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BERKELEYS IMMATERIALISM I

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Title: BERKELEYS IMMATERIALISM I


1
BERKELEYS IMMATERIALISMI
2
Berkeleys 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.

3
Berkeleys 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.

4
Berkeleys 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.

5
Berkeleys 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.

6
Berkeleys 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.

7
Berkeleys 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.

8
Berkeleys 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.

9
Berkeleys 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.

10
Arguments 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.

11
Unity 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)

12
Unity 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)

13
Unity 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.

14
Unity 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.

15
Unity 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.

16
Unity 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.

17
Unity 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.

18
Unity 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.

19
Perceptual 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.

20
Perceptual 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.

21
Perceptual 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)

22
Perceptual 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.

23
Perceptual 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.

24
Perceptual 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)

25
Perceptual 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)

26
Perceptual 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.

27
Perceptual 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.

28
Perceptual 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.
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