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Home , George Berkeley

138 IN CONTEXT BRANCH TO BE IS TO APPROACH BEFORE c.380 BCE In The Republic, BE PERCEIVED presents his , which states that the (1685–1753) world of our is an imperfect shadow of . AFTER 1781 develops Berkeley’s theory into “”, according to which the world that we experience is only appearance. 1807 Georg Hegel replaces Kant’s idealism with “”—the theory that absolute reality is Spirit. 1982 In his book The Case for Idealism, the British philosopher John Foster argues for a version of Berkeley’s idealism.

ike before him, George Berkeley was an L empiricist, that he saw experience as the primary source of . This view, which can be traced back to , stands in contrast to the rationalist view that, in , all knowledge can be gained through rational reflection alone. Berkeley shared the same assumptions as Locke, but reached very different conclusions. According to Berkeley, Locke’s was moderate; it still allowed for the of a world independent of the senses, and followed René Descartes in RENAISSANCE AND THE AGE OF 139

See also: Plato 50–55 ■ Aristotle 56–63 ■ René Descartes 116–23 ■ John Locke 130–33 ■ Immanuel Kant 164–71 ■ Georg Hegel 178–85

What we perceive are , not things from . in themselves.

George Berkeley

George Berkeley was born and So the world A thing in brought up at Dysart Castle, consists only itself must lie near the town of , of ideas... outside experience. Ireland. He was educated first at , then at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1707 he was elected a Fellow of Trinity, and was ordained an Anglican priest. In 1714, having written all his major philosophical works, he left Ireland to travel around A thing only exists in Europe, spending most ... and that so far as it perceives of his in London. perceive those ideas. When he returned to or is perceived. Ireland he became . His main concern, however, had become a project to found a seminary college in . In 1728 he sailed to Newport, Rhode seeing humans as made Island, with his wife, Anne up of two distinct substances, Foster, and spent three years namely and body. trying to raise money for the Berkeley’s empiricism, on the seminary. In 1731, when it other hand, was far more extreme, became clear that funds were and led him to a position known not forthcoming, he returned as “immaterialist idealism.” This There is no to London. Three years later means that he was a monist, such thing as he became Bishop of , believing that there is only one what philosophers call Dublin, where he lived for kind of substance in the universe, material substance. the rest of his life. and an idealist, believing that George Berkeley this single substance is mind, Key works or , rather than . 1710 Treatise Concerning the Berkeley’s position is often of Human Knowledge summarized by the Latin phrase 1713 Three Between esse est percipi (“to be is to be Hylas and Philonous perceived”), but it is perhaps ❯❯ 140 GEORGE BERKELEY

mistake it for a physical thing itself. Ideas, then, can only resemble other ideas. And as our only experience of the world comes through our ideas, any claim that we can even understand the If there were An can be like nothing of “physical things” is mistaken. external bodies, it is but an idea; a color or What we are really understanding impossible we should figure can be like nothing are mental things. The world is ever come to know it. but another color or figure. constructed purely of thought, and George Berkeley George Berkeley whatever is not itself perceiving, exists only as one of our .

