George Berkeley

The Principles of Human Knowledge

Berkeley:
To be is to
be perceived.
 “Obvious to the Mind…”
• “… all those bodies which compose the earth … have
no… subsistence without a mind, … their being is to
be perceived or to be known” [Principle 6]
– “their esse is percipi” [Principle 3]—their “being” is in
“being perceived.”
• Trees, tables, human bodies, etc., exist only in being perceived;
exist only in our minds!
• “… it follows, there is not any substance other than
spirit, or that which perceives.” [Principle 7]
 Berkeley’s Idealism:
• There is no such thing as “material substance.”
• Real things like tables, mountains, etc., exist only in
being perceived. Their esse (“being”) is percipi
(“being perceived”).
• The only real substance is mental, i.e., the only things
that exist in the universe are mind/souls (and the
ideas that exist “in” them).
• “Things,” like tables and chairs, mountains and
bodies, exist only in our perception of them.
Berkeley Rejects (Metaphysical) Realism

• Realists, like both Descartes and Locke,

believe that there is a world (the material
world) that exists independently of whether or
not any conscious mind experiences it.
– Berkeley rejects this.
• “there is not any substance other than spirit”

• Berkeley’s position is known as (metaphysical)

idealism.
Berkeley Rejects Mind/Body Dualism

• “Dualists,” like both Descartes and Locke,

believe that the world contains two
fundamentally different kinds of “stuff”—
mind and matter.
• Berkeley disagrees:
• He believes in the existence of mind;
– “that which perceives”
• He does not believe in the existence of matter.
– things that exist independently of mind.
 Berkeley
• Believes that, in the end, minds (souls, spirits,
immaterial substances) are the only sorts of
things that exist.

• Believes that “bodies” (all the things we can

perceive with our senses) exist only in our
consciousness of them—they are but
“collections of ideas.”
From Locke to Berkeley
Causal Theory of Perception:
Indirectly
aware of
Sensation
Berkeley
REJECTS this
part of Locke’s
picture.

Matter
Compare and Contrast
 Locke:
• “Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is
the immediate object of perception, thought,
or understanding, that I call idea…”

• That is, Locke believes that in “perception,

thought, [and] understanding,”—in all forms
of conscious awareness—what we are
“immediately aware” of are always/only ideas
in our minds.
 Berkeley:

• “It is evident … [that] the objects of human

knowledge … are either ideas actually
imprinted on the senses, or else such as are
perceived by attending to the … operations
of the mind … [such as] memory and
imagination ….”
• Berkeley agrees that in all forms of conscious
awareness, what we are “immediately aware” of
are always/only ideas in our minds.
 Locke and Berkeley Agree:
• The only immediate
objects of thoughts,
sensations,
perceptions, etc. (of
any conscious
experience) are ideas
or sensations, i.e.,
things that exist only
in our minds.
 Where they disagree:
Is there any world beyond (independent
of) our ideas?

• Locke: Yes.
• Berkeley: No.
Berkeley’s Idealism
 Berkeley’s View:
Real
objects are
collections
of ideas.

• Objects (tables, chairs, bodies, etc) are

simply “collections of ideas” that exist only
in being perceived.
– This is Berkeley’s Idealism.
Defending Idealism by
Rejecting Materialism
 Berkeley’s Terminology
• Idealism: There is only one fundamental
kind of thing, mental things, i.e., minds or
souls (and the ideas that are ‘in’ them).

• (What Berkeley calls) Materialism: The

view that there are material things (bodies)
in addition to mental things (minds).
– This is what we called “dualism.” Later philosophers
will use the term “materialism” for those who accept
matter but deny mental substance.
 Berkeley’s Claim:
Materialism leads to skepticism
• Even if it is “possible that solid, figured, moveable
substances … exist without the mind, yet how is it
possible for us to know this?”

• If all that we directly know or experience are ideas

in the mind (mental entities), we have no evidence
for the existence of anything distinct from these
ideas.
 Directly Known Material Substance:
Only inferred

• We are directly aware only of ideas.

• We infer material objects as the causes of these
ideas.
 Even if we grant that we don’t directly
perceive material substances, can’t we infer
them as the best explanation of the ideas and
sensations that we do perceive?

• Berkeley: But “by their own confession …

they own themselves unable to comprehend
in what manner body can act upon spirit.”

--i.e., positing the existence of matter doesn’t really

explain anything, since you can’t actually explain
how matter causally influences mind.
 “they [are] unable to … [explain how]
body can act upon spirit.”

• For Dualists (like Locke and Descartes), mind and

matter are two distinct kinds of substances—they
have nothing in common.

• But if they have nothing in common, how can they

causally interact with one another?
– How can mind (“spirit”) make matter move?
– How can matter (“body”) cause ideas in a (non-material)
mind?
 ?

