Title: BERKELEYS IMMATERIALISM I
1BERKELEYS IMMATERIALISMI
2Berkeleys Philosophical Objectives
- I.The Broad Objectives
- A. Vindication of Human Knowledge
- Demonstrate the reality and scope of human
knowledge. - Demonstrate the incorporeal nature of the soul.
- Demonstrate the immediate providence of God.
- Develop a method for rendering the sciences more
easy, useful, and compendious.
3Berkeleys Philosophical Objectives
- B. Refutation of Sceptics and Atheists.
- Scientific explanations threatened to exclude God
from the universe and render Him superfluous. - Materialists also declare to the common man that
the real world is quite unlike what he sees and
feels.
4Berkeleys Philosophical Objectives
- II Naturalistic Explanation v. Theology
- A. Exclusion of teleology
- Corpuscular explanation tended to exclude
explanation by appeal to final causes (purposes,
functions, goals) from our view of the natural
world. - All explanation is to be mechanical involving
appeals to natural laws and specification of
initial conditions.
5Berkeleys Philosophical Objectives
- B. Thinking Matter
- Hobbes advanced the idea the matter does in fact
think. He proposed that ideas are symbols for
things in the world in much the same way that
sentences in a language are symbols. - This threatened the idea of an immaterial soul,
and thereby, of salvation.
6Berkeleys Philosophical Objectives
- C. The Materialization of God
- Newton had proposed that his concepts of absolute
space and time might correspond to Gods
sensorium. - Gods sensorium would be Gods inner theater.
7Berkeleys Philosophical Objectives
- III. Lockean Epistemology and Scepticism
- A. The Primary/Secondary Quality Distinction
- This doctrine declares that the primary objects
of the special senses colors, sounds, smells,
tastes, hardness, etc., are not really qualities
existing in physical objects (at least not as we
perceive them). - This suggests that the world is often not as it
appears to be. We are mistaken in many of our
ordinary perceptual takings, i. e., when we take
objects to have the very qualities that our
senses indicate that they have.
8Berkeleys Philosophical Objectives
- The real essence of things is a structure of
primary qualities that is not itself perceivable. - B. Representative (Indirect) Realist Views of
Perception - This doctrine has it that we do not directly
perceive physical objects. All we directly
perceive are objects entirely different from
physical things, i.e., ideas that represent the
indirect objects of perception, material things.
9Berkeleys Philosophical Objectives
- IV. The Doctrine of Material Substance is the
Culprit - A. Nothing is lost everything is gained by
rejecting material substances. - 1. Common sense contains no explicit nor implicit
commitment to material substances. So, nothing
important to our common sense world view need be
given up. - 2. Minds are the only independently existing
things. Physical objects become dependent
existences.
10Arguments Against Secondary Quality Realism
- Secondary Quality Realism
- 1. Secondary qualities are objective features of
physical objects that exist in those objects in
just the way we perceive them and independently
of being perceived. - 2. Rubies are red even when they not perceived by
any perceiver, and their redness exists in the
rubies in just the way the way it does when we
are perceiving them.
11Unity of Consciousness Arguments Against
Secondary Quality Realism
- Sensations of Extreme Heat are Pains.
- 1. Sensations had when touching extremely hot
objects are painful. - 2. Such sensations are sensations of heat.
- 3. Therefore, sensations of extreme heat are
painful. (1 2) - 4. A painful sensation is one simple unified
perception. - 5. Therefore, a sensation of extreme heat is both
an experience of heat and a pain. (3 4)
12Unity of Consciousness Arguments Against
Secondary Quality Realism
- 6. Therefore, a sensation of extreme heat is a
pain. (5) - 7. Therefore, extreme heat, as experienced, is a
pain. (6) - 8. If X is not distinct from Y, then X exists
wherever Y exists and vice versa. - 9. Pains exist only in the mind.
- 10. Therefore, extreme heat exists only in the
mind. (7, 8 9)
13Unity of Consciousness Arguments Against
Secondary Quality Realism
- Sensations of moderate heat or warmth are
pleasures. - 1. Sensations had when touching a warm object are
pleasurable. - 2. Such sensations are sensations of moderate
degrees of heat. - 3. Therefore, sensations of moderate warmth are
pleasurable. (12) - 4. Therefore, a sensation of moderate heat is
both an experience of warmth and a pleasure. (3
4) - 5. Therefore, by parity to the reasoning in the
case of extreme heat, moderate heat exists only
in the mind.
14Unity of Consciousness Arguments Against
Secondary Quality Realism
- Heat exists only in the mind.
- a. We have seen that both extreme and moderate
heat exist only in the mind. - b. We should conclude that heat, regardless of
its degree, exists only in the mind.
