Spring 2013 Edition
George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, was one of the great philosophersof the early modern period. He was a brilliant critic of hispredecessors, particularly Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke. He was atalented metaphysician famous for defending idealism, that is, theview that reality consists exclusively of minds and theirideas. Berkeley's system, while it strikes many as counter-intuitive,is strong and flexible enough to counter most objections. Hismost-studied works, theTreatise Concerning the Principles ofHuman Knowledge (Principles, for short) andThreeDialogues between Hylas and Philonous (Dialogues), arebeautifully written and dense with the sort of arguments that delightcontemporary philosophers. He was also a wide-ranging thinker withinterests in religion (which were fundamental to his philosophicalmotivations), the psychology of vision, mathematics, physics, morals,economics, and medicine. Although many of Berkeley's first readersgreeted him with incomprehension, he influenced both Hume and Kant,and is much read (if little followed) in our own day.
Berkeley was born in 1685 near Kilkenny, Ireland. After severalyears of schooling at Kilkenny College, he entered Trinity College, inDublin, at age 15. He was made a fellow of Trinity College in1707 (three years after graduating) and was ordained in the AnglicanChurch shortly thereafter. At Trinity, where the curriculum wasnotably modern, Berkeley encountered the new science and philosophy ofthe late seventeenth century, which was characterized by hostilitytowards Aristotelianism. Berkeley's philosophical notebooks(sometimes styled thePhilosophical Commentaries), which hebegan in 1707, provide rich documentation of Berkeley's earlyphilosophical evolution, enabling the reader to track the emergence ofhis immaterialist philosophy from a critical response to Descartes,Locke, Malebranche, Newton, Hobbes, and others.
Berkeley's first important published work,An Essay Towards a NewTheory of Vision (1709), was an influential contribution to thepsychology of vision and also developed doctrines relevant to hisidealist project. In his mid-twenties, he published his most enduringworks, theTreatise concerning the Principles of HumanKnowledge (1710) and theThree Dialogues between Hylas andPhilonous (1713), whose central doctrines we will examinebelow.
In 1720, while completing a four-year tour of Europe as tutor to ayoung man, Berkeley composedDe Motu, a tract on thephilosophical foundations of mechanics which developed his views onphilosophy of science and articulated an instrumentalist approach toNewtonian dynamics. After his continental tour, Berkeley returned toIreland and resumed his position at Trinity until 1724, when he wasappointed Dean of Derry. At this time, Berkeley began developing hisscheme for founding a college in Bermuda. He was convinced that Europewas in spiritual decay and that the New World offered hopefor a new golden age. Having secured a charter and promises of fundingfrom the British Parliament, Berkeley set sail for America in 1728,with his new bride, Anne Forster. They spent three years in Newport,Rhode Island, awaiting the promised money, but Berkeley's politicalsupport had collapsed and they were forced to abandon the project andreturn to Britain in 1731. While in America, Berkeley composedAlciphron, a work of Christian apologetics directedagainst the “free-thinkers” whom he took to be enemies of establishedAnglicanism.Alciphron is also a significant philosophicalwork and a crucial source of Berkeley's views on language.
Shortly after returning to London, Berkeley composed theTheoryof Vision, Vindicated and Explained, a defense of his earlierwork on vision, and theAnalyst, an acute and influentialcritique of the foundations of Newton's calculus. In 1734 he was madeBishop of Cloyne, and thus he returned to Ireland. It was here thatBerkeley wrote his last, strangest, and best-selling (in his ownlifetime) philosophical work.Siris (1744) has a three-foldaim: to establish the virtues of tar-water (a liquid prepared byletting pine tar stand in water) as a medical panacea, to providescientific background supporting the efficacy of tar-water, and tolead the mind of the reader, via gradual steps, toward contemplationof God. Berkeley died in 1753, shortly after moving to Oxford tosupervise the education of his son George, one of the three out ofseven of his children to survive childhood.
In his two great works of metaphysics, Berkeley defends idealism byattacking the materialist alternative. What exactly is the doctrinethat he's attacking? Readers should first note that“materialism” is here used to mean “the doctrinethat material things exist”. This is in contrast with anotheruse, more standard in contemporary discussions, according to whichmaterialism is the doctrine thatonly material thingsexist. Berkeley contends thatno material things exist, notjust that some immaterial things exist. Thus, he attacks Cartesian andLockeandualism, not just the considerably less popular (inBerkeley's time) view, held by Hobbes, that only material thingsexist. But what exactly is a material thing? Interestingly, partof Berkeley's attack on matter is to argue that this question cannotbe satisfactorily answered by the materialists, that they cannotcharacterize their supposed material things. However, an answerthat captures what exactly it is that Berkeley rejects is thatmaterial things aremind-independent things orsubstances. And a mind-independent thing is something whose existenceis not dependent on thinking/perceiving things, and thus would existwhether or not any thinking things (minds) existed. Berkeley holdsthat there are no such mind-independent things, that, in the famousphrase,esse est percipi (aut percipere) — to be is tobe perceived (or to perceive).
Berkeley charges that materialism promotes skepticism and atheism:skepticism because materialism implies that our senses mislead us asto the natures of these material things, which moreover need not existat all, and atheism because a material world could be expected to runwithout the assistance of God. This double charge provides Berkeley'smotivation for questioning materialism (one which he thinksshould motivate others as well), though not, of course, aphilosophical argument against materialism. Fortunately, thePrinciples andDialogues overflow with sucharguments. Below, we will examine some of the main elements ofBerkeley's argumentative campaign against matter.
The starting point of Berkeley's attack on the materialism of hiscontemporaries is a very short argument presented inPrinciples 4:
It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, thathouses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects have anexistence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by theunderstanding. But with how great an assurance and acquiescence soeverthis principle may be entertained in the world; yet whoever shall findin his heart to call it in question, may, if I mistake not, perceive itto involve a manifest contradiction. For what are the forementionedobjects but the things we perceive by sense, and what do we perceivebesides our own ideas or sensations; and is it not plainly repugnantthat any one of these or any combination of them should existunperceived?
