PowerPoint Presentation Berkeley's Immaterialism II

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BERKELEYS IMMATERIALISMII
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Esse Est Percipi

• Existence in the Mind
• 1. Ideas are the immediate objects of perception.
  Being perceived is the way in which ideas are in
  the mind.
• 2. Being perceived and being in the mind are the
  same thing for Berkeley. To say that some idea is
  in the mind and to say that some idea is
  immediately perceived is just to provide
  different forms of words for the same state of
  affairs.

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Esse Est Percipi

• Existence Outside the Mind.
• 1. For something to exist outside the mind would
  be for it to exist unperceived. This is not
  possible for ideas.
• 2. Berkeley thinks that the suggestion that ideas
  exist outside the mind is incoherent.

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Esse Est Percipi

• a. It is impossible to conceive of an idea
  existing unperceived.
• b. In attempting to conceive of such an idea, one
  must have in ones mind an idea that both exists
  and is unperceived.
• c. But since it is in ones mind is it perceived.
  So, it is not unperceived. So, it is not an idea
  that both exists and is unperceived.
• d. It should be clear that any such attempt to
  conceive of an unperceived idea must meet with
  this same difficulty.

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Esse Est Percipi

• To be is to be perceived.
• 1. Since ideas exist in, and only in, the mind,
  the essence of ideas is to be objects of
  perception.
• 2. This is not true of the other basic element of
  Berkeleys ontology, minds. Minds are not
  immediate objects of perception, in fact, they
  are not objects of perception at all.
• 3. Minds have a different essence. The essence of
  mind is activity.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• Physical Objects Collections of Ideas
• 1. Physical objects, for Berkeley, are
  collections of ideas.
• a. The ultimate constituents of physical objects
  are ideas.
• b. Physical objects are not material substances.
• 2. Therefore, physical objects exist only in the
  mind, i.e., only when perceived.
• a. This is a consequence of the fact that ideas
  exist only when perceived.
• b. However, physical objects continue to exist
  when unperceived by finite minds because they are
  perceived by the infinite mind of God.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• 3. Therefore, physical objects are immediately
  perceivable.
• a. For Descartes and Locke, physical objects are
  only mediately perceived by means of the
  immediate perception of the ideas they produce in
  us.
• b. For Berkeley, some constituents, or parts, of
  physical objects are immediately perceivable
  making the objects immediately perceivable.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• A New Theory of Predication for Physical Objects.
• 1. To say of a physical object, such as an apple,
  that it is red is not, as Descartes or Locke
  would have it, to attribute a secondary quality
  to a material substance.
• 2. Instead, to say that an apple is red is to say
  that an idea of red is a part of the collection
  of ideas that constitute the apple.
• 3. More generally, it is to declare that a
  quality perceived in an idea is a part of a
  collection of ideas denoted by a name for the
  object.
• 4. Berkeley, like Locke, thinks that objects are
  divided into sorts or kinds conventionally by our
  use of language.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• Ideas of Sense v. Ideas of Imagination.
• 1. If all objects are ideas, how are imaginary
  ideas distinquished from sensory ideas.
• 2. Berkeley offers two criteria
• a. Sensory ideas are more intense and vivacious.
• b. Sensory ideas occur independently of ones
  will.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• Real v. Imaginary or Illusory Objects
• 1. Real objects exhibit characteristics that are
  predictable in accordance with laws of nature.
• 2. Laws of nature are regularities to the events
  in the external world that have their explanation
  in the divine will.
• a. Some events in the world are due to the
  actions of other finite minds. These are often
  unpredictable.
• b. God, in his infinite benevolence, orders the
  rest of the course of nature so that we might
  understand and predict nature for the sake of
  prudent planning.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• Ideas are causally inert.
• Minds are active. They can cause ideas.
• Ideas cannot cause other ideas.
• We have no idea of mind because minds are active
  and we discern no activity in ideas.
• If we did perceive activity in ideas we would be
  able to see how they produce their effects.
• But we cannot. We perceive causes following
  effect, but do not see any necessary connection
  between the two.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• Since physical object are nothing but collections
  of ideas, physical objects are causally inert.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• Physical objects do not exist outside the mind.
• 1. The idea of external existence is nonexistent.
  There can be no source of such an idea.
• a. Sensation
• i. The objects of sensory awareness exist only
  when perceived. To have a sensation is to sense
  something.
• ii. Therefore, no sensation has the content
  object o exists and o is not perceived.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• b. Reason
• i. There is no necessary connection between
  external objects and our ideas.
• ii. Therefore, it is not possible to reason from
  the existence of the ideas to the existence of
  things outside the mind.
• c. Abduction (inference to the best explanatory
  hypothesis)
• No one has any idea how the existence of
  nonmental entities explains the occurrence of
  ideas.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• Are Physical Objects Public?
• Can more than one person perceive the same
  physical object at the same time, and can a given
  person perceive the same physical object at
  different time?
• This can be understood a couple of different ways
  depending upon whether ideas are private or not,
  i.e., on whether the numerically same idea can be
  immediately perceived by more than one person, or
  by the same person at a different time.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• Suppose ideas are private.
• Physical objects could be public by having
  private parts.
• No two people would ever perceive the same parts
  of a physical object, but they might nevertheless
  perceive the same physical object because their
  individual private ideas are both constituents of
  the object.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• Suppose ideas are nonprivate.
• A given collection of ideas might be in several
  minds at once, and, therefore, public by being
  shared.
• This means however that when two people are
  looking at the same physical object they are
  looking into each others minds, for they are
  viewing the contents of the others mind.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• How Physical Objects Exist When not Perceived by
  any Finite Mind.
• 1. They exist, in some manner, in the mind of
  God.
• 2. How do physical object exist in Gods mind?
• a. Not by His having the same ideas that are in
  our minds.
• b. Gods ideas are very different from ours.
• i. His ideas have no admixture of pleasure or
  pain.
• ii. Gods ideas are eternal.