15Unity of Consciousness Arguments Against
Secondary Quality Realism
- Sensations of sweet are pleasures sensations of
bitter are pains. - Therefore, sweetness and bitterness exist only in
the mind. - Again, the arguments are similar to the one above
and lead to similar conclusions Sweet and bitter
exist only in the mind. - This generalizes to the conclusion that tastes
exist only in the mind. - All the above applies mutatis mutandis to odors.
16Unity of Consciousness Arguments Against
Secondary Quality Realism
- Sounds have features similar to features of other
sensory qualities. - a. Some sounds are sweet, others sour some
sounds are loud, others soft some sounds are
sharp or acute, others soft and round. - b. We have seen that these qualities exist only
in the mind. - c. Therefore, the same unity of conscious
experience arguments suffice to show that sounds
exist only in the mind.
17Unity of Consciousness Arguments Against
Secondary Quality Realism
- Secondary qualities are a unified order of
properties because they share certain kinds of
phenomenal features that - serve to relate the secondary qualities to each
other within a sensory modality and across
modalities, and - make the secondary qualities the kinds of
qualities they are, i.e., they are essential to
them.
18Unity of Consciousness Arguments Against
Secondary Quality Realism
- Since these phenomenal features are easily seen
to exist only in the mind, the secondary
qualities that are indistinguishable from
experiences of these features must exist only in
the mind.
19Perceptual Relativity Arguments Against Secondary
Quality Realism
- Perceptual Relativity
- The content of perceptual experience is dependent
upon three major factors - 1. The intrinsic features of the object of
perception. - 2. The environmental condition under which the
object is perceived. - 3. The physical and psychological constitution of
the perceiver.
20Perceptual Relativity Arguments Against Secondary
Quality Realism
- The perceptual relativity arguments are designed
to show that the following principle leads to
problems if Secondary Quality Realism is true - An object o has a secondary quality Q if, and
only if, o appears to have Q when o is observed
by a normal perceiver under standard conditions
of observation.
21Perceptual Relativity Arguments Against Secondary
Quality Realism
- Heat/cold.
- 1. Suppose one hand is placed in an oven, while
the other is immersed in ice water. - 2. Both hands are then plunged into lukewarm
water. - 3. The water will feel cold to the hand that was
in the oven and hot to the hand that was in the
ice water. - 4. If Secondary Quality Realism were true, the
water would have to be both hot and cold. - 5. But, the water cannot be both hot and cold
intrinsically. - 6. Therefore, it is neither hot nor cold
intrinsically. (15) - 7. Therefore, Secondary Quality Realism is false.
(4 6)
22Perceptual Relativity Arguments Against Secondary
Quality Realism
- Color
- Berkeley invokes the distinction between real and
apparent color. - He then argues that there is no completely
general way of drawing this distinction. - Perceptual relativity of both an interspecies and
an intraspecies variety is appealed to.
23Perceptual Relativity Arguments Against Secondary
Quality Realism
- Intraspecies Perceptual relativity
- i. The specification of real color must be
relativized to standard conditions of viewing and
a normal perceiver, but - ii. There is no nonarbitrary way of specify what
standard conditions are or what a normal
perceiver is.
24Perceptual Relativity Arguments Against Secondary
Quality Realism
- The Argument From Microscopes
- 1. A drop of blood appears red all over to the
naked eye and red and transparent all over when
viewed under a microscope. - 2. One and the same thing cannot have both one
color (or combination of colors) all over and, at
the same time, have a different color (or
combination of colors) all over. - 3. Being red all over is different from being red
and transparent all over. - 4. The drop of blood which appears red to the
naked eye and red and transparent through the
microscope is one and same object. - 5. Therefore, at least one of the color
appearances of the blood is the presentation of a
merely apparent color. (14)
25Perceptual Relativity Arguments Against Secondary
Quality Realism
- The Argument From Microscopes Extented
- 1. There is no more reason to trust what we see
through a microscope than there is to trust what
we see by means of the naked eye. - 2. Therefore, the colors seen by means of the
naked eye are no more true than the colors seen
through a microscope. (1) - 3. Therefore, neither observing by the naked
eye, nor observing through a microscope are
reliable standards for the identification of real
objective colors. (2) - 4. Therefore, there is no reliable standards for
the identification of real objective colors. (3) - 5. Therefore, there are no real objective colors.
(4)
26Perceptual Relativity Arguments Against Secondary
Quality Realism
- Interspecies Perceptual Relativity
- Very small animals and insects might see objects
as having different colors than the ones we see. - Bees, birds, and fish might see more colors than
we see. - There are no grounds for judging that our
perceptions of color are more accurate than those
of these other species.
27Perceptual Relativity Arguments Against Secondary
Quality Realism
- Perceived color is influenced by
- distance
- condition of the eye
- amount and character of the ambient light
- the color of adjacent objects
- the media through which the light is passed
before striking the object.
28Perceptual Relativity Arguments Against Secondary
Quality Realism
- There is no way to identify any of the colors
seen under these various circumstances as the
true color of the object. - Therefore, all colors, as experienced, are
equally apparent.