Berkeley presents here the following argument (see Winkler 1989,138):
(1) We perceive ordinary objects (houses, mountains, etc.).(2) We perceive only ideas.
Therefore,
(3) Ordinary objects are ideas.
The argument is valid, and premise (1) looks hard to deny. Whatabout premise (2)? Berkeley believes that this premise is accepted byall the modern philosophers. In thePrinciples, Berkeley isoperatingwithin the idea-theoretic tradition of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In particular, Berkeley believesthat some version of this premise is accepted by his main targets, theinfluential philosophers Descartes and Locke.
However, Berkeley recognizes that these philosophers have an obviousresponse available to this argument. This response blocks Berkeley'sinference to (3) by distinguishing two sorts of perception, mediateand immediate. Thus, premises (1) and (2) are replaced by the claimsthat (1′) we mediately perceive ordinary objects, while(2′) we immediately perceive only ideas. From these claims, ofcourse, no idealist conclusion follows. The response reflects arepresentationalist theory of perception, according to whichwe indirectly (mediately) perceive material things, by directly(immediately) perceiving ideas, which are mind-dependent items. Theideasrepresent external material objects, and thereby allowus to perceive them.
Whether Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke were representationalistsof this kind is a matter of some controversy (see e.g. Yolton 1984,Chappell 1994). However, Berkeley surely had good grounds forunderstanding his predecessors in this way: it reflects the mostobvious interpretation of Locke's account of perception andDescartes' whole procedure in theMeditations tends tosuggest this sort of view, given the meditator's situation as someonecontemplating her own ideas, trying to determine whether somethingexternal corresponds to them.
Berkeley devotes the succeeding sections of thePrinciplesto undermining the representationalist response to his initialargument. In effect, he poses the question: What allows an idea torepresent a material object? He assumes, again with good grounds,that the representationalist answer is going to involveresemblance:
But say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without themind, yet there may be things like them whereof they are copies orresemblances, which things exist without the mind, in an unthinkingsubstance. I answer, an idea can be like nothing but an idea; a colouror figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure. (PHK8)
Berkeley argues that this supposed resemblance is nonsensical; anidea can only be like another idea.
But why? The closest Berkeley ever comes to directly addressing thisquestion is in his early philosophical notebooks, where he observesthat “Two things cannot be said to be alike or unlike till theyhave been compar'd” (PC 377). Thus, because the mind can comparenothing but its own ideas, which by hypothesis are the only thingsimmediately perceivable, the representationalist cannot assert alikeness between an idea and a non-ideal mind-independent materialobject. (For further discussion, see Winkler 1989, 145–9.)
If Berkeley's Likeness Principle, the thesis that an idea can only belike another idea, is granted, representationalist materialism is inserious trouble. For how are material objects now to be characterized?If material objects are supposed to be extended, solid, or colored,Berkeley will counter that these sensory qualities pertain to ideas,to that which is immediately perceived, and that the materialistcannot assert that material objects are like ideas in these ways. Manypassages in thePrinciples andDialogues drive homethis point, arguing that matter is, if not an incoherent notion, atbest a completelyempty one.
One way in which Berkeley's anti-abstractionism comes into play is inreinforcing this point. Berkeley argues in the“Introduction” to thePrinciples[1] that we cannot form general ideas in the way that Locke often seemsto suggest—by stripping particularizing qualities from an ideaof a particular, creating a new, intrinsically general,abstract idea.[2] Berkeley then claims that notions the materialist might invoke in alast-ditch attempt to characterize matter, e.g.being or mereextension, are objectionably abstract and unavailable.[3]
Berkeley is aware that the materialist has one important card left toplay: Don't we need material objects in order toexplain ourideas? And indeed, this seems intuitively gripping: Surely the bestexplanation of the fact that I have a chair idea every time I enter myoffice and that my colleague has a chair idea whenshe entersmy office is that a single enduring material objectcausesall these various ideas. Again, however, Berkeley replies byeffectively exploiting the weaknesses of his opponents' theories:
…though we give the materialists their external bodies, theyby their own confession are never the nearer knowing how our ideas areproduced: since they own themselves unable to comprehend in what mannerbody can act upon spirit, or how it is possible it should imprint anyidea in the mind. Hence it is evident the production of ideas orsensations in our minds, can be no reason why we should suppose matteror corporeal substances, since that is acknowledged to remain equallyinexplicable with, or without this supposition. (PHK 19)
Firstly, Berkeley contends, a representationalist must admit that wecould have our ideas without there being any external objectscausing them (PHK 18). (This is one way in which Berkeley seesmaterialism as leading to skepticism.) More devastatingly, however,he must admit that the existence of matter does not help to explainthe occurrence of our ideas. After all, Locke himself diagnosed thedifficulty:
Body as far as we can conceive being able only to strike and affectbody; and Motion, according to the utmost reach of ourIdeas,being able to produce nothing but Motion, so that when we allow it toproduce pleasure or pain, or theIdea of a Colour, or Sound,we are fain to quit our Reason, go beyond ourIdeas, andattribute it wholly to the good Pleasure of our Maker. (Locke 1975,541;Essay 4.3.6)
And, when Descartes was pressed by Elizabeth as to how mindand body interact,[4] she rightly regarded his answers as unsatisfactory. The basic problemhere is set by dualism: how can one substance causally affect anothersubstance of a fundamentally differentkind? In itsCartesian form, the difficulty is particularly severe: how can anextended thing, which affects other extended things only by mechanicalimpact, affect a mind, which is non-extended andnon-spatial?
