Does Berkeley Have Bite?
In our last exciting epistemological adventure, John Locke tried to split the difference between objectivity and subjectivity by claiming that objective, primary qualities of objects gave rise to our subjective perceptions or interpretations of secondary qualities in those same objects — so that, for example, the exact shape and size of the particles that make up an apple (and which are always in the apple) interact with our sense organs to make us perceive the color, taste, texture, and so on of the apple. It was a fairly decent compromise, with only one major problem: it doesn’t work. Anglican clergyman/theologian/philosopher George Berkeley wrote a number of texts in the early 1700s that aimed to silence the skeptics who challenged the authority of humanity’s knowledge (and by extension, humanity’s knowledge of God’s authority), and his route went straight through Locke’s system.
Berkeley’s problem with Locke was that in order to maintain a division between objectivity and subjectivity, Locke held onto the distinction between matter — an unthinking, unsensing “stuff” — and ideas — the stuff that goes inside our heads, including our own perceptions. But once you create the distinction, you also create a gap, and it’s that gap that skeptics usually attack. How do we know that the idea that we have in our head really matches up with the matter that’s “out there” causing the idea? (Remember the Matrix scenario.) In terms of Locke’s division into qualities, the questions can be put this way: Locke assumes that the primary qualities give rise to the secondary qualities. But the only way we can know anything about the primary qualities is through the secondary qualities! If I want to know how long something is, for example, I have to rely on my perceptions of color and shading and texture to know where the object ends and where it begins. So the whole process is reliant on what’s going on inside my mind — there’s no totally objective object “out there” in the world that I understand directly.
Now this, of course, poses a major problem for any opponent of skepticism, because whatever theory of knowledge you may have, it’s likely that somewhere inside it is the notion that there’s a Way Things Are, “out there,” and that to know something is to have a thought or a perception or a belief in your mind that matches up with it. Berkeley knew this, so he wouldn’t have run Locke down unless he thought he had something better ready to replace his system. And he did; Berkeley was one of the primary proponents of a position called idealism, or sometimes immaterialism. He did away with the division between matter and ideas, and said that there was no such thing as matter — only ideas.
Now, it’s important to remember that when Berkeley says, “There is no matter,” he means matter in a very specific way — as a “stuff” that can’t be directly perceived by the senses, that does not perceive anything itself, that has no ability to think, but nonetheless generates or causes all the perceptions, sensations and thoughts that we have. Rather than make matter the fundamental building block of reality, and then try and build ideas out of that, Berkeley skips the middle man and says that the most basic thing in the universe is an idea. If I have a glass of water, for instance, the height of the glass is one idea. The temperature of the glass is another idea. The temperature of the water in the glass is yet another idea. All of these ideas “move” together in a little bundle, so from my encounter with one idea I can surmise that the others are present as well. We attach words and concepts to these clusters of ideas, and when we make an error in judgment it’s only because we’re encountering a batch of ideas in a different combination than what we’re expecting. The important thing to remember is that ideas must be generated, maintained and perceived by a mind. The essence of an object, he says, is in its perception by a mind of some kind. So, to answer the old question, if a tree falls in the forest, and no one’s around, not only was there no sound, there was no tree and no forest, either.
Now this doesn’t mean that your house ceases to exist when you run to the store for a snack or something. Remember, Berkeley’s a clergyman; he has a divine ace in the hole. All ideas have to be generated by a mind — but the mind doesn’t have to be human. In fact, Berkeley points out that there are some ideas that we can generate and control (like the vision of a bowl of vanilla fudge ice cream running through my head right now) and others that we can’t (like the grumbling in my stomach, which is either encouraging me to find a bowl of ice cream or warning me what a colossally bad idea that would be). The ideas that we can’t control — in fact, we ourselves — are ideas generated and constantly perceived by the divine mind of God. It’s really a rather elegant system, and unlike Locke there are no immediate contradictions that spring to mind.
The main problem with Berkeley’s proposal is also, I think, one of the most valuable things we can learn from it. Berkeley doesn’t really offer a very satisfying answer to how we can distinguish between the cluster of ideas that is a glass of water and the cluster that is just a hallucination of a glass of water. Which means that in the long run, he may have proven that objects do exist, but he has a hard time proving that any particular object exists. But what he has done is demonstrate the importance of the human mind and human language in grouping together ideas and sensations into usable concepts. We make choices about what to include and what to exclude from certain words and concepts, and those decisions shape our future thought processes. I’m not sure that’s what Berkeley intended, but it’s certainly worth considering.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.