Maybe he was just joking?

But I can show you real, tangible objects as evidence that matter exists, and we have evidence that matter has existed before minds have. Science has repeatedly shown that things exist independent of our perceptions. Consider the argument in another thread is:



So, if Berkeley is saying the rock is a culmination of sensations, he's wrong. There's something there independent of our sensations. There's overwhelming evidence for this. I mean just the great intersubjectivity alone tells us something. If you reject something like this, then I suspect you could reject anything.

Did Samuel Johnson misunderstand George Berkeley?
The famous story (in Boswell's Life of Johnson) that Samuel Johnson kicked a rock (or was it a stone?) and cried out, "Thus I refute Berkeley". Berkeley, of course, denied that there were any material objects. It is often said (with some condescension) that all this showed was that Johnson misunderstood Berkeley, and that what Johnson did was not a refutation of Berkeley's view. My question is whether this criticism of Johnson is correct. Why didn't Johnson refute Berkeley by kicking the stone or rock?

Did Samuel Johnson misunderstand George Berkeley?

The famous story (in Boswell's Life of Johnson) that Samuel Johnson kicked a rock (or was it a stone?) and cried out, "Thus I refute Berkeley". Berkeley, of course, denied that there were any material objects. It is often said (with some condescension) that all this showed was that Johnson misunderstood Berkeley, and that what Johnson did was not a refutation of Berkeley's view. My question is whether this criticism of Johnson is correct.

Why didn't Johnson refute Berkeley by kicking the stone or rock?

Why would you think that?

Your response shows that you do not understand.

And in a like manner, saying that there is "really" matter in back of the sensations, is equally going beyond experience as being an idealist.

It smacks of tongue in cheek, even if you're interpreting it as being a serious challenge to Berkeley you have to admit there is at least some element of jest. With the whole kicking the pebble thing. I'm not certain that anyone takes G.E. Moore's proof for an external world seriously, it's understood that he's being sarcastic. That's just how it sounds to me anyways. Anyone who has actually read the first page of Berkeley knows that this isn't anywhere near serious challenge to his position.

...

And in a like manner, saying that there is "really" matter in back of the sensations, is equally going beyond experience as being an idealist.

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Let's suppose you are right about that. So what? Saying that world is really round goes beyond the belief of the flat-earthers that the world is flat.

Of course the view that there is matter which causes our sensations is not what Berkeley thinks is true. That is why, if correct, it would refute Berkeley.

Do you imagine that Johnson doing what he believes is kicking a stone proves that we are not brains in vats?

The first page? I'll have to look that up.

No one I have ever read or heard of thought that so far as I know. I don't think that Moore was every joking or sarcastic, or meant other than he wrote

That is a very different claim. "Going beyond someone's beliefs" and "going beyond experience" are two different ideas. And in the case of the flat-earthers, the dispute is not about metaphysics, but about the shape of a particular object.





No. If it were correct that there is matter which causes our sensations, that would make Berkeley wrong. But being wrong and being proven wrong are two different things.

Do you imagine that Johnson doing what he believes is kicking a stone proves that we are not brains in vats? If so, please explain how that would be. And if not, then you should be able to see how it likewise proves nothing regarding the dispute between idealists and materialists.

But I do understand. I know what solipsism is. And I know of the brain in the vat.

So, anyway, back to the argument I posted originating from kennethamy... (the one you ignored)

Do you believe that science has to the capacity to prove that an external world exists? Yes, or no?

You know what you believe solipsism to be based on your notions of the mind and reality. The problem lies in the fact that idealists have a much different definition of mind and reality than people working through the materialist scope of modern science.

"Science" as it exists today is a very young movement, and idealism is an attempt to capture Plato's rationalism. So if you are unable to understand Plato, then you are unable to understand idealism.

---------- Post added 03-01-2010 at 11:12 AM ----------



Not without there first existing an interior consciousness.

In which case they are dependent upon each other.

But my point was that if it is true that the proposition that there is matter does go beyond our sensations, it doesn't follow that by kicking the stone Johnson has not refuted Berkeley. Just because Berkeley hold that we can know only what we can immediately sense, and rejects inferential knowledge, why should we go along with him on that?

Why cannot we infer (as on some accounts we do) or postulate, that there is something that explains those sensations?