Berkeley's point is thus well taken. It is worth noting that, inaddition to undermining the materialist's attempted inference to thebest explanation, Berkeley's point also challenges any attempt toexplain representation and mediate perception in terms ofcausation. That is, the materialist might try to claim that ideasrepresent material objects, not by resemblance, but in virtue of beingcaused by the objects. (Though neither Descartes nor Lockespells out such an account, there are grounds in each for attributingsuch an account to them. For Descartes see Wilson 1999, 73–76; forLocke see Chappell 1994, 53.) However, PHK 19 implies that thematerialists are not in a position to render this account ofrepresentation philosophically satisfactory.
As emphasized above, Berkeley's campaign against matter, as hepresents it in thePrinciples, is directed againstmaterialist representationalism and presupposesrepresentationalism. In particular, Berkeley presupposes that allanyone ever directly or immediately perceives are ideas. Ascontemporary philosophers, we might wonder whether Berkeley hasanything to say to a materialist who denies this representationalistpremise and asserts instead that we ordinarily directly/immediatelyperceive material objects themselves. The answer is‘yes’.
However, one place where one might naturally look for such anargument is not, in fact, as promising as might initially appear. Inboth thePrinciples (22–3) and theDialogues (200),Berkeley gives a version of what has come to be called “TheMaster Argument”[5] because of the apparent strength with which he endorses it:
… I am content to put the whole upon this issue; if you canbut conceive it possible for one extended moveable substance, or ingeneral, for any one idea or any thing like an idea, to existotherwise than in a mind perceiving it, I shall readily give up thecause…. But say you, surely there is nothing easier than toimagine trees, for instance, in a park, or books existing in a closet,and no body by to perceive them. I answer, you may so, there is nodifficulty in it: but what is all this, I beseech you, more thanframing in your mind certain ideas which you callbooks andtrees, and at the same time omitting to frame the idea of anyone that may perceive them? But do not you your self perceive or thinkof them all the while? This therefore is nothing to the purpose: itonly shows you have the power of imagining or forming ideas in yourmind; but it doth not shew that you can conceive it possible, theobjects of your thought may exist without the mind: to make out this,it is necessary that you conceive them existing unconceived orunthought of, which is a manifest repugnancy. When we do our utmost toconceive the existence of external bodies, we are all the while onlycontemplating our own ideas. But the mind taking no notice of itself,is deluded to think it can and doth conceive bodies existing unthoughtof or without the mind; though at the same time they are apprehendedby or exist in it self. (PHK 22–23)
The argument seems intended to establish that we cannot actuallyconceive of mind-independent objects, that is, objects existingunperceived and unthought of. Why not? Simply because in order toconceive of any such things, we must ourselves be conceiving,i.e., thinking, of them. However, as Pitcher (1977, 113) nicely observes,such an argument seems to conflate therepresentation (whatwe conceivewith) and therepresented (what weconceiveof—the content of our thought). Once we makethis distinction, we realize that although we must have someconception or representation in order to conceive of something, andthat representation is in some sense thought of, it does notfollow (contra Berkeley) that what we conceiveof must be athought-of object. That is, when we imagine a tree standing alone in aforest, we (arguably) conceive of an unthought-of object, though ofcourse we must employ a thought in order to accomplish this feat.[6] Thus (as many commentators have observed),this argumentfails.
A more charitable reading of the argument (see Winkler 1989, 184–7;Lennon 1988) makes Berkeley's point that we cannot representunconceivedness, because we have never and could never experience it.[7] Because we cannot represent unconceivedness, we cannot conceive ofmind-independent objects. While this is a rather more promisingargument, it clearly presupposes representationalism, just asBerkeley's earlierPrinciples arguments did.[8] (This, however, is not necessarily a defect of the interpretation,since thePrinciples, as we saw above, is aimed againstrepresentationalism, and in theDialogues the Master Argumentcrops up only after Hylas has been converted to representationalism(see below).)[9]
Thus, if we seek a challenge to direct realist materialism, we mustturn to theThree Dialogues, where the character Hylas (thewould-be materialist) begins from a sort of naïve realism,according to which we perceive material objects themselves,directly. Against this position, Philonous (lover ofspirit—Berkeley's spokesperson) attempts to argue that thesensible qualities—the qualities immediately perceived bysense—must be ideal, rather than belonging to materialobjects. (The following analysis of these first dialogue arguments isindebted to Margaret Wilson's account in “Berkeley on theMind-Dependence of Colors,” Wilson 1999, 229–242.[10])
Philonous begins his first argument by contending that sensiblequalities such as heat are not distinct from pleasure or pain.Pleasure and pain, Philonous argues, are allowed by all to be merelyin the mind; therefore the same must be true for the sensiblequalities. The most serious difficulties with this argument are (1)whether we should grant the “no distinction” premise inthe case of the particular sensory qualities invoked by Berkeley (whynot suppose that I can distinguish between the heat and the pain?)and (2) if we do, whether we should generalize to all sensoryqualities as Berkeley would have us do.
Secondly, Philonous invokes relativity arguments to suggest thatbecause sensory qualities are relative to the perceiver, e.g. what ishot to one hand may be cold to the other and what is sweet to oneperson may be bitter to another, they cannot belong tomind-independent material objects, for such objects could not bearcontradictory qualities.
As Berkeley is well aware, one may reply to this sort of argument byclaiming that only one of the incompatible qualities is truly aquality of the object and that the other apparent qualities resultfrommisperception. But how then, Berkeley asks, are these“true” qualities to be identified and distinguished fromthe “false” ones (3D 184)? By noting the differencesbetween animal perception and human perception, Berkeley suggests thatit would be arbitrary anthropocentrism to claim that humans havespecial access to the true qualities of objects. Further, Berkeleyuses the example of microscopes to undermine theprima facieplausible thought that the true visual qualities of objects arerevealed by close examination. Thus, Berkeley provides a strongchallenge to any direct realist attempt to specify standard conditionsunder which the true (mind-independent) qualities of objects are(directly) perceived by sense.
