with contradictions, and I think this is why. There are all sorts of logical difficulties that arise from the elementary observation that in discussions of the nature of reality as such, we are not other to that which we seek to understand.

Anyway I agree Berkeley's argument is very hard to get your head around. There may be very strong arguments against it, but I don't think that he is blatantly silly. I have been prompted to go back and look at the Dialogs again, in that updated edition I referred to above, and I find him a very persuasive and subtle thinker.

It seems to me that before we examine arguments against Berkeley, we ought to examine Berkeley's own arguments for his view.

Berkeley's argument is that 'the appearance of the table' is all that is available.

Of course, that is not an argument at all. It is an assertion. What we need is an argument for that assertion. Preferably, a good argument. Since it is not, in any case, a common intuition that "appearances are all we have". Most of us, in our saner moments, think we have tables.

(Yes, Berkeley is clearly a nominalist, and is therefore, an atheist when it comes to abstract entities).

I think that those of you who wish to discuss things going beyond the scope of the opening post should start a new thread. I realize, you are responding to someone else, but I think that all of this stuff that is not about Johnson's "argument" should be in another thread.

Could be. I suppose a thread could be started on Berkeley. It doesn't seem to me to make a lot of difference.

I think it matters because the on-topic posts get lost in the clutter of other things. For example, you still have not responded to my reply to one of your posts. My reply is post 180:

http://www.philosophyforum.com/philosophy-forums/branches-philosophy/metaphysics/7708-did-samuel-johnson-misunderstand-george-berkeley-4.html#post140304

You might also want to read the last part of something I posted in reply to someone else, which was post 182:

http://www.philosophyforum.com/philosophy-forums/branches-philosophy/metaphysics/7708-did-samuel-johnson-misunderstand-george-berkeley-4.html#post140308

Unless, of course, I have missed your reply in all of the clutter. In which case, kindly direct me to it.

You evidently do not get the point of the magician example. Johnson did not prove that he kicked a material object, or even that there was a material object to be kicked. In order to refute Berkeley, he needs to do that. Kicking a stone proves nothing, just like my magician example does not prove that he can turn water into wine, even if he really has that ability. You do agree, don't you, that if you saw a magic act, you would not simply believe the appearance was real, right? But suppose it was real. It being real would not prove it is real, and that is the point; that is why kicking a stone, material or otherwise, is insufficient to prove anything about what Berkeley was saying.

Berkeley's argument is that 'the appearance of the table' is all that is available.

Of course, that is not an argument at all. It is an assertion.