Lecture on Berkeley I
I. Transition
A. Leibniz: Theistic, focused on metaphysics and the nature of bodies. Argues that the
modern, Newtonian picture of bodies is incoherent—that monads are required to explain
ultimate reality, that “force” is required to explain change, and that the only way to think
about force existing in a monad is as a kind of psychological force—perception and
appetition. Bodies merely phenomenal.
B. Recall also occasionalism. Malebranche’s realism is strange because it leaves the
external objects out there, at least with their primary qualities. Berkeley does away with
the extra level of reality, motivated at least in part by Occam’s razor.
C. Finally, consider Locke’s view. First, he is an empiricist, someone who wants to
ground all of our knowledge, and indeed all of our ideas, in the simple ideas that we get
through sensation and reflection (introspection). Second, the distinction between the
primary and secondary qualities, moreover, had taken hold in modern philosophy and
become the dominant picture. Eliminitivism vs. Reductionism.
*Berkeley is going to say that Locke’s philosophy leads to skepticism and
atheism. Skepticism because on Locke’s own empiricist principles we can’t
prove the existence of external material objects. Atheism because there is no
clear need for God in the system, and Locke’s own arguments for God’s existence
are weak.
F. So Berkeley is going to give us an occasionalist, empiricist idealism which is meant to
refute skepticism and atheism AND be in keeping with common sense. This rhetorical
strategy, of aligning himself with common sense or “The Vulgar,” is brilliant, since that
is typically exactly what people accuse the idealists of not doing, and not being able to
do.
II. Life (1685-1753)
III. Some arguments that we would have confronted in the Dialogues
A. Start with Relativity Arguments regarding Secondary Qualities
1. What is the object of our perception? Sensible qualities of objects.
2. Are sensible qualities in the mind, or in the object?
3. An argument
a) The real properties of an external object cannot change without the
occurrence of a change in the object itself.
b) The sensible qualities I perceive can change without the occurrence of a
change in the object itself.
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c) Thus, the sensible qualities I perceive are not the real properties of an
external object.
4. Defending (3b)
a. Consider colors: If the surrounding lighting is altered, or if I have
jaundice, the sensible color qualities that I perceive change, and if I get up
really close the color disappears, but all this occurs without there being a
change in the object itself.
b. All other secondary qualities--sounds, tastes, smells--are also
susceptible to relativity in this way. So these sensible qualities are not real
properties of the external object. They are merely sensations—i.e., ideas
in the mind.
c. If they are merely ideas, then Berkeley suggests that they cannot exist in
matter, which is supposed to be an unthinking corporeal substance.
Again, these qualities are sensations, and sensations are ideas, and ideas
exist only in minds. Something that doesn’t think (i.e. matter) can’t have
ideas.
d. Riposte: Make the primary/secondary quality distinction and become
Lockean reductionists.
B. Absurdity arguments against reductionism. You end up with the absurd conclusion
that, e.g., sounds are vibrations in the air—so real sounds can be felt or seen, but not
heard!
C. Moreover, the Relativity argument also applies to primary qualities. Consider figure.
1. Presumably a mite sees its own foot, and sees it to be rather large, whereas we
can only see it under a microscope, and even then not very large. Moreover,
visible figure changes as we move closer to a thing.
2. So it looks like the relativity argument applies also to extension and figure as
sensible qualities. B makes analogous arguments for motion and solidity.
3. Why do we privilege taking a ruler up to the tabletop and measuring it?
Because touch reinforces sight? If so, then here is where B’s arguments against
assuming that it is self-evident that touch and sight give us the same thing play an
important role.
*Molyneaux problem: Locke admits that the man blind from birth
would not know by sight the difference between a globe and a
cube. (291b)
*Likewise, we only by custom take ourselves to be touching the
“same thing” as we are seeing; the senses don’t actually tell us that
they are the same thing. “A man no more sees and feels the same
thing, than he hears and feels the same thing” (New Theory of
Vision, section 47).
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*Why privilege the way the ruler looks to you when you hold it
that way (i.e. in the holding it up to the table and measuring way)?
4. So all we perceive are ideas, and ideas exist only in minds. If we perceive
bodies at all, as everyone thinks we do, then bodies must just be collections of
ideas in minds.
D. The inseparability argument (cf. 426b; pp. 472-3).
1. A thought experiment: “For my own part, I evidently see that it is not in my
power to frame an idea of body extended and moved, but I must in addition give it
some color or other sensible quality which is acknowledged to exist only in the
mind” (pp. 472-3).
2. Inseparability in thought implies inseparability in fact (cf. p. 426b).
3. Therefore the “primary” qualities exist only where the “secondary” qualities do
(“in the mind and nowhere else”).
*But are we really unable to conceive of primary qualities existing apart
from all secondary qualities as the inseparability argument suggests?
a. Imagine a red circle, a blue circle, a green circle…
b. They’re all in the same shape.
c. Now can we conceive of something possible by thinking, “it’s like these
in shape but without any color”?
d. Does the concept of similarity, without any possible image, establish
possibility?
e. Do we get by touch an image of something like the colored circles in
shape but without any color?
1) B says no: “A man no more sees and feels the same thing, than
he hears and feels the same thing” (New Theory of Vision, section
47).
2) He argues that what is common to a “visible square” and a
“tangible square” is too abstractly mathematical to constitute
likeness (New Theory, section 142-3).
3) This is an interesting, deep, and complex issue…
5. Perhaps we can appeal not to an idea of a particular set of primary qualities
existing apart from all secondary qualities, but rather to the general notion or
abstract general idea of extension, motion, size, etc. (425b-426b).
6. Against abstract ideas (see Intro to the Principles)
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