Under this pressure from Philonous, Hylas retreats (perhaps a bitquickly) from naïve realism to a more “philosophical”position. He first tries to make use of the primary/secondary qualitydistinction associated with mechanism and, again, locatable in thethought of Descartes and Locke. Thus, Hylas allows that color, taste,etc. may be mind-dependent (secondary) qualities, but contends thatfigure, solidity, motion and rest (the primary qualities) exist inmind-independent material bodies. The mechanist picture behind thisproposal is that bodies are composed of particles with size, shape,motion/rest, and perhaps solidity, and that our sensory ideas arisefrom the action of such particles on our sense organs and, ultimately,on our minds. Berkeley opposes this sort of mechanism throughout hiswritings, believing that it engenders skepticism by dictating thatbodies are utterly unlike our sensory experience of them. HerePhilonous has a two-pronged reply: (1) The same sorts of relativityarguments that were made against secondary qualities can be madeagainst primary ones. (2) We cannot abstract the primary qualities(e.g. shape) from secondary ones (e.g. color), and thus we cannotconceive of mechanist material bodies which are extended but not (inthemselves) colored.[11]
When, after some further struggles, Hylas finally capitulates toPhilonous' view that all of existence is mind-dependent, he does sounhappily and with great reluctance. Philonous needs to convince him(as Berkeley needed to convince his readers in both books) that acommonsensical philosophy could be built on an immaterialistfoundation, that no one but a skeptic or atheist would ever missmatter. As a matter of historical fact, Berkeley persuaded few of hiscontemporaries, who for the most part regarded him as a purveyor ofskeptical paradoxes (Bracken 1965). Nevertheless, we can and shouldappreciate the way in which Berkeley articulated a positive idealistphilosophical system, which, if not in perfect accord with commonsense, is in many respects superior to its competitors.
The basics of Berkeley's metaphysics are apparent from the firstsection of the main body of thePrinciples:
It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of humanknowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on thesenses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions andoperations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory andimagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representingthose originally perceived in the aforesaid ways. By sight I have theideas of light and colours with their several degrees andvariations. By touch I perceive, for example, hard and soft, heat andcold, motion and resistance, and of all these more and less either asto quantity or degree. Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palatewith tastes, and hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all theirvariety of tone and composition. And as several of these are observedto accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so tobe reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste,smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, areaccounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple. Othercollections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the likesensible things; which, as they are pleasing or disagreeable, excitethe passions of love, hatred, joy, grief, and so forth.
As this passage illustrates, Berkeley does not deny the existence ofordinary objects such as stones, trees, books, and apples. On thecontrary, as was indicated above, he holds that only an immaterialistaccount of such objects can avoid skepticism about their existence andnature. What such objects turn out to be, on his account, are bundlesor collections of ideas. An apple is a combination of visual ideas(including the sensible qualities of color and visual shape), tangibleideas, ideas of taste, smell, etc.[12] The question of what does the combining is a philosophicallyinteresting one which Berkeley does not address in detail. He doesmake clear that there are two sides to the process of bundling ideasinto objects: (1) co-occurrence, an objective fact about what sorts ofideas tend to accompany each other in our experience, and (2) something wedo when we decide to single out a set of co-occurring ideas and referto it with a certain name (NTV 109).
Thus, although there is no material world for Berkeley, there is aphysical world, a world of ordinary objects. This world ismind-dependent, for it is composed of ideas, whose existence consistsin being perceived. For ideas, and so for the physical world,esseest percipi.
Berkeley's ontology is not exhausted by the ideal, however. Inaddition to perceived things (ideas), he posits perceivers, i.e., mindsorspirits, as he often terms them. Spirits, he emphasizes,are totally different in kind from ideas, for they are active whereideas are passive. This suggests that Berkeley has replaced one kindof dualism, of mind and matter, with another kind of dualism, of mindand idea. There is something to this point, given Berkeley's refusalto elaborate upon the relation between active minds and passiveideas. At Principles 49, he famously dismisses quibbling abouthow ideas inhere in the mind (are minds colored and extendedwhen such sensible qualities “exist in” them?) with thedeclaration that “those qualities are in the mind only as theyare perceived by it, that is, not by way ofmode orattribute, but only by way ofidea”. Berkeley'sdualism, however, is a dualismwithin the realm of themind-dependent.
The last major item in Berkeley's ontology is God, himself a spirit,but an infinite one. Berkeley believes that once he has establishedidealism, he has a novel and convincing argument for God's existenceas the cause of our sensory ideas. He argues by elimination: Whatcould cause my sensory ideas? Candidate causes, supposing thatBerkeley has already established that matter doesn't exist, are (1)other ideas, (2) myself, or (3) some other spirit. Berkeley eliminatesthe first option with the following argument (PHK 25):
(1) Ideas are manifestly passive—no power or activity isperceived in them.(2) But because of the mind-dependent status of ideas, they cannothave any characteristics which they are not perceived to have.
Therefore,
(3) Ideas are passive, that is, they possess no causalpower.
It should be noted that premise (2) is rather strong; Phillip Cummins(1990) identifies it as Berkeley's “manifest qualitiesthesis” and argues that it commits Berkeley to the view thatideas are radically and completely dependent on perceivers in the waythat sensations of pleasure and pain are typically taken to be.[13]
The second option is eliminated with the observation that although Iclearly can cause some ideas at will (e.g. ideas of imagination),sensory ideas are involuntary; they present themselves whether I wishto perceive them or not and I cannot control their content. The hiddenassumption here is that any causing the mind does must be done bywilling and such willing must be accessible to consciousness.Berkeley is hardly alone in presupposing this model of the mental;Descartes, for example, makes a similar set of assumptions.
