I hate to break it to you: you are NOT going to find any Transcendental project that explores in more depth the synthetic a priori conditions of all experience than in Kant's own Critique. Berkeley didn't even have a Transcendental project at all. He merely ran with a common-sense epistemic empiricist principle and drew invalid conclusions from it. I even recommend reading David Hume before Berkeley.

Berkeley made horrible blunders, and his philosophy is rather reserved for the simple-minded. I doesn't accomplish anything. It is dead end. So I strongly recommend devoting your full blown attention to Kant in depth instead. His philosophy is incredibly fruitful and fuels further research and exploration unlike Berkeley's philosophy which is a stale dead end.

But the results of modern sciences only yield empirical a posteriori truths, and their discoveries as they stand are very foreign to Kant's actual enterpise. Kant's project is a Transcendental project concerning uncovering the a priori necessary truths within the spontaneous cognitive faculties of mind--and these kinds of results empirical science cannot provide due to the very nature of its subject. Science is empirical. Kants project is a priori pure without taking any content provided by empirical perception at all.

You need to pick up all the modern day commentary on Kant's Critique, stop cherry-picking isolated passages out of context that *appear* to support your point, and stop mentioning only a very small minority of misguided people who agree with you while ignoring all the rest of the scholarship which emphatically disagrees. I have devoted my strictest attention to the Critique many times over; I possess extensive notes about it which come from my own readings and others' readings of the text; and I have written several papers on this work myself. But guess what: I do NOT see George Berkeley's Idealism evident anywhere in the Critique.

Yes he did. And that is why he is such an important philosopher, and we can learn so much from him just by unraveling his mistakes. How could his arguments be any good when they are in support of such an absurd conclusion? But how much can we learn from his arguments? A great deal! In addition, he was an excellent and shrewd critic of representative realism from whom representative realists have a lot to learn. Even now. So, I cannot agree with your assessment of him.

But it is so easy to refute Berkeley's Idealism once you see the fundamental error in his "Master Argument." To a green-recruit in philosophy, sure, Berkeley's view seems to be insightful and thorough--and I used to be a fan before I began my formal training in philosophy. After all, it only took my taking one undergraduate course in college years ago to see his mistakes, and I don't think his arguments offer any fundamental mind-boggling challenges to the representational theory of perception either. I find Berkelian Idealism quite naive, actually, and lacking the rigor necessary to address the tough epistemological questions that Kant addressed--especially after you get drilled with Kant's Critique so many times over, and other contemporary positions in epistemology. I think Kant "blows Berkeley out of the water," in terms of rigor, honesty, thoroughness, genius, and insightfulness. And Kant was only one generation removed from Berkeley.

Obviously, that evidence may make something highly plausible, but may not prove it, in the sense of mathematical demonstration. So,kicking a stone may not refute (beyond all doubt) that there are no material objects, but it does so beyond all reasonable doubt (at least in an age when there were no holographs).

But, I am not particularly interested in Berkeley at all, except to defend him being bashed as a strawman as in this OP.

You are short-sighted on this.
Evolutionary theory, neuroscience, cognitive neurosciences and the likes can penetrate into the a priori on a neuronal basis.

What other better tool to delve into our cognitive faculties other than cognitive neurosciences and complemented with others relevant sciences.

You can assume and presume all you want.
These days with the internet and torrents, we can have access to many books and download them. Anyone who has keen interests in any philosophers would have a collection of related books and papers easily and readily.

Kant is a great (genius and savant?) with his Copernican turn but he put up a thick wall infront of him and did not want to go further.

Schopenhauer with the advantage of a later period and having access to a wider range of new knowledge went further into a higher level of philosophy.

But it is so easy to refute Berkeley's Idealism once you see the fundamental error in his "Master Argument." To a green-recruit in philosophy, sure, Berkeley's view seems to be insightful and thorough--and I used to be a fan before I began my formal training in philosophy. After all, it only took my taking one undergraduate course in college years ago to see his mistakes, and I don't think his arguments offer any fundamental mind-boggling challenges to the representational theory of perception either. I find Berkelian Idealism quite naive, actually, and lacking the rigor necessary to address the tough epistemological questions that Kant addressed--especially after you get drilled with Kant's Critique so many times over, and other contemporary positions in epistemology. I think Kant "blows Berkeley out of the water," in terms of rigor, honesty, thoroughness, genius, and insightfulness. And Kant was only one generation removed from Berkeley.

When one is insulting Berkeley's philosophy, one is merele insulting one's own intelligence.

Worst still if it is based on the misunderstanding of his philosophy.

Berkeley's philosophy in the tradition of the involvement of the mind is equivalent to kindergarten standard.

If you are at college level, there is no need to make a nuisance of yourself by arguing strongly and egoistically plus condemning the ideas put forward by a kindergarten kid.

But I did not say that Berkeley's theory was even plausible. Indeed, I said quite the opposite. I said it was absurd. I think his criticisms of representative realism hit the mark, but that has to be discussed by examples. And, I said we can learn a lot from Berkeley's mistakes. Was Kant greater than Berkeley. I suppose so, although Kant had Berkeley's and Hume's shoulders to stand on, remember.

