I presume you have copies of the Treatise and Dialogs in hand (or folder).

Let's look at the Dialogs first.
Show me where did Berkeley repeat the phrase Esse est percipi in the Dialog.
If this is his central theme, surely he should have repeated it in the Dialogs.

I have numbered the Dialogs and there are 843 conversational paras.
(have not checked whether i have misnumbered, but i don't think this is critical).

Let's take the first 20 paras.
In para 11, Berkeley stated,
That there is no such thing as what PHILOSOPHERS CALL MATERIAL SUBSTANCE.
How would you interpret Berkeley's view of what is material substance as philosophers would called it.
In para 12, Hylas mention the term "matter".
What is Hylas definition of matter?
In para 13, Because Hylas believe in the existence of matter, Berkeley will set out to prove that Hylas is a greater sceptic than he is.
You can refer to other paras to answer the above.
I think we should reconcile (either agree or disagree) the above before we proceeed further.

So Berkeley thinks Material substance doesn't exist, and that those who contend that it does exist are greater skeptics than Berkeley. Ok, so what? Where's the argument here?

Do you intend to present a case on behalf of Berkeley? It would save everyone time if you actually got to the point.

OK then I have a question about what is the nature of esse in the absence of percipe (if I can use that expression.) It concerns the case of the ships at sea, illuminated or not by the lighthouse, and what they are, in the absence of any perception of them. What size do they have, for example? Remember, this is a question asked in regard to them, in the absence of any viewpoint. I do notice that a viewpoint does bring to the consideration of the ship, certain parameters, such as its size and distance, relative to myself, or some other observer. Yet if the ship is there at anchor, as we say, and yet totally unperceived, then it what manner can it be said to 'exist'? For in this case, it does not have a location, a size, or a shape, or many other basic attributes which, even in just our in our mind's eye, we see. Unperceived, it would appear to have none of these attributes, would it? For they can only inhere in the ship insofar as it is perceived by some observer, in some location, from whom it has some distance and direction, and relative to whom is has some size. Isn't this the case?

OK then I have a question about what is the nature of esse in the absence of percipe (if I can use that expression.)

Yet if the ship is there at anchor, as we say, and yet totally unperceived, then it what manner can it be said to 'exist'?

Unperceived, it would appear to have none of these attributes, would it?

For they can only inhere in the ship insofar as it is perceived by some observer,

The main contention that Berkeley disagreed was what philosophers called unthought 'matter'.To Berkeley' such unthought 'matter' is an impossibility.

This is similar to Kant thing-in-itself.

In addition, the 'perception' in Esse est percipi is a very complex term and should be interpret in line with the concept of "Anschauung" as used by the German philosophers.

To use perception in this case in the ordinary conventional sense of merely sensations, ideas, etc. is likely to go off tangent.

I still believe reality exists for, and in relation to, a viewpoint.

Whether it exists apart from that remains to be seen, in my view. I think B.

Berkeley's idealism can be separated from his God concept by replacing God with Kant's CoPR and modern sciences.
Berkeley did mention that his main focus was to prove the existence of God.

Berkeley's form of idealism". Specifically the term, "form". Certainly, God is integral to Berkeley's own views, but I would have thought that by using there term "form of" you mean something wider than that. For example, John Stuart Mill defined physical objects as "permanent possibilities of sensation", a view that has been called, "Berkeley without God".

Berkeley correctly affirms. But this impossibility does not entail that the existence of the object depends on my perception of it. This inference is exactly Berkeley's logical fallacy.

well I would have let it go, but having been accused of some kind of crypto-fascism I think I had better say something. I don't believe in subjectivism in the sense which I think I have conveyed.

My overall philosophy - this is not an academic philosophy and won't stand up in academia of course - is that the human being is in a sense, the universe knowing itself.

Most humans are thoroughly immersed in their own life story and therefore unable to appreciate this perspective.

What I think the spiritual side of religion is a metaphor for, is awakening to this fact.

The most direct expression of it is in the philosophical traditions is non-dualism.

The aspects of Berkeley and other Western idealism that appeal to me have something in common with this, although in other ways they are quite dissimilar.

On the other side of the scale, materialism and objectivism, whatever that means, signifies the inability and unwillingness of the individual to deal with this reality

On the other side of the scale, materialism and objectivism, whatever that means, signifies the inability and unwillingness of the individual to deal with this reality, and the 'flight into insentience' by becoming fixated on and absorbed in the world of technology, matter, and so on. This is probably the normal state.

Evidence E. that Y is true need not rule out the possibility that Y is not true. It need only make Y more probable than not. Or, even just increase the probability that Y is true. It need only be such that it would be difficult to explain the existence of E. unless Y were true.

[Berkeley's] Idealism has an incredibly difficult time accounting for what error is since, if there does not exist an external material world, then there is no way of making sense of my point-of-view ever being false, illiusory, or mistaken. All efforts to rid ourselves of error are, in the end, superfluous efforts since there exists nothing about which we can be mistaken in the first place.

Just for the record, I wasn't accusing you of fascism; I was only showing the consequences of the view you seemed to be proposing.

I agree. But I would say that the human being is merely part of universe that knows itself.

I agree. But FYI, I think most people in this forum would disagree with us.

"Non-dualism" with respect to what exactly? There are all types of dualisms one can either accept or reject.

What "reality"?