The cause of perception If things that are not perceivers only exist in so far as they are perceived, however, this seems to better represented by esse est aut Berkeley has two main objections to mean that when I leave the room, perciperi aut percipi (“to be is to this view. First, he argues that our my desk, computer, books, and so perceive or to be perceived”). For understanding of (the fact on all cease to exist, for they are no according to Berkeley, the world that certain events cause other longer being perceived. Berkeley’s consists only of perceiving minds events) is based entirely on our response to this is that nothing is and their ideas. This is not to say experience of our own volitions (the ever unperceived, for when I am that he denies the existence of way we cause events to happen not in my room, it is still perceived the external world, or claims that through the action of our wills). by . His theory, therefore, not it is in any way different from what His point is not simply that it is only depends on the existence we perceive. His claim is rather wrong for us to project our own of God, but of a particular type of that all knowledge must come experience of volitional action onto God—one who is constantly from experience, and that all we the world—which we do when we involved in the world. ever have access to are our say that the world causes us to For Berkeley, God’s involvement perceptions. And since these have ideas about the world. His in the world runs deeper than this. perceptions are simply “ideas” point is that there is in fact no As we have seen, he claims that (or mental representations), we such thing as a “physical cause”, there are no physical causes, but have no grounds for believing that because there is no such thing as anything exists other than ideas a physical world beyond the world and the perceivers of ideas. of ideas that could possibly be the cause of our ideas. The only type Causation and volition of cause that there is in the world, Berkeley’s target was Descartes’ according to Berkeley, is precisely view of the world as elaborated the volitional kind of cause that is by Locke and the scientist Robert the exercise of the . Boyle. In this view, the physical Berkeley’s second objection is world is made up of a vast number that because ideas are mental of physical particles, or “corpuscles”, entities, they cannot resemble whose and interactions give physical entities, because the two rise to the world as we understand types of thing have completely it. More controversially, for Berkeley, different properties. A painting or a Optical illusions are impossible, for this view also maintains that the photograph can resemble a physical Berkeley, since an is always as world causes the perceptual object because it is itself a physical it appears to be. A straw submerged ideas we have of it by the way thing, but to think of an idea as in water, for example, really is bent, it interacts with our senses. resembling a is to and a magnified object really is larger. RENAISSANCE AND THE AGE OF REASON 141 only “volitions”, or acts of will, and Can a tree fall over if there is nobody it follows that only an act of will can present to observe it? Objects only exist produce the ideas that we have while they are perceived, according about the world. However, I am not to Berkeley. However, the tree can fall over—because the in control of my experience of the tree, and the rest of the world, and cannot choose what I world, is always experience—the world simply perceived by God. presents itself to me the way it does, whether I like it or not. Therefore, the volitions that cause my ideas about the world are not mine; they are God’s. So for Berkeley, God not only creates us as perceivers, he is the cause and constant generator of all our perceptions. This raises a number of questions, the most urgent being: how is it that we sometimes perceive things incorrectly? Why would God want to deceive us? Berkeley tries to answer this question by claiming that our perceptions are never, in fact, in error, and that where we go wrong is in the judgements we make about the oar cannot be both straight and possibility that the only thing I what we perceive. For example, if bent at the same time, there must can be certain of existing—or an oar half-submerged in water in fact be two oars—one that I that may in fact exist—is myself. looks bent to me, then it really is see and one that I feel. Even more One possible solution to bent—where I go wrong is thinking problematic for Berkeley, however, runs as follows: since I that it only appears to be bent. is the fact that two different people can cause changes in the world, However, what happens if I reach seeing the same oar must in fact be such as raising my own hand, and into the water and feel the oar? It seeing two different oars, for there since I notice similar changes in certainly feels straight. And since is no single, “real” oar “out there” the bodies of other people, I can that their perceptions converge on. infer that those bodies are also changed by a “” The problem of solipsism inside them. The problem for An inescapable fact of Berkeley’s Berkeley, though, is that there is no system, therefore, seems to be that “real” hand being lifted—the most we never perceive the same things. a person can do is be the cause of All the choir of heaven and Each of us is locked in his own the idea of his own hand rising— furniture of earth—in a word, world, cut off from the worlds of and only their idea, not another all those bodies which other people. The fact that God has person’s. I, in other words, must compose the frame of the an idea of an oar cannot help us still rely on God to supply me with world—have not any here, for that is a third idea, and my idea of another person’s hand subsistence without a mind. therefore a third oar. God caused rising. Far from supplying us with George Berkeley my idea and your idea, but unless empirical certainty, therefore, we share a single mind with each Berkeley leaves us depending other and with God, there are still for our knowledge of the world, three different ideas, so there are and of the existence of other three different oars. This leads us minds, upon our faith in a God to the problem of solipsism—the that would never deceive us. ■