John Tyler & Paul R.

Shockley
Berkeley’s Immaterialism & Case Against Locke’s Realism (1685-1753):
Berkeley’s philosophy revolves around the following claim: There is no such thing as matter; this was an apparent fact to him. All the objects we perceive & ordinarily take to exist in the world outside ourselves are simply
collection of ideas, existing only in the mind. Idealism: God implants ideas in us in an orderly manner & that in God’s mind all things exist all times. Reality consists of the eternal mind of God & our finite minds, between which
rational communication takes place by means of ideas, Berkeley gets rid of the problems past philosophers have dealt with in giving an account of material substance, & the mind/body problem, & restores God as the necessary &
sustaining source of all things. But in its place he has the difficulty of how to think of the physical sciences (for they purport to establish truths about a physical universe, which Berkeley declares to be non-existent). He eventually
solves this difficulty by saying that they are useful theories rather than factual accounts; theoretical structures are employed for use & predictive power than their factual truth.

I. MAJOR THEMES: II. 4 STRATEGIC ATTACKS ON B. # 2 Strategy: Attack Locke’s

LOCKE: Representational Realism:
A. Idealism or “immaterial hypothesis”: A. Get rid of matter without destroy science; B. It is 1. What is Locke’s view?
1. He denies the very possibility of inert, mindless, material substance. Materialism impossible to to say that our ideas resemble objects if we a. Locke believes that objects are substances that exist independently of
is the belief in the existence of mind-independent material objects: It is incoherent, don’t have access to external objects; C. Like secondary us; b. These external objects or substances cause our ideas. c. We are
untenable, & ultimately leads to skepticism. 2. Argument for Immaterialism involves only aware of our ideas; d. We have 2 kinds of awareness: awareness of
qualities, primary qualities have no existence outside of the primary qualities & awareness of secondary qualities. Remember, secondary
his account of causation & the claim that material objects are unnecessary: mind; D. The idea of abstraction is incoherent. qualities don’t resemble properties of objects; instead, secondary qualities
Regarding causation: neither material ideas nor ideas can be causes; they are entirely inert; are produced in us by the powers by primary qualities.
three is neither activity nor power in them; only spirits can be causes. Why? Consider the (3) Why discredit materialism: They denied that God could create
power of volition. For ex. consider the connection between our willing to raise our arm & the something out of nothing; the derision of immaterial substances; 2. Berkeley’s Response:
fact that we are able to raise our arm. Neither ideas nor material substances can be wills. viewed soul as divisible & corruptible; denied Providence; a. Locke claims our ideas resemble external objects yet Locke admits we
Regarding the claim that material objects are unnecessary: even if material objects existed, we have no access to the external objects [because of the veil of perception
attributed events to blind chance or fatal necessity problem or gap between me and external world]; b. Therefore, it is
couldn’t know this; nothing in our senses can establish the existence of anything outside of
our minds; reason can’t establish it either (Descartes’ methodic doubt: dreams, deceiving God, A. # 1 Strategy: Attack Materialism: impossible to say that our ideas resemble external objects if we don’t have
access to the external objects. c. Thus, realism is not superior to
etc). Lastly, Berkeley’s system is a more simple & elegant explanation
Get rid of matter without destroy immaterialism as a source of explanatory power.
B. For something to Exist it must be perceived: science: His plan is to discredit
C. # 3 Strategy: Attack the Distinction
“Esse Est percipi”: To be is to be perceived. materialism:
1. Denies the “realist” contention that in perception we become directly aware of 1. His claim: Nothing exists independently of our minds; between Primary & Secondary Qualities:
objects that persist unchanged when they cease to be perceived. 2. For something to 2. His method: Make objects out of our ideas instead of making 1. Locke’s View:
exist it must either be perceived or else be the active beingthat does the perceiving. 3. ideas out of our objects. a. Maintains that secondary qualities don’t correlate with real properties of
3. 3 Arguments against the Existence of Material Substance: the external objects; 2. secondary qualities don’t really exist, applying a
Sensible qualities are things that are perceived. 4. Sensible things or ideas can’t exist perceptual relativity argument. For examples,the sky is not really blue,
master conceivability argument; argument from perceptual
except as the “passive objects of minds or spirits, active being that perceive and will.”5. relativity; argument from pleasure & pain: sugar, is not sweet, etc.
There can be nothing except active spirits on the one hand & passive sensible things 2. Berkeley’s Response:
a. Master [conceivability] argument: It is inconceivable that
on the other: The latter can’t exist except as perceived by the former. objects exist outside of the mind: In order to conceive it possible for a a. It is impossible that objects exist with primary qualities alone; b.
tree to exist outside of our minds, we need to able to think of an primary qualities are no more real than secondary qualities (applying the
unconceived tree. But as we try to conceive of this unconceived tree, we argument from perceptual relativity). c. Thus, primary qualities, like
C. Criticism of Contemporary Science: have conceived it. So we have failed.
secondary qualities, have no existence outside of the mind.
“Mere triflers, mere Nihilarians” b. Argument from perceptual relativity [regarding primary &
1. Vindicate Christianity without undermining science. In pursuit of this goal he wants secondary qualities]: our perceptions of these qualities are highly D. # 4 Strategy: The Materialistic Mistake
to defeat Locke’s atheism, materialism, & skepticism, and return to common sense variable, although we suppose the object itself is not variable.
Therefore, the perception must be in our minds. For example, a Of Abstraction:
regarding the ordinary objects of experience. 2. natural science was descriptive piece of wheat can be big to a mite & but small to a person 1. Berkeley considers the claim that objects can exist outside of perception
rather than explanatory and was concerned with correlations than with causes. 3. [primary quality of extension] or colors can look different in varied to be an illegitimate abstraction. We can’t abstract an “idea” of man by
Berkeley sees science not only challenging faith, but common sense about knowledge, lighting conditions [secondary quality of color]. Given that we looking at Matthew, mark, & Luke & subtract away their oddities. Every
have these highly variable perceptual experiences of both primary time we think of “man,” we think of a man w/ definite characteristics. 2.
for there is no difference between how things appear to be & how things actually are. We don’t think of a man w/ “some” shape, but rather we think of a man w/
& secondary qualities, Berkeley concludes that what we are
experiencing can’t be anything mind-independent. “a” shape. 3. Thus, the idea of abstraction is incoherent for Locke, for we
D. Sensible Qualities are the Signs of God’s Purpose: can’t say “this apple exists” independently of all perception, yet this is
c. Argument from pleasure & pain [regarding secondary what the realist maintains. 4. Berkeley does admit that that we have general
“He daily speaks to our senses in a manifest and clear dialect.” qualities]: we experience intense heat as pain. Pain exist only in ideas & words that enable us to make claims. For ex. “this apple is a fruit.”
1. The order of phenomena was willed by God for the good of created spirits. In the mind and is therefore mind-dependent. Intense heat only We can make a word stand for a general category of objects without
deciphering the conjunctions & sequences of our sense experience we are learning differs from ordinary heat by a matter of degree. Therefore, all heat engaging in abstraction & claiming the existence of an object independent
what God has decreed .2. sensible qualities are the language in which God speaks to us. exist in the mind. For example, we experience intense heat as of our perceptual experience.
pain. But pain can’t exist in a insentient object. Therefore, pain ----------------------
They are divine visual language by which God teaches us thingsare good & harmful. can’t be in material objects. Pain can only be in a mind. But if we Berkeley’s view of Spiritual Substances: (A) There are only 2: Spirits
3. Thus, just as man’s words reveal his thoughts & intentions by means of the feel intense heat as pain that means that intense heat also can’t (minds) & ideas. (B) A spirit is a simple, undivided being. (C)
conventional signs of language, so the sensible order reveals God’s will in exist outside of mind. So, intense heat is mind-dependent. This “understanding” refers to a mind perceiving ideas whereas “will” refers to a
phenomena that could’ve been ordered quite differently if He so decided. means that all heat must be mind-dependent, since intense heat is mind producing ideas. We know our own mind directly (Cartesian) & we
obviously the same kind of thing as all other degrees of heat. know others minds indirectly by analogy.

