dangerous idea: Berkeley's arguments against matter

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Berkeley's arguments against matter

Can Berkeley be refuted? Lewis said that his arguments were unanswerable.

Labels: idealism, materialism. Berkeley

13 Comments:

At November 28, 2010 1:55 PM , Anonymous said...

How is different from solipsism?
At November 28, 2010 2:03 PM , John W. Loftus said...

Refuted is a strong claim, Vic. Is that the standard here, that I must refute these beliefs? Such a high standard you seem to have. One would think probability or improbability is good enough. And in that sense one wonders why we even have livers, hearts, brains and lungs if Berkley is right.

One thing I know is that this argument comes from a Bishop who was defending his culturally adopted faith, just like Anselm's ontological argument came from his culturally adopted faith. Berkeley was offering a solution to the mind brain problem initiated with intensity by Descartes. So what to do when his religious beliefs required a soul that would be judged by God in the face of there being no reasonable contact between a person's mind and body? Deny a material world. Let all of our senses be created by God.

No scientifically minded person can possibly take this seriously.
At November 28, 2010 2:14 PM , Victor Reppert said...

I don't know if that is a strong claim. Maybe not a decisive refutation. Just some indication of what premises you have doubts about, and why you have them.

No scientifically minded person can accept this position? Are you telling me that scientifically minded persons have to accept scientific realism, or realism in general? Many well-known scientists were thoroughgoing anti-realists, as you know well.
At November 28, 2010 2:15 PM , Leah said...

I'm amused to see Loftus beat me to the punch with his comment about livers and hearts. I remember, when I had to write on Berkeley for my freshman philosophy course I wrote about the appendix, which made no clear impression on any person until we began dissections of humans, but presumably existed prior to that point. If appendixes, atoms, and planets could exist and one day be discovered, is it reasonable to assume the existence of a substance or of matter not because of direct sense experience, but because it is a prerequisite for what you do observe?

--Leah @ Unequally Yoked
At November 28, 2010 2:18 PM , Leah said...

Oh, and this is a small point, but it seems weird to accept the premise that a great heat is indistinguishable from a pain. It may belong to the subset of pains, but the fact of it being heat carries additional information that prevents pain <--> great heat from being a one to one mapping. The step from great heat is sometimes experienced as pain to great heat is indistinguishable from pain didn't seem necessary to me. Can you explain?
At November 28, 2010 2:23 PM , bossmanham said...

If I'm not mistaken, Berkley held that God held ideas like that in being, didn't he?
At November 28, 2010 2:46 PM , John W. Loftus said...

One other thing Vic. I distinctly remember Stanley Jaki in his book "The Road of Science..." saying creative science never came from the Idealist tradition of thought.

If so, and I think he's right, then Berkeley's views can actually best be described as anti-scientific.

Shame that in order to defend your faith you must entertain something like that.
At November 28, 2010 3:39 PM , Victor Reppert said...

I'm not defending Berkeley. I'm just saying that he is harder to argue against than most people give him credit for being. I don't think the existence of a physical world is something you can just take for granted, if you are being really critical in your thinking.
At November 28, 2010 8:29 PM , Anonymous said...

Berkeley isn't in the business of denying that there exist hearts or brains or lungs. He's in the business of questioning just what hearts and brains and lungs in fact are ultimately. In particular, he's questioning whether they are "things" out there in a world distinct from our (or any) thought that we can, practically by definition, never directly experience because the only way we ever come to know of them are by thoughts and subjective experiences.

So according to Berkeley, our thoughts and experiences are not only sufficient to describe "reality", but to go beyond them would require a huge supposition that we could never verify. So why make that step? We can discuss hearts and atoms and livers just fine while recognizing they're all thoughts, not some kind of distinct "stuff".

The posturing that all this is unscientific sounds like similar claims that various things were unscientific, or even supernatural, from gravity (action at a distance instead of cartesian physics? Sounds supernatural to me!), to quantum theory (Schrodinger's Cat! Measurement problems! Superposition!)

Incidentally, there's something funny about relying on Jaki's impression of the origins of science, since Jaki's view is that science arose out of Christianity, and that atheism would best be regarded as an impediment to science.
At November 29, 2010 8:59 AM , Bobcat said...

Organs are perfectly compatible with Berkeley's idealism. So, too, are things that are real but that we haven't yet perceived. What Berkeley says is we can say they exist because if we take certain steps, we will perceive them. In other words, if something is possibly perceivable by us or by actually perceived by God, then it exists.

As for idealism being anti-scientific, well, according to the philosopher of physics Hans Halvorsen, Heisenberg was an idealist.
At November 29, 2010 12:06 PM , Brenda said...

"Berkeley be refuted?"

One cannot refute idealism as such but one can show that it is inconsistent or leads to incoherent results.

1. Suppose external realism is true. Then there exists a real world, independently of us and our interests.

2. If there exists a real world, then there is a way that the world really is. There is an objective way that things are in the world.

3. If there is a way that things really are, then we ought to be able to say how they are.

4. If we can say how things are, then what we say is objectively true or false depending on the extent to which we succeed or fail in saying how they are.

Attempts by anti-realists to provide a counter argument seem to me to fail. Their arguments are usually incoherent and logically inconsistent. But it seems to me that there is a deeper reason why anti-realists reject the idea that there is an objective external world. That is because it offends their will to power. Many people, including many philosophers just find it offends them that there should exist an external world where we could be wrong. Idealism and Relativism are appealing because they satisfy a basic urge to power. It seems too disgusting that we should be at the mercy of a real world and that our representations should be answerable to anything other than us.
At November 30, 2010 11:20 AM , Steve Lovell said...

I've not read Berkeley, but in the material Vic is linking to the following argument seems very weak:

(1) If X and Y can be conceptually separated, X and Y can exist separated in reality.
(2) Any conception of a state of affairs is, by definition, existing perceived by the mind.
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(3) Thus, it is not possible to conceive of a unperceived object.
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(4) Thus, it is not possible for an unperceived objcet to exist.

Suppose we grant (1) and (2), and that (3) follows from (2). It seems clear enough that (4) does not follow from (1) and (3). The first premise states the consequences of saying something is conceivable, but the inference in question is from something being inconceivable. At the very least, for the argument to work, (1) must be strengthened to a biconditional ... and I don't want to accept that biconditional.

Steve
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