This leaves us, then, with the third option: my sensory ideas must becaused by some other spirit. Berkeley thinks that when we consider thestunning complexity and systematicity of our sensory ideas, we mustconclude that the spirit in question is wise and benevolent beyondmeasure, that, in short, he is God.
With the basic ingredients of Berkeley's ontology in place, we canbegin to consider how his system works by seeing how he responds to anumber of intuitively compelling objections to it. Berkeley himselfsees very well how necessary this is: Much of thePrinciplesis structured as a series of objections and replies, and in theThree Dialogues, once Philonous has rendered Hylas areluctant convert to idealism, he devotes the rest of the book toconvincing him that this is a philosophy which coheres well withcommon sense, at least better than materialism ever did.
Perhaps the most obvious objection to idealism is that it makes realthings no different from imaginary ones—both seem fleetingfigments of our own minds, rather than the solid objects of thematerialists. Berkeley replies that the distinction between realthings and chimeras retains its full force on his view. One way ofmaking the distinction is suggested by his argument for the existenceof God, examined above: Ideas which depend on our own finite humanwills are not (constituents of) real things. Not being voluntary isthus a necessary condition for being a real thing, but it is clearlynot sufficient, since hallucinations and dreams do not depend on ourwills, but are nevertheless not real. Berkeley notes that the ideasthat constitute real things exhibit a steadiness, vivacity, anddistinctness that chimerical ideas do not. The most crucial featurethat he points to, however, isorder. The ideas imprinted bythe author of nature as part ofrerum natura occur in regularpatterns, according to the laws of nature (“the set rules orestablished methods, wherein the mind we depend on excites in us theideas of sense, are called the Laws of Nature” PHK 30). They arethus regular and coherent, that is, they constitute a coherent realworld.
The related notions of regularity and of the laws of nature arecentral to the workability of Berkeley's idealism. They allow him torespond to the following objection, put forward in PHK 60:
…it will be demanded to what purpose serves that curiousorganization of plants, and the admirable mechanism in the parts ofanimals; might not vegetables grow, and shoot forth leaves andblossoms, and animals perform all their motions, as well without aswith all that variety of internal parts so elegantly contrived and puttogether, which being ideas have nothing powerful or operative inthem, nor have any necessary connexion with the effects ascribed tothem? […] And how comes it to pass, that whenever there is anyfault in the going of a watch, there is some corresponding disorder tobe found in the movements, which being mended by a skilful hand, allis right again? The like may be said of all the clockwork of Nature,great part whereof is so wonderfully fine and subtle, as scarce to bediscerned by the best microscope. In short, it will be asked, how uponour principles any tolerable account can be given, or any final causeassigned of an innumerable multitude of bodies and machines framedwith the most exquisite art, which in the common philosophy have veryapposite uses assigned them, and serve to explain abundance ofphenomena.
Berkeley's answer, for which he is indebted to Malebranche,[14] is that, although God could make a watch run (that is, produce in usideas of a watch running) without the watch having any internalmechanism (that is, without it being the case that, were we to openthe watch, we would have ideas of an internal mechanism), he cannot doso if he is to act in accordance with the laws of nature, which he hasestablished for our benefit, to make the world regular andpredictable. Thus, whenever we have ideas of a working watch, we willfind that if we open it,[15] we will see (have ideas of) an appropriate internalmechanism. Likewise, when we have ideas of a living tulip, we willfind that if we pull it apart, we will observe the usual internalstructure of such plants, with the same transport tissues,reproductive parts, etc.
Implicit in the answer above is Berkeley's insightful account ofscientific explanation and the aims of science. A bit of background isneeded here to see why this issue posed a special challenge forBerkeley. One traditional understanding of science, derived fromAristotle, held that it aims at identifying the causes ofthings. Modern natural philosophers such as Descartes narrowedscience's domain toefficient causes and thus held thatscience should reveal the efficient causes of natural things,processes, and events.[16] Berkeley considers this as the source of an objection at Principles51:
Seventhly, it will upon this be demanded whether it does not seemabsurd to take away natural causes, and ascribe every thing to theimmediate operation of spirits? We must no longer say upon theseprinciples that fire heats, or water cools, but that a spirit heats,and so forth. Would not a man be deservedly laughed at, who shouldtalk after this manner? I answer, he would so; in such things we oughttothink with the learned, and speak with the vulgar.
On Berkeley's account, the true cause of any phenomenon is aspirit, and most often it is the same spirit, namely, God.
But surely, one might object, it is a step backwards to abandon ourscientific theories and simply note that God causes what happens inthe physical world! Berkeley's first response here, that we shouldthink with the learned but speak with the vulgar, advises us tocontinue to say that fire heats, that the heart pumps blood, etc.What makes this advice legitimate is that he can reconstrue such talkas being about regularities in our ideas. In Berkeley's view, thepoint of scientific inquiry is to reveal such regularities:
If therefore we consider the difference there is betwixt naturalphilosophers and other men, with regard to their knowledge of thephenomena, we shall find it consists, not in an exacterknowledge of the efficient cause that produces them, for that can beno other than thewill of a spirit, but only in a greaterlargeness of comprehension, whereby analogies, harmonies, andagreements are discovered in the works of Nature, and the particulareffects explained, that is, reduced to general rules, seeSect. 62, which rules grounded on the analogy, anduniformness observed in the production of natural effects, are mostagreeable, and sought after by the mind; for that they extend ourprospect beyond what is present, and near to us, and enable us to makevery probable conjectures, touching things that may have happened atvery great distances of time and place, as well as to predict thingsto come…. (PHK 105)
Natural philosophers thus consider signs, rather than causes (PHK108), but their results are just as useful as they would be under amaterialist system. Moreover, the regularities they discover providethe sort of explanation proper to science, by rendering the particularevents they subsume unsurprising (PHK 104). The sort of explanationproper to science, then, is not causal explanation, but reduction to regularity.[17]
Regularity provides a foundation for one of Berkeley's responsesto the objection summarized in the famous limerick:
There was a young man who said God,
must find it exceedingly odd
when he finds that the tree
continues to be
when noone's about in the Quad.[18]
The worry, of course, is that if to be is to be perceived (fornon-spirits), then there are no trees in the Quad at 3 a.m. when noone is there to perceive them and there is no furniture in my officewhen I leave and close the door. Interestingly, in thePrinciples Berkeley seems relatively unperturbed by thisnatural objection to idealism. He claims that there is no problemfor
…anyone that shall attend to what is meant by the termexist when applied to sensible things. The table I writeon, I say, exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of mystudy I should say it existed, meaning thereby that if I was in mystudy I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually doesperceive it. (PHK 3)
So, when I say that my desk still exists after I leave my office,perhaps I just mean that I would perceive it if I were in my office,or, more broadly, that a finite mind would perceive the desk were itin the appropriate circumstances (in my office, with the lights on,with eyes open, etc.). This is to provide a sort of counterfactualanalysis of the continued existence of unperceived objects. The truthof the counterfactuals in question is anchored in regularity: becauseGod follows set patterns in the way he causes ideas, I would have adesk idea if I were in the office.
