Questions to ask about Contemporary
Reactions and Reviews
How did Berkeley’s contemporaries
understand him?
What did they find most interesting about
his views?
What objections did they raise?
Percival’s letter to Berkeley
of 26 August, 1710
Those who hear of Berkeley’s immaterialist
thesis
treat it with ridicule and
reject it without thinking it worth the
bother of reading what he has
said to defend it
They assume that Berkeley himself must
either be mad (if sincere)
or insincere (and merely out to make a
name for himself by offering
ingenious arguments for false
conclusions)
Lady Percival’s objection: What are we to
make of the creation story if there is
nothing but spirits and ideas?
Berkeley’s Reply
Notwithstanding its agreement with
common sense,
the immaterialist theory needs to be
“introduced with great caution
into the world”
since it “contradicts vulgar and
settled opinion” [!]
Rather than say that the book denies the
existence of matter,
say that it promotes “true knowledge
and religion” and offers a new
proof of the existence of God and
the immortality of the soul.
Berkeley’s Reply to Lady Percival
The creation consists in making ideas
eternally existing in God’s mind
perceptible to other finite spirits.
[so we perceive ideas that exist in God’s
mind rather than our own ideas?]
While scripture and reason assure us that
there are indeed other finite spirits (and
hence ones that might have been
around to witness the creation) …
… it is “sufficient if we suppose that a man,
in case he was then created and
existing at the time of the chaos, might
have perceived all things formed out of it
in the very order set down in Scripture”
[so unperceived existence needs to be
understood phenomenalistically?]
Percival’s Letter to Berkeley
of 30 October 1710
William Whiston and Samuel Clarke gave
some attention to Berkeley’s Principles
They found it clever …
…and considered it to be like the works
of Malebranche, Norris and
[Leibniz?]
But both thought it wrong.
Whiston did not consider himself to have
the philosophical training to answer
Berkeley, though he was convinced
Berkeley was wrong.
Clarke did not consider Berkeley’s position
to be worth replying to.
Le Clerc’s Critique of Berkeley’s
Rejection of Abstract Ideas of Extension
While we cannot imagine (form a mental image) of a
geometrical figure that has no specific size or
colour, …
… we can conceive (grasp the concept) of such
a thing
(grasping a concept is an act of pure intellect,
and need not involve the formation of an
image
[cf. Descartes’s example of the concept
of a chiliagon]
Tangible extension is no more the object of
geometry than visual extension.
Both vision and touch supply us only with aids for
focusing the mind on intelligible objects.
Berkeley’s Reply to Le Clerc
i. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have
an ability to grasp the concept of a thing
apart from forming an image of that
thing …
…and I can’t even imagine what it
would mean.
ii. If there were such a thing as pure
intellect, it would be the means whereby
we know our own soul and other
spiritual things [e.g., relations] …
… but sensible qualities cannot be
conceived otherwise than by forming
representations of [particular]
sensible things, from which they
cannot be separated.
iii. Focusing your attention on one quality
of a sensible thing is not the same thing
as forming a separate, abstract idea of
that quality. I can only do the former.
The object of geometry need not be an
actually touched magnitude …
… it could be an object we imagine by
combining or dividing ideas of extension
previously received from touch.
This is still not an intelligible object.
The Journal des Sçavans
(September 1711)
(Keep in mind that you are reading a translation of a
review originally written in French of a work written in
English.)
Berkeley’s thesis is that “neither body nor
matter exists, and … there is no being or
substance other than spirits.”
“Everything else that we take to exist
external to us is nothing … but ideas ….
They have no existence apart from that of
being perceived, and they cease to be or to
exist when our mind or some other mind
ceases to perceive them.”
The first argument that the reviewer
mentions as employed to prove “so
seemingly strange an hypothesis” is the
negative answer to the Molyneux question.
Everyone grants that the “accidental
qualities” revealed to us by our senses
(heat, colour, etc.) are merely sensations
that no external thing can resemble.
The fact that someone newly made to see
would not recognize figures familiar from
touch shows that we do not get the same
ideas of the primary qualities of bodies from
vision that we do from touch.
