Berkeley took Locke's ideas a step further and argued that there is no material world.
He believed that there are only ideas and minds, and that to be is to be perceived.
I'm just curious what people think about his philosophy. Is there any evidence to the contrary? Are there any decent arguments to refute his reasoning?
Is his reasoning sound or does it contain hidden fallacies?

You and I both know that that is not a refutation of Berkeley's philosophy.

You can't gather evidence against a metaphysical assumption. Metaphysical assumptions are interpretations of physical phenomena, and unfalsifiable as such.

John Locke believed that we experience the world through an indirect, representative realism, that our perceptions are all we actually know and that external objects may be quite different than we assume they are.
Berkeley took Locke's ideas a step further and argued that there is no material world.
He believed that there are only ideas and minds, and that to be is to be perceived.
I'm just curious what people think about his philosophy. Is there any evidence to the contrary? Are there any decent arguments to refute his reasoning?
Is his reasoning sound or does it contain hidden fallacies?

It is interesting how it is thought that only internal criticisms of Berkeley are even possible criticisms. I wonder why that is. It is as if metaphysical views are hermetically sealed off from the world. A criticism like Johnson's is supposed to show only what a backwoodsman he really is. As with G.E. Moore who shocked the British Academy by even venturing that by displaying his hands, he was proving the existence of the external world. Johnson a backwoodsman? Maybe. But G.E. Moore?

Is his reasoning sound or does it contain hidden fallacies?

You can't gather evidence against a metaphysical assumption. Metaphysical assumptions are interpretations of physical phenomena, and unfalsifiable as such.

A standard refutation of Berkeley goes thusly however.

Some of Berkeley's key assumptions.
1. To be is to be perceived.
2. The world is made of of perceivers and their perceptions.
3. The perceiver is unperceivable.
4. There is no external world, only minds.

A contradiction may be derived from these three assumptions which is devastating to Berkeley's position. If there is no external world, and to be is to be perceived how do perceivers come into existence. You can't say that perceivers being is not contingent on being perceived, because Berkeley's entire position is that to be is to be perceived. And if perceivers could be without being perceived, then why couldn't other things. But perceivers surely cannot be perceived, so then perceivers must not exist. However, we know that there exists at least one perceiver (you). So then being is not contingent upon being perceived.

That seems a little dogmatic, don't you think? And why are interpretations of physical phenomena unfalsifiable. Can't there be mistaken interpretations of physical phenomena?

In any case, if kicking the stone does not show Berkley's view is wrong, then nothing does.

There are several things wrong with what Berkeley states, some of which are revealed by reading Hume. (Berkeley, by the way, was great at revealing problems with some of his predecessors' views.)

Frankly, I think if Berkeley had followed his program more consistently, he would have ended up a solipsist and an atheist, as one does not directly experience other people or god more than one experiences matter. And then he should have also thrown out the self as well, as all he really experiences is, as Hume famously put it, "a bundle or collection of different perceptions". What some people imagine to be the self, or the "container" of these perceptions, is not experienced.

But, of course, it is another question whether or not he should have gone down the path that he did in the first place. For that, I will simply suggest reading articles about Berkeley and see what kinds of criticisms you can find. I will give you a hint: Most philosophers since Berkeley have been decidedly unconvinced by him.

I think it's a practical view, that is justified by its usefulness. Still, I wonder how he can speak so freely about a reality that can only be known via representation? He creates a dualism that he can only know one side of. And yet it makes perfect sense that he would do so.

I feel that Kant did the same sort of thing, and was criticized for the same reason. If reality-in-itself is unknowable, in what way does it exist? Except as a hypothetical cause of representation that must exist within this same zone of "representation"?

I'm not sure I understand the dualism you mentioned. I thought that Berkeley was a monist, in that all is immaterial, as either an idea or a perceiver of ideas. Essentially his philosophy is that we are all independent entities created by God living in a matrix programmed with God's ideas.
But everything, in his view, is made of whatever material God is made of. There is no second thing...
Unless you have some insight that I'm missing.

He believed that there are only ideas and minds, and that to be is to be perceived.

Sorry, I was responding to Locke. My skullwires were crossed. My apologies. Yes, I agree that B was presenting a nondualist view. Sorry about the confusion.

---------- Post added 05-12-2010 at 05:01 PM ----------



Now I will actually respond as I should have. I think B's position is reasonable, except that in this case, "ideas" and "minds" become somewhat useless words. Because if you dissolve the mind/matter dichotomy, you are left with something new. I suppose that "mind" is a good word to get the point across, but perhaps some word that doesn't reference the old distinction should have been applied. (I have a fondness for "absolute idealism." When idealism becomes absolute, it's no longer idealism. To me this is a great leap from Kant to Hegel. It may be useless practically, but it's quite poetic.)

I completely agree. Mind is just a concept that people are familiar with, so he used it, but for precision sake, he should have come up with a new word.

Metaphysical concepts like this seem useless at first, because there is no way we can use this information practically. But, our metaphysical foundation (what we think is metaphysically true) is what we build all other branches of philosophy on top of. If we change the foundation, all other things begin to change to, which would include how we relate to objects and life forms in the "physical world".
It's very important, in a subtle way.

Actually, I agree that it is important, especially as it changes our attitude toward the world. The Berkeley Locke connection reminds me of the Kant Hegel connection. A useful practical dualism is followed by a more logically consistent monism. I would personally argue that the practical and the logical aren't the same, however often they are associated.

I find it very tricky to talk about absolute idealism. I think it a radical beautiful idea. This ties in with the "self as the limit of the world." Or we could also say that the limit of the world is the limit of the self. In my opinion, it's right there in front of us, but practical ways of speaking obscure it. I'll stop there as I have a tendency to say too much on this pet subject of mine.

...

Pyrrho;163409 wrote:

There are several things wrong with what Berkeley states, some of which are revealed by reading Hume. (Berkeley, by the way, was great at revealing problems with some of his predecessors' views.)

Frankly, I think if Berkeley had followed his program more consistently, he would have ended up a solipsist and an atheist, as one does not directly experience other people or god more than one experiences matter. And then he should have also thrown out the self as well, as all he really experiences is, as Hume famously put it, "a bundle or collection of different perceptions". What some people imagine to be the self, or the "container" of these perceptions, is not experienced.

But, of course, it is another question whether or not he should have gone down the path that he did in the first place. For that, I will simply suggest reading articles about Berkeley and see what kinds of criticisms you can find. I will give you a hint: Most philosophers since Berkeley have been decidedly unconvinced by him.

"Frankly, I think if Berkeley had followed his program more consistently, he would have ended up a solipsist and an atheist, as one does not directly experience other people or god more than one experiences matter"

I don't think Berkeley would have led himself to Solipsism or Atheism.
Two of his primary assumptions that allowed him to suggest this philosophy in the first place were A) God Exists, and B) Many human minds exist with different perspectives.
Without God his entire philosophy breaks down into non sense.
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" Or we could also say that the limit of the world is the limit of the self. "

According to Berkeley the limit would not be the self, the limit would be God.

If we were to deny idealism, then we could say life was the product of an accidental chemical reaction and that consciousness is the result of millions of years of evolution.

But, if it's true that only ideas and minds exist, then there would have to be an initial creator, and we would be forced to accept a God-theory in some way or another.