Unfortunately, this analysis has counterintuitive consequences whencoupled with theesse est percipi doctrine (McCracken 1979,286). If to be is, as Berkeley insists, to be perceived, then theunperceived desk does not exist, despite the fact that itwould be perceived and thuswould exist if someoneopened the office door. Consequently, on this view the desk would notendure uninterrupted but would pop in and out of existence, though itwould do so quite predictably. One way to respond to this worry wouldbe to dismiss it—what does it matter if the desk ceases to existwhen unperceived, as long as it exists whenever we need it? Berkeleyshows signs of this sort of attitude in Principles 45–46, where hetries to argue that his materialist opponents and scholasticpredecessors are in much the same boat.[19] This “who cares?” response to the problem of continuedexistence is fair enough as far as it goes, but it surely doesconflict with common sense, so if Berkeley were to take this route hewould have to moderate his claims about his system's ability toaccommodate everything desired by the person on the street.
Another strategy, however, is suggested by Berkeley's reference inPHK 3 and 48 to “some other spirit,” a strategysummarized in a further limerick:
Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd
I'm always about in the Quad
And that's why the tree
continues to be
Since observed by, yours faithfully, God
If the other spirit in question is God, an omnipresent being, thenperhaps his perception can be used to guarantee a completelycontinuous existence to every physical object. In theThreeDialogues, Berkeley very clearly invokes God in thiscontext. Interestingly, whereas in thePrinciples, as we haveseen above, he argued that God must exist in order tocauseour ideas of sense, in theDialogues (212, 214–5) he arguesthat our ideas mustexist in God when not perceived by us.[20] If our ideas exist in God, then they presumably existcontinuously. Indeed, they must exist continuously, since standardChristian doctrine dictates that God is unchanging.
Although this solves one problem for Berkeley, it creates severalmore. The first is that Berkeley's other commitments, religious andphilosophical, dictate that God cannot literally have our ideas. Ourideas are sensory ideas and God is a being who “can suffernothing, nor be affected with any painful sensation, or indeed anysensation at all” (3D 206). Nor can our sensory ideas be copiesof God's nonsensory ones (McCracken 1979):
How can that which is sensible be like that which is insensible? Cana real thing in itselfinvisible be like acolour;or a real thing which is notaudible, be like asound? (3D 206)
A second problem is that God's ideas are eternal, whereas physicalobjects typically have finite duration. And, even worse, God has ideasof all possible objects (Pitcher 1977, 171–2), not just the ones whichwe would commonsensically wish to say exist.
A solution (proposed by McCracken) to these related problems is totie the continued existence of ordinary objects to God's will, ratherthan to his understanding. McCracken's suggestion is that unperceivedobjects continue to exist as God's decrees. Such an account in termsof divine decrees or volitions looks promising: The tree continues toexist when unperceived just in case God has an appropriate volition orintention to cause a tree-idea in finite perceivers under the rightcircumstances. Furthermore, this solution has important textualsupport: In theThree Dialogues, Hylas challenges Philonousto account for the creation, given that all existence ismind-dependent, in his view, but everything must exist eternally inthe mind of God. Philonous responds as follows:
May we not understand it [the creation] to have been entirely inrespect of finite spirits; so that things, with regard to us, mayproperly be said to begin their existence, or be created, when Goddecreed they should become perceptible to intelligent creatures, inthat order and manner which he then established, and we now call thelaws of Nature? You may call this arelative, orhypothetical existence if you please. (3D 253)
Here Berkeley ties the actual existence of created physical beings toGod's decrees, that is, to his will.
As with the counterfactual analysis of continued existence, however,this account also fails under pressure from theesse estpercipi principle:
Hylas. Yes, Philonous, I grant the existence of a sensible thing consistsin being perceivable, but not in being actually perceived.Philonous. And what is perceivable but an idea? And can anidea exist without being actually perceived? These are pointslong since agreed between us. (3D 234)
Thus, if the only grounds of continued existence arevolitions in God's mind, rather than perceived items (ideas),then ordinary objects do not exist continuously, but rather pop in andout of existence in a lawful fashion.
