Principles 110-117
and 97-98
Berkeley’s attack on absolute space
and time
From the first edition of the Principles:
108. It appears from §66, etc. that the steady,
consistent methods of Nature, may not unfitly be stiled the
language of its Author, whereby He discovers His
Attributes to our view, and directs us how to act for the
convenience and felicity of life. And to me, those men
who frame general rules from the phenomena, and
afterwards derive the phenomena from those rules, seem
to be grammarians, and their art the grammar of Nature.
cf. Newton’s Preface to the 1st edition of
Principia mathematica:
I offer this work as the mathematical principles of
philosophy, for the whole burden of philosophy seems to
consist in this: from the phenomena of motions to
investigate the forces of natue, and then from these forces
to demonsrate the other phenomena …
Berkeley continued:
110. The best grammar of the kind we are speaking of,
will easily be acknowledg’d to be a treatise of mechanics,
demonstrated and applied to Nature, by a philosopher of a
neighbouring nation whom all the world admire. I shall not
take upon me to make remarks, on the performance of
that extraordinary person: only some things he has
advanced, so directly opposite to the doctrine we have
hitherto laid down, that we should be wanting, in the
regard due to the authority of so great a man, did we not
take notice of them. In the entrance of that justly admired
treatise, time space and motion are distinguished into
absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical
and vulgar: which distinction, as it is at large explained by
the author, does suppose those quantities to have an
existence without the mind …
On Absolute Time
When we attempt to consider time apart
from the sequence of concrete events,
(i.e., from the sequence of ideas in our minds)
we attempt to form an abstract idea.
That attempt can never be successful.
At best we come up with a word we
cannot understand because no clear
idea is associated with it.
The True Account of Time
Time is constituted by the succession of ideas in the mind.
So:
How much time passes = how many ideas occur
successively.
The moments of time are marked by the occurrence
of ideas.
Time is not infinitely divisible.
Moreover:
Where there is no succession of ideas, no time
passes.
Consequently:
Spirits do not exist (persist) in an unthinking state.
For spirits, existence cannot be abstracted from
perceiving.
Esse est percipi aut percipere.
Berkeley seems not to have considered (or
not to have wanted to allow for) the case
where:
 more than one idea occurs
simultaneously, and
 two ideas occur sequentially while
another idea occurs
Idea A
Idea B Idea C
This would imply that any given moment of
time is always further divisible.
(Because while any one idea is occurring,
two or more other ideas could occur in
sequence, causing the first idea to endure
over more than one moment.)
The case of the sequence of ideas in
different minds might raise similar issues.
On the Newtonian account, it would make
sense to ask how long any idea takes to
occur.
On Berkeley’s account, there can be no
time shorter than that marked by the fastest
sequence of ideas.
Consequently, it can make no sense
to say that the sequence of ideas
slows down.
Hence, no sense to say that it
speeds up.
However fast or slow the fastest
sequence is, each idea in that
sequence marks exactly one
moment, and it makes no sense to
say that one moment is longer or
shorter than any other.
Absurd Consequences of Absolute Time
 Because absolute time is infinitely
divisible, there must be an infinite
number of moments between any two
given moments
Consequently, an infinitely long time
will have to pass between the
moment when a spirit gets one idea
and the moment when it gets the
next idea
 If you accept that spirits cannot exist in
an unthinking state, then it follows that
you are annihilated every moment of
your existence (because you cease to
exist over the infinitely long time
between the occurrence of each of your
ideas).
Berkeley’s Arguments against Newton’s
concepts of Absolute (and Relative)
Motion
I cannot form an idea of motion unless there are at least
two bodies, one of which is approaching to or receding
from the other.
[since to be is to be perceived, if I can’t form an
idea of it, it can’t exist]
Consequently there can be no motion of a body with
reference to absolute space, since it is imperceptible.
Though all motions are relative, we can distinguish true
relative motions from merely apparent relative motions by
considering which of the bodies are acted upon by moving
forces.
i.e., which are being moved as a consequence of
the will of some spirit, and which are only moving
only relatively to those truly moved.
So, if I walk over the paving stones, I truly move
my limbs relative to the paving stones, and the
paving stones do not truly move relative to my
limbs.
Objection: What about the case where I walk
over the planks of a ship while the ship is
sailing in the opposite direction at the same
speed?
Answer: When a spirit moves a body, the thing
with reference to which that body moves may
be more or less appropriately denominated.
For purposes of common life, the
appropriate denomination is the surface of
the Earth.
(since we are only able to move bodies relative to
that object)
But in natural philosophy it is more appropriate
to consider the universe finite, its outermost,
immobile boundaries to be marked by the fixed
stars, and the divine spirit to be moving bodies
relative to those landmarks.