The “new philosophy” or “corpusclarian philosophy” that became dominant near the beginning of 18th century, maintained that the material universe was atomic or “corpusclar” in its structure & mechanical in its operation. The world worked entirely in terms of
mass, shape, size, & motion (properties generally thought to be primary qualities of matter). So-called secondary qualities such as tastes, colors, & temperatures we ordinarily ascribe to things, were held not to be in the things themselves but in us, although produced
in us by “powers” in the external bodies. Perception was generally analyzed as a causal process in which a stimulus is transmitted from the sense organs to the brain which then causes “ideas” to be produced in “the mind.” These “ideas” rather than objects
themselves that are actually perceived. This theory was held by John Locke. Locke argues that there are things we don’t understand, such as (1) real nature of things (“I know, not what”), how the mind works, how particles cohere together, whether soul is
immaterial or material. Locke argues that human faculties are limited & so endorses a certain type of ignorance. Berkeley responds & says the problem is due to the philosophers themselves; “that we have first raised a dust, and then, complain, we cannot see.”
Berkeley opposes skepticism of lockean sense, a distrust or denigration of senses, and the denial that we need to doubt what we see. In fact, Berkeley denies that the world is not really as it seems: this is the central point of Berkeley’s Three Dialogues. But Locke
says we are ignorant of the real essences of things “while we know that gold is yellow, we do not know its true nature.”