Yes, but Johnson would point out that if Kant attempted to stand on Berkeley's shoulders, he would certainly plummet to the ground, as they were, supposedly, quite insubstantial!

Samm

But I did not say that Berkeley's theory was even plausible. Indeed, I said quite the opposite. I said it was absurd. I think his criticisms of representative realism hit the mark, but that has to be discussed by examples. And, I said we can learn a lot from Berkeley's mistakes. Was Kant greater than Berkeley. I suppose so, although Kant had Berkeley's and Hume's shoulders to stand on, remember.

Extrain, you obviously disagree with Berkeley as most of us do in one regard or another. But do you like Johnson, think that kicking a stone can refute Berkeley's argument about the nature of reality?

But of course, brakes that do not work are not made because they cannot be sold. So it is unlikely that pressing the brakes will prove anything except that whatever kind of brakes you have either do or don't work when pressed.

Samm

Ok, my apologies. I agree.

I'm not so sure Kant is indebted to Berkeley that much at all--certainly not near as much as he is indebted to Hume. Kant himself thought he owed homage to Hume and Leibniz, actually.

---------- Post added 03-25-2010 at 10:34 AM ----------



Way to bring me back to the topic.

I was reading everyone else's Moorean approach to this, and guess I would respond the same way--namely, by first weighing the initial plausibilities of competing alternative hypotheses before I answer....

Remember, Berkeley starts out his arguments with what he calls a very "common sense" princple but then derives (albeit invalidly) a very counterintuitive conclusion. And Moore approached the topic of skepticism, just like everyone seems to be approaching Berkeley's argument here. Moore used the "your modens ponens is my modus tollens" reply to the skeptic. Like here:

Skeptic says:

If I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat, then I do not know that I have hands.
I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat.
Therefore, I do not know that I have hands.

Moore says:

If i do not know that I am not a brain in a vat, then I do not know that I have hands.
But I do know that I have hands.
Therefore, I do know that I am not a brain in a vat.

So which premise is more plausible than the other? That I know that I have hands? Or that I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat?
Philosophers will answer differently.

I would respond similarly to Berkeley about Idealism if I were to take this approach.

But, considering the complexity of the notion knowing that one is a brain in a vat, and what implications that would have, as contrasted with the comparative simplicity of knowing I have two hands, what would you consider the comparative likelihood of the two? I think it is obviously more likely that I know I have two hands than that I do not know I am a brain in a vat. I have a lot of reason for thinking the first is true, and I have no reason for thinking the latter is true. Is that, in any way, dubious?

But, considering the complexity of the notion knowing that one is a brain in a vat, and what implications that would have, as contrasted with the comparative simplicity of knowing I have two hands, what would you consider the comparative likelihood of the two? I think it is obviously more likely that I know I have two hands than that I do not know I am a brain in a vat. I have a lot of reason for thinking the first is true, and I have no reason for thinking the latter is true. Is that, in any way, dubious?

Yes, just because we can conjure circumstances like the brain in the vat, does not mean we should genuinely consider them as plausible. We have no reason to believe we are brains in vats, and we have every reason to believe we are people with bodies.

But people present the brain in the vat thought-experiment as some sort of negative proof that we cannot know how we are experiencing this world. And that seems to me silly, since the burden of proof is on the person stating we are brains in vats, and not I for believing I am actually walking down streets and kicking stones.

I find consideration of this so-called 'brain in vat' a bit trivialising, really. There are much more realistic scenarios for imagining the way in which reality, so-called, might be a grand illusion. One is, that it does exist pretty much exactly as it appears, but that we attribute to it all kinds of meanings and qualities which it doesn't have, on the basis of our own prejudices and attitudes. It exists, but its existence is not what we take it to be. We continually misapprehend it. I think there is a fair amount of common-sense support for this idea on television, actually.

Anyway, off the point. I only had one comment I wanted to have criticized here. I think esse means 'to be', and 'to be' does not mean the same as 'to exist'. It is true that I can say that 'I exist' and 'I am', however I think the two terms mean different things. 'My existence' refers to my being in the world, the external facts of my person, etc. 'My being' is the ground in which these inhere. I suppose I am veering off into some kind of existentialism here.

But as a result, I think there is a difference between the ideas 'to be is to be perceived' and 'something only exists if it is perceived'. The role of mind is pivotal, once again. It is within the mind that the nature of existence is realized, or made real. This does not say outside the human mind, or a mind, that nothing exists. I think it is to say, that outside mind, nothing either exists or does not exist. But I know that is not going to stand up, on face value. I certainly have much more reading to do.

Ayway I acknowledge this has not much to do with Berkeley. I now understand - thanks to all - the limitations of Berkeley's view. I don't think his view is without some truth, or without merit, but at the same time, I also don't believe it provides a complete philosophical outlook. At best it is a statement that says 'in an important sense, esse est percipe' - and then proceeds to try and create an entire worldview on this basis.

That is to say that "to be" and "to exist" mean the same thing.