Fortunately, Kenneth Winkler has put forward an interpretation whichgoes a great distance towards resolving this difficulty. In effect, heproposes that we amend the “volitional” interpretation ofthe existence of objects with the hypothesis that Berkeley held“the denial of blind agency” (Winkler 1989, 207–224). Thisprinciple, which can be found in many authors of the period (includingLocke), dictates that any volition must have an idea behind it, thatis, must have a cognitive component that gives content to thevolition, which would otherwise be empty or “blind”. Whilethe principle is never explicitly invoked or argued for by Berkeley,in a number of passages he does note the interdependence of will andunderstanding. Winkler plausibly suggests that Berkeley may have foundthis principle so obvious as to need no arguing. With it in place, wehave a guarantee that anything willed by God, e.g. that finiteperceivers in appropriate circumstances should have elm tree ideas,also has a divine idea associated with it. Furthermore, we have a neatexplanation of Berkeley's above-noted leap in theDialoguesfrom the claim that God must cause our ideas to the claim that ourideas must exist in God.
Of course, it remains true that God cannot have ideas that are,strictly speaking, the same as ours. This problem is closely relatedto another that confronts Berkeley: Can two people ever perceive thesame thing? Common sense demands that two students can perceive thesame tree, but Berkeley's metaphysics seems to dictate that they nevertruly perceive the same thing, since they each have their ownnumerically distinct ideas. One way to dissolve this difficulty is torecall that objects are bundles of ideas. Although two people cannotperceive/have the numerically same idea, they can perceive the sameobject, assuming that perceiving a component of the bundle sufficesfor perception of the bundle.[21] Another proposal (Baxter 1991) is to invoke Berkeley's doctrine that“same” has both a philosophical and a vulgar sense (3D247) in order to declare that my tree-idea and your tree-idea arestrictly distinct but loosely (vulgarly) the same. Either accountmight be applied in order to show either that God and I may perceivethe same object, or that God and I may perceive, loosely speaking, thesame thing.
From this discussion we may draw a criterion for the actual existenceof ordinary objects, one which summarizes Berkeley's consideredviews:
AnX exists at timet if and only if God has anidea that corresponds to a volition that if a finite mind att is in appropriate circumstances (e.g. in a particularplace, looking in the right direction, or looking through amicroscope), then it will have an idea that we would be disposed tocall a perception of anX.
This captures the idea thatexistence depends on God's perceptions, but only on the perceptionswhich correspond to or are included in his volitions about whatwe should perceive. It also captures the fact that thebundling of ideas into objects is done by us.[22]
A further worry about Berkeley's system arises from theidea-bundle account of objects.[23] If there is no mind-independent object against which to measure myideas, but rather my ideas help to constitute the object, then how canmy ideas ever fail—how is error possible? Here is another wayto raise the worry that I have in mind: We saw above thatBerkeley's arguments against commonsense realism in the firstDialogue attempt to undermine (1) claims that heat, odor,taste are distinguishable from pleasure/pain and (2) the claim thatobjects have one true color, one true shape, one true taste, etc. Ifwe then consider what this implies about Berkeleyian objects, we mustconclude that Berkeley's cherry is red, purple, gray, tart, sweet,small, large, pleasant, and painful! It seems that Berkeley's desireto refute the mechanist representationalism which dictates thatobjects are utterlyunlike our experience of them has leadhim to pushbeyond common sense to the view that objects areexactly like our experience of them.[24] There is no denying that Berkeley is out of sync with common sensehere. He does, however, have an account of error, as he shows us intheDialogues:
Hylas. What say you to this? Since, according to you, men judge ofthe reality of things by their senses, how can a man be mistaken inthinking the moon a plain lucid surface, about a foot in diameter; or asquare tower, seen at a distance, round; or an oar, with one end in thewater, crooked?Philonous. He is not mistaken with regard to the ideas he actuallyperceives; but in the inferences he makes from his present perceptions.Thus in the case of the oar, what he immediately perceives by sight iscertainly crooked; and so far he is in the right. But if he thenceconclude, that upon taking the oar out of the water he shall perceivethe same crookedness; or that it would affect his touch, as crookedthings are wont to do: in that he is mistaken. (3D 238)
Extrapolating from this, we may say that my gray idea of the cherry,formed in dim light, is not in itself wrong and forms a part of thebundle-object just as much as your red idea, formed in daylight.However, if I judge that the cherry would look gray in bright light,I'm in error. Furthermore, following Berkeley's directive to speakwith the vulgar, I ought not to say (in ordinary circumstances) that“the cherry is gray,” since that will be taken to implythat the cherry would look gray to humans in daylight.
We have spent some time examining the difficulties Berkeley faces inthe “idea/ordinary object” half of his ontology.Arguably, however, less tractable difficulties confront him in therealm of spirits. Early on, Berkeley attempts to forestall materialistskeptics who object that we have no idea of spirit by arguing for thisposition himself:
A spirit is one simple, undivided, active being: as it perceivesideas, it is called theunderstanding, and as it produces orotherwise operates about them, it is called thewill. Hencethere can be no idea formed of a soul or spirit: for all ideaswhatever, being passive and inert,vide Sect. 25, they cannotrepresent unto us, by way of image or likeness, that which acts. Alittle attention will make it plain to any one, that to have an ideawhich shall be like that active principle of motion and change ofideas, is absolutely impossible. Such is the nature ofspirit or thatwhich acts, that it cannot be of it self perceived, but only by theeffects which it produceth. (PHK 27)
Surely the materialist will be tempted to complain, however, thatBerkeley's unperceivable spiritual substances, lurking behind thescenes and supporting that which we can perceive, sound a lot like thematerial substances which he so emphatically rejects.
Two very different responses are available to Berkeley on this issue,each of which he seems to have made at a different point in hisphilosophical development. One response would be to reject spiritualsubstance just as he rejected material substance. Spirits, then,might be understood in a Humean way, as bundles of ideas andvolitions. Fascinatingly, something like this view is considered byBerkeley in his early philosophical notebooks (see PC 577ff). Why heabandons it is an interesting and difficult question;[25] it seems that one worry he has is how the understanding and the willare to be integrated and rendered one thing.
