Lecture 28 Notes

Background

1. Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753)
1. Eccentric Genius
2. Early "American" Scholar
2. Berkeley's Philosophy
1. Concern Over Ego-Centric Predicament
2. Defender of Common Sense
3. Rethinking Primary-Secondary Quality Distinction
4. Critical Question: Why suppose any resemblance between ideas and matter???

Berkeley's Idealism

1. The only things that exist are minds and their ideas!!!
2. Paradox in Berkeley's Philosophy: Berkeley Viewed Himself As the True Anti-Skeptic; As the Defender of Common Sense Views.  But He Denies the Reality Of Matter!
3. Crucial distinction between ordinary objects on the one hand, and mind-independent matter, on the other hand--Ordinary objects exist; mind-independent matter does not.
1. Berkeley is not a solipsist.  According to solipsism, objects are not real.
2. Berkeley does think that objects are real.  However, to be real is not to be material.  To be real is just to be a collection of ideas.  Therefore, objects exist, but they are just collections of ideas.

Berkeley's Attack on Matter

1. Hylas and Philonous: Goal is to Avoid Skepticism
1. Berkeley thinks that one avoids skepticism by attacking mind-independent matter.
2. If objects are just collections of ideas, then our ideas cannot misrepresent objects.
2. Strategy for the Attack on Matter
1. First Stage: Attacking Naive Representationalism
• Notes the continuum to pain and pleasure (see Locke's discussion of the continuum from warmth to pain)
  
• Variance arguments again (see Locke's variance arguments)
2. Second Stage: Attacking Locke's Limited Representationalism
• Berkeley uses Locke's own arguments to show that primary qualities are also mind-dependent.
3. Variance Arguments for Primary Qualities
1. Size depends on the perceiver.  For example, a shoe might seem large to an ant but relatively small to a person.
   
2. Different shapes for the same object.  For example, a stool seat might appear round when one is looking at it from directly above, but it will appear oval-shaped when one is looking at it from an angle.
3. Degree of motion depends on psychological factors.  For example, a person on earth in a room judges that she is not in motion.  But someone in a spaceship looking down on that person would see that they are moving as the earth rotates on its axis and orbits the sun.
4. The Failure of Abstraction--There is no such thing as size or motion "in general".
4. Highlighting the Mysterious Nature of Matter: The Uselessness of "Substratum"
1. The idea of a "substratum"--Even if all of the primary qualities and secondary qualities are ideas, there must be something that causes these ideas in the mind.  This something is the material substratum.
2. Berkeley thinks the notion of a "substratum" is useless.  Matter is neither perceivable nor conceivable!
• All experienced qualities are ideas; ideas cannot exist in a non-mental substance.
• We cannot conceive of something with no color or shape, etc.  So we cannot conceive of a material substratum.
  
• We cannot conceive of something unconceived.
• No basis for inference to mind-independent matter.
  
• Interaction problems--There are notorious problems with positing that matter and immaterial minds interact.