(All the laws of physics are equally valid when
true motion is taken to be motion relative to the
fixed stars rather than motion relative to absolute
space, so we don’t need absolute space for
physics)
Berkeley’s criticism of the bucket
experiment
The bucket experiment does not prove that a force
effect of receding from the axis of rotation does not
belong to merely relative circular motion.
Because at Stage 2, when the water is said to
have the greatest relative circular motion, it does
not in fact have any true circular motion (i.e., any
motion relative to the earth or the fixed stars
resulting from an impressed force)
So, that it should not rise up the sides of the
bucket at this stage does not prove that you can
have (true) relative circular motion without a
force effect.
[as for what would happen if the bucket were rotated in an
otherwise empty universe, we can’t say]
If you think of the water at stage 2 as moving relative
to the sides of the bucket, you are mistaking which
body is being moved by an impressed force.
(It is really the bucket that is being moved by God in
accord with laws of elasticity in the wound cord.)
Berkeley on Vacuum
Principles 99 and 116.
The existence of empty space is as
contrary to Berkeley’s philosophy as that of
absolute space.
Because were empty space to exist apart from
body, it would follow that we ought to be able to
form ideas of empty space, and Berkeley wanted
to reject any such ideas as illegitimately abstract.
Accordingly, Berkeley needs to reduce talk
of empty (or “pure”) space to something
else and refute arguments for its existence.
 When you think there is a vacuum in the
bell jar, you are not thinking of space
apart from any body. You are instead
imagining free motion of your limbs.
 That we see empty space between us
and the fixed stars is refuted by the
theory of vision.
A Final Advantage
By adopting Berkeley’s views on absolute
and empty space and time we avoid the
dangerous impiety of considering space
and time to be self-subsisting, infinite,
eternal, unalterable and indestructible
things, and so considering them coequal
with God or aspects of God.
The former places constraints on
God’s activity.
The latter makes God a material
thing.
Principles 101-109
Berkeley’s Philosophy of Science
Those who suppose that there are qualities
in bodies that cause them to change
or enable them to bring about changes
in other bodies
only lead us to become sceptics.
Because our best science has never
discovered one such quality.
The best we have managed to do is give
names to the effects of these supposed
qualities.
Universal gravitation is no exception.
First, because when we say that bodies
gravitate we are doing no more than
describe how they move
We are not explaining what makes
them move as they do.
Second, because universal gravitation is
not in fact universal.
The fixed stars do not gravitate.
The parts of the air are so far from
gravitating that they repel one
another.
The only cause of change in nature is God.
This is not to say that science has no
use, because God operates in
constant ways.
Consequently, by careful attention to
the phenomena we may discover the
laws God follows in producing them
and make use of these laws to
predict what will happen next.
The business of science is to make the
observations of the phenomena and
discover the laws.
While we ought to seek to account
for the greatest number of
phenomena by appeal to the fewest
number of laws, we can do this only
so far as experience warrants and
should not extend the analogies and
harmonies beyond those bounds.
In performing this task we ought to
have an eye to final causes.
We also ought to keep in mind that
all we are discovering is signs, not
causes.
Principles 85-96
Advantages of Immaterialism
 It answers apparently intractable
philosophical problems
 the thinking matter controversy
 the paradoxes of the continuum
 the mind/body interaction problem
Advantages of Immaterialism, cont.’d
 It refutes scepticism
Once you think there is a distinction between ideas
and things,
and that ideas are merely appearances of things
which are alone real,
you get stuck in a “veil of perception” problem that
forces you to conclude that you know nothing of the
nature or even the existence of reality.
Immaterialism turns the table on this scepticism by
treating ideas, which are perfectly known, as real
things.
This is not a mistake because what makes things
real is not whether they are literally external to
us, but whether they are caused by something
other than us.
(Also whether they exist in some other mind
when not perceived by us.)
It is still not clear whether it makes any sense to talk about
a collection of ideas in someone else’s mind being the
same thing as a collection of ideas in my mind.
Advantages of Immaterialism, cont.’d
 It refutes atheism
The main support for atheism is the
notion that matter is eternal and that
it operates in accord with its own
internal forces.
This does away with creation and
design and imposes a determinism
(or indeterminism = blind chance)
that is fatal to ethics.
A system of thought that eliminates
this support ought to be attractive to
people “of better principles.”
Advantages of Immaterialism, cont.’d
 It answers religious heresies
 idolatry
 socinianism
An Important Text
Principles 89
In addition to knowledge by way of ideas, we
are able to obtain “notions” of our own minds by
inner reflection and of other minds by
reasoning.
We also have “notions” of relations.
We cannot have notions of relations without
having ideas of the related things.
But we can have ideas of things without
having notions of relations.
One consequence:
We have a notion that ideas are related to
our own minds by the “perceives” relation
and that this provides ideas with their
“support” (i.e., is what makes them exist).
This allows us to make meaningful use of
“substance” when applied to spirit.