The second response would be to explain why spiritual substances arebetter posits than material ones. To this end, Berkeley emphasizesthat we have a notion of spirit, which is just to say that we knowwhat the word means. This purportedly contrasts with“matter,” which Berkeley thinks has no determinatecontent. Of course, the real question is: How does the term“spirit” come by any content, given that we have no ideaof it? In thePrinciples, Berkeley declares only that weknow spirit through our own case and that the content we assign to“spirit” is derived from the content each of us assigns to“I” (PHK 139–140). In theDialogues, however,Berkeley shows a better appreciation of the force of the problem thatconfronts him:
[Hylas.] You say your own soul supplies you with some sort ofan idea or image of God. But at the same time you acknowledge you have,properly speaking, no idea of your own soul. You even affirm thatspirits are a sort of beings altogether different from ideas.Consequently that no idea can be like a spirit. We have therefore noidea of any spirit. You admit nevertheless that there is spiritualsubstance, although you have no idea of it; while you deny there can besuch a thing as material substance, because you have no notion or ideaof it. Is this fair dealing? To act consistently, you must either admitmatter or reject spirit. (3D 232)
To the main point of Hylas' attack, Philonous replies that each of ushas, in our own case, an immediate intuition of ourselves, that is, weknow our own minds through reflection (3D 231–233). Berkeley'sconsidered position, that we gain access to ourselves as thinkingthings through conscious awareness, is surely an intuitiveone. Nevertheless, it is disappointing that he never gave an explicitresponse to the Humean challenge he entertained in his notebooks:
+ Mind is a congeries of Perceptions. Take away Perceptions& you take away the Mind put the Perceptions & you put themind. (PC 580)
A closely related problem which confronts Berkeley is how to makesense of the causal powers that he ascribes to spirits. Here again,the notebooks suggest a surprisingly Humean view:
+ The simple idea call'd Power seems obscure or rather none at all. butonely the relation ‘twixt cause & Effect. Wn I ask whether A canmove B. if A be an intelligent thing. I mean no more than whether thevolition of A that B move be attended with the motion of B, if A be besenseless whether the impulse of A against B be follow'd by ye motionof B. 461[26]S What means Cause as distinguish'd from Occasion? nothing but a Beingwch wills wn the Effect follows the volition. Those things that happenfrom without we are not the Cause of therefore there is some otherCause of them i.e., there is a being that wills these perceptions inus. 499
S There is a difference betwixt Power & Volition. There may bevolition without Power. But there can be no Power without Volition.Power implyeth volition & at the same time a Connotation of theEffects following the Volition. 699
461 suggests the Humean view that a cause is whatever is (regularly)[27] followed by an effect. 499 and 699 revise this doctrine by requiringthat a cause not only (regularly) precede an effect but also be avolition. Berkeley's talk of occasion here reveals the immediateinfluence of Malebranche. Malebranche held that the only true causeis God and that apparent finite causes are only “occasionalcauses,” which is to say that they provide occasions for God toact on his general volitional policies. Occasional“causes” thus regularly precede their“effects” but are not truly responsible for producingthem. In these notebook entries, however, Berkeley seems to besuggesting that all there is to causality is this regular consequence,with the first item being a volition. Such an account, unlikeMalebranche's, would make my will and God's will causes in exactly thesame thin sense.
Some commentators, most notably Winkler, suppose that Berkeleyretains this view of causality in the published works. The maindifficulty with this interpretation is that Berkeley more than oncepurports to inspect our idea of body, and the sensory qualitiesincluded therein, and to conclude from that inspection that bodies arepassive (DM 22, PHK 25). This procedure would make little sense ifbodies, according to Berkeley, fail to be causes by definition, simplybecause they are not minds with wills.[28] What is needed is an explanation of what Berkeleymeans byactivity, which he clearly equates with causal power. Winkler (1989,130–1) supplies such an account, according to which activity meansdirection towards an end. But this is to identify efficient causationwith final causation, a controversial move at best which Berkeleywould be making without comment or argument.
The alternative would be to suppose, asDe Motu 33 suggests,that Berkeley holds that we gain a notion of activity, along with anotion of spirit as substance, through reflective awareness/internalconsciousness:
[W]e feel it [mind] as a faculty of altering both our own state andthat of other things, and that is properly called vital, and puts awide distinction between soul and bodies. (DM 33)
On this interpretation, Berkeley would again have abandoned theradical Humean position entertained in his notebooks, as he clearlydid on the question of the nature of spirit. One can only speculate asto whether his reasons would have been primarily philosophical,theological, or practical. Berkeley's writings, however, are notgenerally characterized by deference to authority, quite the contrary,[29] as he himself proclaims:
… one thing, I know, I am not guilty of. I do not pin myfaith on the sleeve of any great man. I act not out of prejudice& prepossession. I do not adhere to any opinion because it isan old one, a receiv'd one, a fashionable one, or one that I have spentmuch time in the study and cultivation of. (PC 465)
The standard edition of Berkeley's works is:
The following abbreviations are used to reference Berkeley's works:
| PC | “Philosophical Commentaries” | Works 1:9–104 |
| NTV | An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision | Works 1:171–239 |
| PHK | Of the Principles of Human Knowledge: Part 1 | Works 2:41–113 |
| 3D | Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous | Works 2:163–263 |
| DM | De Motu, or The Principle and Nature of Motion and the Cause of the Communication of Motions, trans. A.A. Luce | Works 4:31–52 |
References to these works are by section numbers (or entry numbers,for PC), except for 3D, where they are by page number.
Other useful editions include:
A collection, useful to students, of primary texts constitutingbackground to Berkeley or early critical reactions to Berkeley:
How to cite this entry. Preview the PDF version of this entry at theFriends of the SEP Society. Look up this entry topic at theIndiana Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entryatPhilPapers, with links to its database.
Descartes, René |Hume, David | idealism |Locke, John |Malebranche, Nicolas