So our senses do not inform us accurately of
the primary qualities of bodies either.
Note that this argument only establishes the
sceptical thesis that we can’t know that
matter exists, not the idealist thesis that
there can be no such thing as matter.
The reviewer cites 2 arguments for
concluding that we cannot infer the
existence of matter from reasoning about
the causes of sensations.
The sensations had when delirious are just
as vivid as those had when we are calm,
though they are not caused by external
bodies and so cannot resemble them.
Whatever causes our sensations must be
endowed with power and volition, which
does not conform to our idea of body …
… because matter cannot act on
spirit
… and because an intelligence with
no body [and in a world where there
are no bodies] could receive all the
same sensations we do
Though the second of these arguments gives a reason for
idealism, the further additions suggest that the reviewer
regards it as merely sceptical (a reason for denying
knowledge of matter, not its existence)
The reviewer cites Berkeley’s arguments for
concluding that matter cannot be an instrument
or occasion of perception,
lists some of Berkeley’s reasons for considering
immaterialism to be advantageous,
especially a response to scepticism
grounded in “veil of perception”
arguments
takes note of Berkeley’s views on time
and consequent view that the soul
always thinks,
ineptly states his views on space
space “is just the ease with which I find I
can move what I imagine to be my body”
and remarks on his position on infinite
divisibility.
The reviewer’s summary of Berkeley’s
discussion of objections and replies

the question of unperceived existence is
given pride of place; God’s perception is
not mentioned as a solution

the question of how the soul could
contain extended ideas without being
itself extended is mentioned second

one of Berkeley’s reported answers
is that “extension exists in the soul
only as a perception, not as reality”
Note that the reviewer makes no comment
on the concluding section of the Principles
on self-knowledge and proofs for the
existence of God and other minds.
Mémoires de Trévoux (May, 1713)
Uses Berkeley’s work to attack
Malebranche
Berkeley is represented as someone
who has taken Malebranche’s position
to its logical, but absurd extreme by
actually denying the existence of a
material world
“it is for those who believe that we see
only an intelligible world to prove that
this is carrying their principles too far.”
Mémoires de Trévoux (December, 1713)
(on Three Dialogues)
Represents Berkeley as maintaining that
“we see bodies only in God, hence it is
unnecessary for them to exist outside of
God”
And as maintaining that the creation “is only
the decision that God made to imprint on
minds the ideas of bodies”
The Journal Litéraire (May/June 1713)
Berkeley is someone “more attached to
advancing paradoxes and wholly new
opinions than to carefully examining the
opinions that he refutes”
His book does not contain any arguments
that a reader will find convincing
(“a reading of the book will keep [the reader] from
holding what the author holds”)
He holds the “strange” view that there are
no bodies.
What we call bodies are only ideas
that cannot exist apart from spirits
who have these ideas.
Hence that what we call body is a
“chimera”
“chimera” probably means
something cooked up by the mind all
on its own
Berkeley wastes time trying to prove that
“secondary qualities” are merely sensations
that cannot exist outside of us.
(everyone today accepts that these
are sensations arising in us as a
consequence of how our nerves and
brains are moved by bodies)
And he attacks a straw man when
attempting to refute this view by saying that
it is contradictory to say that sound is a
motion.
[Berkeley’s point was just that we do
not immediately perceive the causes
of sounds or colours]
The crux of Berkeley’s argument is his
attempt to prove that the primary qualities
can exist only as ideas.
This is a conclusion that he attempts
to draw by appeal to various
perceptual relativity arguments.
But these arguments only prove that
we ought to take account of the
changing ways in which objects are
related to us when determining what
their permanent primary qualities
really are.
Berkeley also tries to argue that since we
cannot conceive extension apart from all
sensible qualities, it cannot exist apart from
those qualities, and since they all exist only
in the mind, it can only exist there.
But this is tantamount to arguing only
that the conception or idea of
extension must be an idea in the
mind, not that extension itself must
be in the mind.
The reviewer neglects Berkeley’s challenge
to say what else it would mean for
extension to exist.