Berkeley: How could mind causally interact with

matter?
The “Master Argument”
 “I am content to put the whole upon
this issue…” [P 22]
• “If you can but conceive it possible for …
anything … to exist otherwise than in a mind
perceiving it, I will readily give up the cause.”

• I.e., Berkeley is saying that if you can conceive

of an object existing outside a mind, he will grant
that there are such things.

• This seems too easy!

 “Surely there is nothing easier than to
imagine trees, for instance, in a park,… and
nobody to perceive them.”

• “This … is nothing to the purpose!” (i.e., it is irrelevant)

• “What is this … more than framing ideas in your mind

which you call … trees and omitting to frame the idea of
anyone that may perceive them.”

• “But do you not yourself perceive them or think of them all

the while?”
 Berkeley:
On Locke’s own
view, we can’t
even conceive
of this part of
his picture!
If all we can be “directly aware of” are ideas, this means that
all we can think about (all that we can conceive of) are ideas.
So, on this view, we can’t conceive of material
substance!
 “A Manifest Repugnancy”
• On Locke’s view, says Berkeley, material substance is
impossible because the very concept of it is
contradictory.
– Material substance, by definition, is something other than a
mere idea.
• But, on Locke’s own view, we can only think about ideas.
– So, if we can think of material substance at all, it must be
an idea.
– So, material substance is an idea that is not an idea!
Real vs. Imaginary Things
 An Objection:
• “By your principles everything real and
substantial in nature is banished out of the
world, and replaced by a chimerical system of
ideas. All things that exist do so only in the
mind .... Are all these mere illusions, [mere
chimera]?”
– By “chimera” Berkeley just means “imaginary
being.”
 Real vs. Unreal
• If all real things are just collections of ideas,
doesn’t that mean that all collections of ideas
are real things?

• How can Berkeley distinguish real things from

unreal things (“chimeras”), given that they are
both just collections of ideas?
 Locke’s View:

These are These are

mere ideas. real things.
 Berkeley’s Answer:
• “The ideas imprinted on the senses by the
author of nature [or by what we might call
“laws of nature”] are called ‘real things’;

• and those … caused by the imagination [i.e.,

chimeras, are] less regular, vivid, and constant
….”
 “Real things and chimeras”
• Berkeley distinguishes perceptions (“real things”) from
hallucinations (“chimeras”) internally.
– i.e., not in terms of their relations to something “external,” but rather in
terms of their relations to one another.

This is the important

• Perceptions (of real things) are
point!
a) independent of our will,
b) are “more strong, lively, and distinct than those of
imagination,” and
c) cohere together “in a regular train or series.”
--Eg., You know you were just dreaming because your experiences don’t “fit”
with those you had before waking up.
Idea

Real things
are ideas
Idea that cohere
together
properly.
Idea
 Continued:
• “[My] principles ... don’t deprive us of any one
thing in nature. Whatever we see, feel, [or]
perceive … remains as secure as ever, and is as
real as ever. .... I don’t argue against the
existence of any one thing that we can take in,
either by sense or reflection. The only thing
whose existence I deny is what philosophers
call ‘matter’ or ‘corporeal substance’.”
 “I do not argue against the existence of any
one thing that we can apprehend … by sense
or reflection.”

• Berkeley can agree (with a materialist) about which experiences

are true perceptions and which are mere illusions.

• The only disagreement is about what this means.

– The realist sees lack of internal coherence among ideas as evidence

that they don’t correspond to anything external.

– For the idealist, there is nothing “external” to correspond to. Real

things just are those collections of ideas that cohere together
internally. Chimeras just are those collects of ideas that don’t
cohere as we have learned to expect them to.
 Berkeley and Locke
• Berkeley does not disagree with Locke about
what we immediately perceive.
– Both say, “ideas.”
• Berkeley does not disagree with Locke about
which experiences are “true” and which are
“false.”
– Both agree upon the criteria for distinguishing
these experiences.
 Berkeley and Locke
• Berkeley disagrees with Locke only about
what it means to say that something is “real.”
– Locke says that a “real” thing is an unperceived
material substances that causes certain sets of
(internal cohering) ideas.
– Berkeley says that a “real” thing simply is this
same set of (internally cohering) ideas.
 Truth/Reality
• (Locke’s) Realism: • (Berkeley’s) Idealism:

– Experiences are “true” – Experiences are “true”

when they correspond to a when they cohere together
mind independent reality. in the proper way.

– But, Berkeley notes, the – “Reality” is simply that

only evidence for this collection of experiences
purported correspondence that internally cohere
is the fact that certain together appropriately.
experiences cohere • This appeals to the same
together in the ways we empirical evidence to
have learned to expect. distinguish “real things”
• Since we can’t see from “chimera” as
anything but ideas, we realism, but explains
can’t see if they what the difference is
correspond to anything differently.
external to the mind.