Berkeley’s Idealism Flashcards
What is Berkeley’s idealism?
Idealism: everything that exists is a mind or dependent on a mind. Physical objects nothing more than bundles of ideas and sense data appearing in the mind of perceivers.
Berkeley: “esse est percipi” to be is to be perceived.
Immediate objects of perception are mind-dependent objects.
Attacks primary and secondary quality distinction, argument against ‘matter’, Master Argument.
State examples of secondary qualities as mind dependent.
Cloud from a distance looks like, loses colour/appears grey up close.
Different animals perceive colours of objects differently
Solidly coloured physical objects, viewed under a microscope appear to have different colours than when viewed normally (e.g. sand)
Why does Berkeley view primary qualities as mind dependent rather than mind independent?
Rejects the distinction between primary and secondary qualities.
Berkeley argues that all qualities are mind dependent.
What looks small to me may look huge to a small animal. What looks smooth to the naked eye appears craggy and uneven under a microscope. We see it differently but it doesn’t change.
We cannot say an object has a real (mind-dependent) colour, we cannot say it has a ‘real’ size, shape or motion independent of how it is perceived.
He argues these aspects cannot be properties of material objects.
What is a possible response to this rejection?
Indirect realists resist the criticism using perceptual variation.
They agree the way we perceive both primary and secondary qualities can vary depending on the position and so forth the perceiver.
BUT it does not follow that the qualities themselves actually change.
Distinguishing the ‘apparent’ size, ‘apparent’ shape, ‘apparent’ motion from the real size, shape and motion causes us to draw a different conclusion.
The apparent properties vary but a material objects objective qualities cannot vary.
Give a second rejection of the primary secondary distinction.
IT IS ONLY VIA SECONDARY QUALITIES THAT WE ABLE TO PERCEIVE PRIMARY QUALITIES.
Consider a circle. We can only perceive the shape (primary) via the colour (secondary), if we remove the colour, we cannot perceive the shape.
Therefore primary qualities depend on secondary qualities (already established to be mind dependent) so must also be mind dependent.
How does Berkeley criticise the concept of matter?
A ‘material substratum’ if distinct from its primary and secondary qualities, is never perceived. It is indescribable (cannot describe something you have not perceived/experienced)
Berkeley is an empiricist and believes we can only know something on the basis of experience. Due to the vail of perception, we only ever perceive sense data (qualities) and not matter itself.
Therefore, we have no experience of matter on which to base the claim that matter exists.
It’s beyond the limit of experience and so is fundamentally unknowable.