Berkeley’s arguments over the second half
of Dialogues I and Dialogues II neglect to
consider that God, being all powerful, could
have made inanimate beings capable of
acting on spirits in such a way as to make
them have ideas.
While it is possible that God could directly
impose all our ideas on us rather than use
material instruments,
to maintain that this is what God
actually does is to accuse him of
being a deceiver.
The reviewer acknowledges Berkeley’s contrary
point that we are not compelled to believe in
external objects, but does not consider it
correct.
However, the reviewer continues to neglect
Berkeley’s charge that an active, unthinking
thing is a contradiction in terms and so not
something even God could produce.
Berkeley has not in fact preserved common
sense opinions concerning the reality of
things.
While Berkeley may say that things
are exactly what he knows them to
be, so that the whiteness of a horse
is in the horse, he does not mean the
same thing that ordinary people
mean
(he only means that his ideas
occur together; they mean
something more)
And they would hardly agree with his
view that the horse exists only in
their heads.
This is a bad lampoon of Berkeley’s view.
Heads are bodies. Ideas exist in minds, not
bodies.
On Berkeley’s view, each different view of
an object is actually a different object (a
different collection of ideas) and we merely
decide to call different collections of ideas
by the same name, so that the unity of
these collections is an arbitrary imposition.
This means that:
the hand that strikes the blow is not
the one that was seen to strike
the stick used to strike is not the one
held in the hand
the person who committed the crime
is not the one taken to court
the person hanged on the gallows is
not the one convicted of the
crime
Another bad lampoon. This one neglects
Berkeley’s account of spirits.
A Sharp Contrast to the Early Reception:
Mill’s Comments on Berkeley
Berkeley made three revolutionary
philosophical discoveries:
i. that much of what we think we
immediately perceive is in fact a product
of a learned association of signs with
things.
ii. that there are no such things as abstract
ideas.
iii. that what it means for an object to exist
outside of us is just that groups of
sensations occur to us independently of
our wills and in accord with inviolable
laws.
The first of these discoveries is
independent of immaterialism, but prepares
the way for it.
It teaches us that vision is a language
(learned by experience) that God uses
to tell what tangible objects we are likely
to experience next.
That observation is one that can be
extended to all the other senses,
establishing a paradigm for research in
the psychology of perception.
When it is so extended, each sensible
quality or combination of sensible qualities
serves as a sign for other sensible qualities.
The second discovery is likewise independent
of immaterialism, but serves as an important
premise in the argument for it.
It resolves the long-standing problem of the
nature of universals (the conflict between
realists and nominalists)
The solution consists in realizing that a
common name connotes only some of the
qualities of an object (and hence all objects
that share those qualities), even though the
idea actually called up by the name always
has more qualities.
The additional qualities are
accidental and changeable.
In the idea, the common qualities
are “made artificially prominent”
while the accidental ones are
“thrown into the shade”
An abstract idea is actually a concrete image
that changes over time.
The third discovery is the immaterialist
theory.
It is correct when unperceived existence is
accounted for phenomenalistically.
For an object exist unperceived is just
for it to be the case that were someone
present, that person would have
sensations of the sort that are called by
the name for that object.
So that an object is really a more or less
“permanent possibility” of obtaining a
certain sort of sensory experience.
(Nothing makes for this possibility — it is
just a law of nature that it is there)
Unfortunately, Berkeley himself proposed a
rather more extravagant account, involving
perception of ideas by God.
Mill’s account of why people have been deceived
into believing that objects exist unperceived.
In virtue of learning from past experience, a single
sensation of sight or sound comes to serve as a sign
for the “potential presence” many others in a
complex group.
So we form ideas of imagination of those
others.
Then subsequent experience confirms that
those ideas of imagination were in fact good
copies of the ideas of sense we get when
we move to where experience would lead us
to expect those ideas.
This leads us to mistake the “potential presence” of
the signified sensations for an abiding “latent cause”
of those sensations existing in space outside us.
In fact, there are no such causes — only regularities
in the succession of sensations.