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Berkeleys Theory ofPhysical Objects

• 3. Berkeley adopts a view wherein physical
  objects have a very different mode of existence
  in Gods mind.
• i. They exist in finite minds as sensations which
  are independent of our will.
• ii. Gods mind an idea of an object consists in
  His plan for the production of certain sorts of
  ideas in finite minds.
• iii. The ideas in God are not strictly identical
  to the ideas in any finite mind.

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Physical Objects are not Material Substances

• Aristotle on Substance
• a. Substance in the truest and primary and most
  definite sense of the word is that which is
  neither predicable of a subject nor present in a
  subject for instance, the individual man or
  horse.
• b. In other words, a primary substance is a
  concrete individual thing.
• c. Those things are called substances within
  which, as species, the primary substances
  (individuals) are included also those which, as
  genera, include the species.

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Physical Objects are not Material Substances

• d. These are Aristotelian secondary substances.
  Secondary substances are not substances in the
  primary sense because things like the species man
  or the genus animal are predicables, i.e., things
  that can be applied to or said of a primary
  substance.
• e. A medieval derivative of the Aristotelian
  notion of primary substance is the notion that
  substances are things that, in contrast to
  qualities and relations, can exist on their own.
• f. Substances persist despite losing various
  qualities and gaining new ones, i.e., despite
  change.

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Physical Objects are not Material Substances

• Material Substance or Matter
• For Descartes, material substances all bear some
  extensive attribute.
• For Locke and other corpuscularians, extension is
  just one of several primary qualities that make
  up every material thing.
• Interactions among material things are determined
  by the primary qualities of the samples of matter
  involved in the interaction.

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Physical Objects are not Material Substances

• Perception of material things is detection of
  their primary or secondary qualities.
• This detection is accomplished by means of the
  effect upon our sensory surfaces of the structure
  of primary qualities adhering in a thing.
• As such, a material thing is perceived by
  perceiving its qualities.
• This suggests that material things are not in
  themselves perceived only their qualities are.

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Physical Objects are not Material Substances

• Matter and Common Sense
• Berkeley takes the belief that physical objects
  are material substances to be a philosophical
  hypothesis not derived from, supported by, or
  even compatible with common sense.
• Giving up this notion does not endanger our
  common sense beliefs, because the man of common
  sense was never committed to the existence of
  material substances in the first place.

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Physical Objects are not Material Substances

• Berkeleys Critique
• Material substance is an abstract idea.
• Material substance is an unnecessary explanatory
  posit.
• The relation between a material substance and its
  properties is unknowable.
• Material substance is inconceivable.
• The Likeness Principle Nothing is like an idea
  except another idea.
• We only have concepts of ideas and collections of
  ideas.

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Notions

• We have no concept of mind.
• We have no idea of mind because mind is active
  and ideas are passive.
• Instead we have what Berkeley calls a notion of
  mind.
• Notions are the content of the knowledge we
  possess by virtue of our awareness of our own
  activity in thinking and willing.

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The World as Will and Representation

• Mind is the active principle of reality.
• Ideas are the product of this activity.
• Physical objects are collections of ideas placed
  in finite minds by God according to an orderly
  lawful-governed plan for the welfare and
  salvation of man.

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Divine Language

• The world as a whole and the things in it reflect
  the will of God.
• As such they are like symbols in a divine
  language by which God speaks to us.
• True knowledge consists in understanding this
  language.
• True wisdom consists in conforming your own will
  to what is made manifest by means of it.