That Berkeley refuses to countenance such an inference (which he does) or does not recognize the value of positing what we do not directy observe (which he does) does not show that we have either misunderstood or not refuted Berkeley. It is simply to suppose that Berkeley is right, or that we are confined to Berkeley's assumptions and cannot dispute them. But why should we do that?

The BIV is the same kind of thing, but needs to be treated somewhat differently.

Can it be that whenever we say something contrary to Berkeley's assumptions that we are misinterpreting him?

Can we criticize him only internally and not externally? Is that the kind of hermeneutic approach to criticism you hold? I didn't think you did. That is the sort of thing the postmoderns think.

Of course, this is a fundamental issue of criticism.

I don't think that Rationalism and Idealism have much to do with one another.
Plato was an Idealist, but not an Idealist in the sense that Berkeley was. Plato would have been called an objective idealist in the 19th and 20th centuries. Berkeley was a subjective idealist. Plato did not believe that the world was mental. And, his Ideas (Forms) were not mental objects.

The famous story (in Boswell's Life of Johnson) that Samuel Johnson kicked a rock (or was it a stone?) and cried out, "Thus I refute Berkeley". Berkeley, of course, denied that there were any material objects. It is often said (with some condescension) that all this showed was that Johnson misunderstood Berkeley, and that what Johnson did was not a refutation of Berkeley's view. My question is whether this criticism of Johnson is correct. Why didn't Johnson refute Berkeley by kicking the stone or rock?

Whatever is wrong with philosophers' thoughts, it is, at any rate, not ordinary falsity, or ignorance of empirical truths. Quine argued, with enough plausibility to satisfy some unexacting folk, that philosophy is continuous with empirical science;8 and Popper once tried to show that philosophical problems regularly have `their roots in science'.9 Such a belief can make for better philosophy, (as I remarked in Essay 4 above). The only trouble with it is, it is not true. You need only try it out in particular cases, rather than in general terms, in order to see this. Take any paradigm philosopher: Parmenides, say, or Plato, or Aquinas, or Berkeley, or Meinong. That the thoughts for which they are so famous had gone enormously wrong, is not in dispute. But was their trouble that they were ignorant of, or that they denied, some empirical facts or other, of which we are apprised? To ask this question is to answer it. Or take British idealism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Did the idealism of Bosanquet and Bradley depend on ignorance of, or require denial of, anything in Lyell's geology, say, or in Darwin's biology, or in Einstein's physics? Only someone very ignorant of their philosophy could suppose that it did.

Berkeley is always considered an empiricist because he believes that all knowledge comes by experience, even though he is also a 'material idealist'.

It has occurred to me that although you seem disinclined to go along with me, there is someone else with whom you may be more inclined to agree. David Stove wrote:



Stove, What Is Wrong With Our Thoughts

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Oh yes. I agree with Stove about nearly everything. I have posted that link several times. Just about a week ago I did it again.

And do you now agree that Johnson did not understand Berkeley, as his "proof" that Berkeley is wrong is irrelevant to what Berkeley stated, which is obvious? To quote Stove, "But was their trouble that they [Berkeley et al.] were ignorant of, or that they denied, some empirical facts or other, of which we are apprised? To ask this question is to answer it." And we may apply what he says of later idealism to Berkeley: "Or take British idealism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Did the idealism of Bosanquet and Bradley depend on ignorance of, or require denial of, anything in Lyell's geology, say, or in Darwin's biology, or in Einstein's physics? Only someone very ignorant of their philosophy could suppose that it did." Although I do not deny that there is something wrong with Berkeley's thoughts, I think that Johnson failed miserably at identifying what was wrong with Berkeley's thoughts.

And yes, I am aware of you providing the link, which I got from reading your posts (though I have read the entire book previously). Thank you for the link.

The famous story (in Boswell's Life of Johnson) that Samuel Johnson kicked a rock (or was it a stone?) and cried out, "Thus I refute Berkeley". Berkeley, of course, denied that there were any material objects. It is often said (with some condescension) that all this showed was that Johnson misunderstood Berkeley, and that what Johnson did was not a refutation of Berkeley's view. My question is whether this criticism of Johnson is correct. Why didn't Johnson refute Berkeley by kicking the stone or rock?

Regretably, like Einstein and Newton, he had to resort to God to fill the final gap of knowledge. .