But is any of what you have written a reason for thinking that Johnson did not understand Berkeley, and refute him? Berkeley assuredly does deny the reality of the material world. He believes that the world is spiritual. If you don't understand that, you do not understand Berkeley's main thesis. If the "ultimate basis for the world" is divine thought, then how could there be a material world? Unless Berkeley believes that divine thought is material. But do you think that is so? Berkeley constantly denies there is a material world, and he thinks that the belief that there is a material world is a belief implanted in us by the Devil to conceal God. For. Berkeley argues, if we but understood that there is not material world, we would see clearly that the only cause of our experiences could be (as you say) divine thought. Without the supposition of a material world, we would have no explanation of our experiences by God. So, to say that he is not denying the reality of the material world (as you do) undercuts Berkeley's argument at the knees.

A personal attack is no substitute for an argument.

That is to say that when, by kicking a stone, Johnson's foot did not pass through the stone, but impacted it, and moved it, he proved that it was a material object. For that is what material objects are like.

No, because it does not assume what needs to be proved. It is designed to prove what needs to be proved. That is to say that when, by kicking a stone, Johnson's foot did not pass through the stone, but impacted it, and moved it, he proved that it was a material object. For that is what material objects are like. Suppose I am challenged to prove that there are giraffes, and I take someone to the zoo and I point to a giraffe. Am I then begging the question?

I thought that Berkeley believed that for something to exist was for the perceiver to have certain sensations.
Isn't that true?
What else does esse est percipi mean?

Neither is the blithering nonsense you "respond" with. You do not even seem to read my responses to the issues you have with my arguments. I explain that philosophers sometimes must either choose between giving a special definition to a word or making one up. You must know this to be true if you have read any philosophy. It is commonplace. You do give the appearance of having some familiarity with philosophy. And yet you respond by saying in effect that I cannot use any word other than as it is used in common speech. You deny me the right that most other philosophers have often used in expressing their ideas to others--ideas for which there is no word readily available to communicate them clearly and completely. I defined my use of the words for you, and yet you suggested that I was just assigning random meanings to words. Your actions are intolerable, improper, and repugnant. Why should I continue to discuss anything with you if you cannot show me a minimal amount of respect? If you think that I'm using personal attack on you, you should see the posts that I erase without sending, not for your sake but out of respect for the site. You are totally blind to the ideas of others and obstinate and unyielding in ideas of your own which are offered without support other than that you think so. You really must learn to read what other people are saying to you, to understand their arguments, before you respond with such nonsense as you respond with.


Would you like to discuss my ideas or yours or both? I am not unkind until I have been driven to frustration. Do you think that Johnson's action was sufficient to discredit Berkeley's argument regarding matter?

Samm

Well a good place to start is always with questions like "where in the chain of being or the realm of "existence" does experience begin or end and what are your reasons for thinking that?"

Drawing the line between mind and no mind, or experience or no experience, between the mental and the material is actually not an easy thing to do. Science tells us relatively little about the subjective nature of our own experience and there is little reason to think that science does or will tell us much about the experiences of other "entities" that have material aspects or properties as well.

George Berkeley basically gives primacy to the mental and experiential properties of reality and I do not think modern physics or human experience refutes him. No one is denying the reality of the material world they are just denying that that is the entire story. There is no ultimate reality without the mental. In Berkeley.s case there is no world without God. The ultimate basis for the world for Berkeley is divine thought.

But we still have a very big problem with ambiogenesis.

Chief amongst which is that it is not in the dictionary.

Humanity, I use the word consciousness to mean "that-which-experiences." That's what you and I and kennethamy are; we are conscious beings. We see and hear, taste and touch. feel contact and weight and temperature, we think and dream, we remember and worry, we are happy or sad or lonely or angry, we hunger and thirst and lust. We are conscious of all these things, and thru them we know ourselves and our world.

But do I mean to imply that rocks and quarks are conscious beings? Yes. Precisely so.
Consciousness as the ability to experience, and that alone, does not require sentience or self-awareness. It requires only the ability to experience, by which I mean specifically the ability to react or respond to a stimulus. How does an apple fall to ground if it doesn't experience the tug of gravity? How do quarks bond to form protons and neutrons if the do not experience the color force? This is all I mean when I say that apples, rocks, and quarks are conscious beings as we humans are. The only differences are that our experiences are more numerous and more complex and that our experiences include sentient functions that allow us to have and make choices.

What word would you recommend that I use to identify that unseen seer within who is not a property of our existence but actually IS that reality by which we exist and know that we exist.

Actually, all I deny you is the right to use a different word with a different meaning, but claim it is really the same word with the same meaning as the one used in common common speech. For example, you should not use the term, "experience" to say that when a car is dented it is experiencing a dent, and mean the same thing by "experience" that the word means when it is used to say that the person experienced a great deal of pain. I am just denying you the right to commit the fallacy of equivocation. Is that wrong?

There is general agreement that if something looks like a giraffe, it is a giraffe. But there is no such agreement that if something looks and behaves like a material object, it is a material object.

The term, "material object" is a quasi-term of art. It is mostly a philosopher's term, and if it does not refer to objects that are mind-independent, and which is (as Locke put it) "impenetrable", then to what would it refer? I suppose then it would fail to refer. Which is exactly what Berkeley maintains. And, it fails to refer (according to B.) not the way "unicorn" fails to refer. It fails to refer because it is a confused idea, or it is meaningless. In B's view, "material object" implies, "material substance", which he thinks makes no sense. And that is a part of the issue. Is someone who thinks that there are material object someone who is committed to material substance? I don't think that was, for example, Hume's view. It isn't mine, either.

There is no logical impossibility in the supposition that the whole of life is a dream, in which we ourselves create all the objects that come before us. But although this is not logically impossible, there is no reason whatever to suppose that it is true; and it is,
in fact, a less simple hypothesis, viewed as a means of accounting for the facts of our own life, than the common-sense hypothesis that there really are objects independent of us, whose action on us causes our sensations.

This is why I find books discussing the problems of philosophy much more interesting than books discussing the history of philosophers.

So Berkeley thought "material object" implies "material substance", but you (and Hume) do not. If Berkeley had not thought that, then perhaps he would have accepted that there are material objects. Have I got that right?

The problem is that this argument is highly abstract, and seems a long way removed from the empirical question of whether one's foot goes through a stone when it kicks it. Can you please elaborate on how kicking a stone is relevant to (a) the existence or non-existence of material substance, and (b) whether "material object" implies "material substance"?

It seems to me that the experienced solidity of an object does not prove the object's mind-independence. If it did, then any tactile experience would prove the existence of a material (i.e. mind-independent) world. So the mere experience of swinging one's foot through the air would prove there is a material world, since the feeling of swinging is a kind of tactile experience. (If one experienced the foot swinging but then passing through the stone, that would indicate that there is a material world, albeit a rather odd one.) So I do not see how the impacting and moving of the stone are crucial.

Solidity is not a sufficient condition, but it seems to me a necessary condition for something's being a material object

and, therefore a reason to think it is one.

Berkeley denies that there are material objects on the ground that nothing is mind-independent (esse est percipi). But that Idealist principle seems to me simply refutable by reflecting that objects predating minds are known to have existed.

But that Idealist principle seems to me simply refutable by reflecting that objects predating minds are known to have existed.

Yes. Forget about kicking stones; this seems a much stronger argument in favour of realism. (I am aware of the Kantian counter-argument that pre-existing objects only prove "common-sense" realism and not "philosophical" realism; but I don't fully understand it.)