Aren't we talking about moral relativism here, or even moral nihilism. I guess if you think "everything" is subjective then morals would be also. Of course my position is moral relativism in incompatible with most forms of idealism.

But does Berkeley really say that. The existence of the object does not depend on your individual finite minds perception of it, it depends on the infinite mind or god.

Oh, and yes I think Johnson clearly misunderstood Berkeley and as far as I can tell so did/does most everybody else.

IMHO It seems to me that if you leave god (infinite mind) out of his system of philosophy, the Bishop's going to be upset and rightfully so.

Mind/matter substance dualism
Mind/matter property dualism
Mind/matter conceptual dualism (which is usually a form of metaphysical monism).

Subjective/objective justification
Subjective/objective morality

Berkeley's Idealism is the thesis that only the mental exists and not the physical.

one is refusing to recognize that there exists an external reality independent of one's own ideas whether one chooses to recognize that fact or not.

I do require a philosophy that makes sense of our being in the cosmos, and there are plenty that won't even attempt that question. That is what I have always sought in philosophy, but analytic and modern philosophy is not much interested in questions of that type, it seems to me.

Nondualism as in advaita (Hindu) or Advaya (Buddhist). Essentially these all grow out of the consciousness arising from meditative practises. They are not well represented or understood in a lot of western philosophy.

The reality that the Buddhas exemplify, which is completely different to what humans generally understand as "reality".

As Kant says in his Critique of Practical Reason:

It is our duty to promote the highest good; and it is not merely our privilege but a necessity connected with the duty as requisite to presuppose the possibility of this highest good. This presupposition is made only under the condition of the existence of God, and this condition of the existence of God, and this condition inseparably connects this supposition with duty. Therefore it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God. [2]


The existence of God is therefore to Kant a necessary postulate for what he sees to be an objectively valid morality. That morality is objective, Kant has no doubt:

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. [3]


Of course when I say Kant resorted to God in his ethics I do not mean he accepted moses, the mountain and the ten commandments only that he asserted the concept of god was morally necessary for them.

For the "Eastern Way," just like any other religious tradition, the distinction between their conceptions of what they take to be "real" and "illusory" is entirely dependent on their own linguistic and cultural frameworks too. But it is far from clear whether or not these arbitrary distinctions are logical. And that's what I dispute. AFter all, how can an Eastern consistently say that there are no distinctions while at the same time claim there exists a distinction between reality and illusions? Is this not another distinction? And upon what criteria do they decide this distinction is the correct one to be making?

Assertions like these are no more exempt from critical analysis than any other philosophical view.

I am beginning to think one can not package worldviews so neatly like this. I feel like I am taking a test and if you answer enough questions at the end the computer will spit out an analysis of your worldview

The nature of ultimate reality is a question (matter, mind, monism, or perhaps like me some think ultimate reality is events or moments of experience).

I do not feel Berkeley denies there is a world independent of your finite mind.

Well to be fair for materialist the mental exists it is just a rare, emergent, epiphenomena or matter and is ultimately reducible to material states.i.e. the mental is completely dependent on the material and most of the universe is inert, insensate matter devoid of mental properties.

Berkeley would say that what we call the "material", the "physical" really is dependent on the infinite mind of god and has no independent existence or properties other than those divinely given.

Btw, in the first Edition of the CoPR, Kant agreed with Berkeley completely but changed his mind in the 2nd edition with a slightly different interpretation of transcendental idealism.

But when later I read Kant's great work in the first edition, which is already so rare, I saw, to my great pleasure, all these contradictions disappear, and found that although Kant does not use the formula, "No object without a subject," he yet explains, with just as much decision as Berkeley and I do, the outer world lying before us in space and time as the mere idea of the subject that knows it.
Therefore, for example, he says there without reserve (p. 383):
"If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must disappear, for it is nothing but a phenomenon in the sensibility of our subject, and a class of its ideas."
But the whole passage from p. 348-392, in which Kant expounded his pronounced idealism with peculiar beauty and clearness, was suppressed by him in the second edition, and instead of it a number of remarks controverting it were introduced.

In this way then the text of the "Critique of Pure Reason," as it has circulated from the year 1787 to the year 1838, was disfigured and spoilt, and it became a self-contradictory book, the sense of which could not therefore be thoroughly clear and comprehensible to any one.

The particulars about this, and also my conjectures as to the reasons and the weaknesses which may have influenced Kant so to disfigure his immortal work,
I have given in a letter to Professor Rosenkranz, and he has quoted the principal passage of it in his preface to the second volume of the edition of Kant's collected works edited by him, to which I therefore refer. In consequence of my representations, Professor Rosenkranz was induced in the year 1838 to restore the "Critique of Pure Reason" to its original form, for in the second volume referred to he had it printed according to the first edition of 1781, by which he has rendered an inestimable service to philosophy; indeed, he has perhaps saved from destruction the most important work of German literature; and this should always be remembered to his credit


But let no one imagine that he knows the "Critique of Pure Reason " and has a distinct conception of Kant's teaching if he has only read the second or one of the later editions.
That is altogether impossible, for he has only read a mutilated, spoilt, and to a certain extent ungenuine text. It is my duty to say this here decidedly and for every one's warning.
[Unquote]

Ooops, i have accidentally replaced the original with the above which was intended as a new post.
To see the original refer to this post

Btw, in the first Edition of the CoPR, Kant agreed with Berkeley completely but changed his mind in the 2nd edition with a slightly different interpretation of transcendental idealism.