I. Philosophy after Descartes
A. At first, Cartesian rationalism thrived in philosophy
* Philosophers such as Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) first made their names by writing responses to Descartes
* Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677): actually wrote in axiom/theorem form
* Gottfried von Leibniz (1646-1716): coinventor of calculus, also held very Cartesian philosophy
B. Especially in Britain, things started to take a more empiricist turn. With the growth of science, there was an increased focus on the nature of observation and use of the senses. This impacted philosophy as well.
C. "British Empricism": usually refers to three major figures
* John Locke (1634-1704)
* George Berkeley (1685-1753)
* David Hume (1711-1776), arguably the most important of the three
* We're going to focus on Berkeley, perhaps because his empricism is the simplest and in some ways the most radical
* But you can't understand Berkeley without first understanding Locke
II. Locke on perception
A. Some things Locke borrows directly from Descartes
* The distinction between two different types of things: mind and matter.
* Minds think, feel and perceive. They are immaterial and unextended.
* Matter does not think, feel or perceive. Its most important trait is physical extension.
* Perceptions, therefore, exist not in physical bodies, but are activities of the mind.
* Throughout the empiricst tradition, the word "idea" is used very broadly: it means anything in the mind, including perceptions, thoughts, feelings, imaginations, memories, etc.
B. General model of perception. Example: flower
* External material object (the flower itself) causes a set of ideas in the mind (the perception/image of the flower)
* The image of the flower resembles the flower itself
* There are certain qualities which are shared by both the image and the object. These are called primary qualities.
* There are certain qualities which only the image really has. These qualities are only ideas. These are called secondary qualities.
* The traditional view was that most or all qualities fall into the first group. Every quality of the image is also a quality of the flower itself: shape, size, texture, color, etc.
* Locke and certain of his contemporaries suggested that this was mistaken, and insisted that many of the attributes of our ideas do not correspond at all to anything "out there", e.g. color is a secondary quality
* Secondary qualities include color, sound, taste, smell, softness/roughness
* Primary qualities include extension (size), figure (shape), motion/rest, solidity, number
III. Berkeley's Life
* Born in 1685 in Kilkenny, Ireland
* Studied at Trinity College, Dublin and eventually joined the faculty. He did most of his philosophical work early in his life.
* While at Trinity, he became an Anglican clergy member
* His lifelong dream was to found a University in the "New World", and Bermuda in particular (Remember that both Ireland and America were then a part of the British empire)
* Got married to Anne Forster and travelled to the Rhode Island colony to raise funds in 1728
* Returned a few years later when the funding fell through. Went back to London and politicked to be appointed bishop.
* Returned to Ireland as Bishop of Cloyne, until right before his death. (He died in Oxford visiting his son.)
* The University of California system remembered his lifelong dream and named their Berkeley campus after him
IV. Berkeley's reaction to Locke
1. Accepted Locke's arguments that secondary qualities are ideas in the mind, but said they could be pushed further
* From our point of view, there is no difference between primary and secondary qualities. Why should we think that extension is any different than color?
* In our ideas, primary qualities are dependent on secondary qualities. In a visual image, size and shape just are certain configurations of color. Why should we suppose that size and shape can exist without color "out there"?
* Conclusion: none of the qualities of our ideas correspond to qualities of external objects. Primary qualities and secondary qualities are both ideas.
2. Ideas cannot resemble things outside the mind.What could it mean to say that a color resembles something unperceivable? What could it mean to say that a feeling of touch resembles something intangible?
3. External objects cannot cause perceptions. How can something inert and material cause an idea in an active, immaterial mind or soul?
4. Without any of that, there is no reason to believe in material substances at all. In fact, the idea of them is incoherent. They are supposed to be matter, and thus substances that don't think, feel or perceive. But they are also supposed to have primary qualities, which are ideas . How can a substance that doesn't think, feel or perceive have ideas?
5. What are we left with? Immaterialism/idealism: the only things that exist are minds/souls and their ideas.
6. What is the flower then? Berkeley doesn't think that the flower doesn't exist. Instead, he thinks that it is just a collection of ideas or perceptions. As he says, Esse est Percipi. "To be is to be perceived." For objects of sense, their being is their being perceived by us.
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