Berkeley: history, culture, and academic significance

Berkeley's primary argument for the existence of the real world in our minds is rooted in his theory of the thought. He agreed with classical Lockian theory that the immediate object of our knowledge is ideas or subjective impressions. However, his philosophy deviates from traditional Lockian thinking by rejecting the concept of substance as a mysterious objective "substratum" which is the root cause of our perceptions. Berkeley argues that everything is related to our impressions, and that everything that perceptible is subjective. He does not believe in articulating a clear distinctive division between objective and subjective qualities. As a result, he argues that if substance is separate from our impressions, then it is not perceptible because it is not part of our subjective perception. Therefore the concept of substance cannot have any real meaning within the context of perception and is both unknowable and inconceivable. Only when substance is connected with our impressions as a subjective part of our consciousness can it part of our world and therefore resides within the subject themselves. Material substances according to Berkeley are cognitive phenomena and are thus subjective in and of them.

Although he presents his theory logically and through careful critique of Lockian Empiricism, it takes many logical leaps that makes it less convincing. I think he makes a major assumption that primary and secondary qualities are both wholly related to subjective perception. He never answers the theory of social dissonance, or why individuals perceive or see the same substance. Much of his argument relies upon his theory of spiritual connectivity which he never clearly articulates.

Berkeley believes that there is no separation between objective and subjective impressions. This is because everything we perceive is subjective and part of our own personal impressions. He argues that there exists a spiritual collective that allows all of us to perceive a real chair in the same manner, but that all of the dissonance and association that we give the chair is purely subjective. Berkeley's fundamental argument becomes that there exists a world of spirituality that connects all of us, and that reality is nothing more than our perception and this universal spirituality. He argues that the chair is caused by another mind other than our own because of his theory of spirit as both active and passive agents. Our active spirit is a producer of ideas; it is represented in our ability to recall memories and our imagination. Passivity occurs when the spirit receives ideas that it has not produced itself. Thus under his theory, we are passive recipients of the ideas of others. The object of the chair is representative of this concept; he argues that the chair as it is conceived of as a "real chair" is actually the passivity of our spirit in receiving the idea of the chair from others. Since everyone's idea of the chair is shared and thus, sensory perception is nothing more than the interplay between spiritual forces that operate within the world and between people.

Berkeley's argument here has many favorable and appealing areas, specifically, his rhetoric on the existence of a universal spirit and that all of our sensory perceptions are based upon the ideation of the collective. However, he never fully explains the origination of "the real chair" so to speak, specifically, if everyone's idea of the chair comes from the passive reception of them from others, there has to be an original individual. Although he attempts to justify this with the existence of God, it seems unconvincing that our conception of an object begins with an individual conceiving entirely by thought the ideation of the chair and enforcing this on others. The logic that he uses is very weak and he makes significant assumptions.

The core of Berkeley's defense when it comes to objects in the physical world and our ideation is that beyond our finite spirits that resides in each individual there is also an infinite spirit which also exists, which is the manifestation of God. He derives this concept by explaining that although there are many spirits that go into the production of ideas, there are many concepts that cannot possibly be produced by any finite spirit. These occurrences which are concepts that no one perceives, but is self-evident, such as nature and the natural order of beings are pre-supposed by God. Thus God is the ultimate producer of order and he guides the harmony and constancy of natural phenomena. The real fire that burns you is the fire that is produced by God as the natural regulatory forces of nature. While the fire that is hallucination is fire that is conjured through the ideation of finite spirits such as other individuals. Real fire, since it is a subjective creation of God, has the ability to burn us, while illusionary fires do not have that inherent ability. Therefore all objectives that are not perceived by other human beings are perceived by God and have an existence within the world.

Berkeley's fundamental argument about reality and matter is that they are all sensory perceptions. However, since God creates ultimate harmony within the world and moreover provides a system in which we live in, his rules applies to all objects that we possess and use. Therefore, although arsenic in itself is nothing more than an idea, it is an idea that is regulated by the ideation of God, and therefore it is part of a defined regularity that have specific pre-defined properties. Eating arsenic, since it has dangerous properties that God instilled in it through His ideation, it is still toxic and deadly to human beings. The role of science has a unique position within Berkeley's philosophical system. Since he argues that the true cause of any phenomenon is a spirit and that the spirit in relations to most objects and phenomenon is God, it would appear as if this is against the grain of established science. Berkeley argues that science is about the discovery of regularities in our ideas. The point of scientific inquiry is to reveal the regularities within the system that God has created for us. Therefore, we know that fire heats and the hearts pump blood to the rest of our body; these discoveries are all part of the universal collection of regularities that occur and are dictated through God's ideation process. Science is about uncovering all of the specific regularities that are associated with ideas.

Thus Berkeley sees scientific explanations not as causes but as signs that point to established universal knowledge. Since the materialist system is created by God, the results of scientific inquiry are useful. Scientific explanations are reductions in regularity rather than actual causal explanations for phenomenon.