Berkeley on Immaterialism

The following is an essay I wrote for my British Empiricism class. 

In order to understand Berkeley’s argument that sensible objects cannot exist unperceived, we first need to understand his ontology and how he understands “existence”. The objects of our knowledge, begins Berkeley, are either impressed upon the senses, or by perception of the passions or mind, or by memory and imagination. All these objects, no matter which mode they come by, will only be known to us by some kind of property, such as it is red, soft, and heavy. That is all that is known to us, and what is not known to us is the thing in themselves. When I describe my heavy red blanket, all I am really describing are my bundled perceptions of the thing, but there is a gap between my perceptions of the thing and the thing itself. So all I really have access to are perceptions. However, if there are no perceptions of a thing, then it cannot be said to exist. For Berkeley, to speak of something unperceived as existing is simply unintelligible. For example, would it make much sense to say that there is some color that exists that has not been impressed upon you, that you cannot possibly think up or imagine, no less remember? Presumably not. To say that you could would really reduce to saying you could perceive it in some way. So, to exist is to be perceived. 

My own evaluation of this argument is that it is underwhelming. I understand Berkeley to assume that perception is not a passive quality, which I take to be false. Passive perception is something that I acquire from without. To say that I acquire some perception from solely within would seem to lead to some difficulties. So, for example, if my hand goes from potentially feeling hot to actually feeling hot, then some kind of change has occurred. But if I am changed, then the causal principle of change cannot be myself, for then I would have to explain why I change at this particular instant and not any other random instant. Change seems to be done from without. Or, to use the language of St. Thomas Aquinas, that which is moved can only be moved by another. If that’s the case, then our perceptions are passive and we begin to learn about things outside of our own mind and the gap between our mind and the external world begins to close.

The most common alternative view is naive realism. Naive direct realism is, according to Berkeley, the view that all sensible objects have an existence independent or distinct from their being perceived. This seems commonsensical and is held by many people, so why not believe in this simple explanation instead? If I have the idea, say, of a particular tree, why not just say that I get the idea by directly observing the tree itself? Berkeley argues that this view leads to a contradiction. If you have an objection of perception like a tree, we would need to ask what it is exactly that is before you that you are perceiving. You have an idea or sensation of a tree, sure, but the content of the idea or sensation doesn’t take away from the fact that it is still fundamentally only an idea or sensation, and clearly sensations or ideas cannot exist to be unperceived, contrary to what the common man would believe concerning this sort of direct realism. 

The annihilation objection states that if the essence of being or existence is an act of perception, then objects constantly pop in and out of existence, which is absurd. If I were to close my eyes and cease to see my friend in front of me, then it would seem to follow that when I shut my eyes, my friend ceases to exist, and then I open them up again, my friend pops back into existence. But if this is an absurd conclusion, then something is fundamentally wrong with Berkeley’s argument. To be clear, sense perception here is not limited to sight, but is the only sensation that is assumed to illustrate the point. 

Berkeley’s first reply to this objection is a linguistic one. Existence is meant to be understood as the ability to be perceived. If Pegasus does not exist, then it is impossible to perceive Pegasus. If Pegasus does exist, then it is possible to perceive Pegasus. That is what “does exist” and “does not exist” means. There is a sense in which this is postulative. Berkeley invites challenges to show how anything could be more simple or fundamental, and if you can’t meet that challenge, then you’re the one that is being unreasonable, not him. 

Berkeley’s second reply to the annihilation objection appeals to other minds. For although I myself may not perceive an object when I close my eyes, it may be the case that another mind perceives the object and so remains in existence. So when Berkeley says that objects have no existence without the mind, this is qualified to mean “all minds” and not this or that particular mind. In developing this point, he appeals to the “Schoolmen”, the scholastic thinkers of the medieval period, who appeal to divine conservation to sustain the world, which presumably Berkeley thinks is similar enough to his own view that God, the omniscient and omnipresent mind, perceives and thus sustains all of creation. If one wants to reject Berkeley’s view on those grounds of absurdity, then one would also have to reject the scholastic view. But the scholastic opinion is held in high regard and not rejected, so neither should Berkeley’s. 

If God is perceiving these objects and is the reason for their sustained existence apart from finite minds, how is this to be understood? It could be objected, for example, that an absurd consequence of Berkeley’s view is that it entails that God must have sensations. I think Berkeley has some ways to wiggle out. Sensations as commonly understood by scholastics are had by the physical part of ourselves. But God is not physical, so God cannot have sensations. But for Berkeley, ideas can be had in non sensational ways such as an operation of the mind or imagination. So the conclusion that God must have sensations is not entailed. It could be further objected that such as we cannot come up with some idea that is not impressed upon us in some way, then God cannot either, but what could impress upon the mind of God? This would entail something prior to God, which is contrary to God being understood as being the only metaphysically necessary being. But this is disanalogous because the western world takes it to be coherent that God created the world out of nothing, so why not ideas out of nothing as well? 

Still, it seems like creating ideas, to which sensible objects are grounded in, can’t be said to come out of nothing because then it would seem to entail they have a kind of existence independent from God, and God would be creating something fundamentally unknown, even to Him, which is contrary to His omniscience and still contrary to His necessity. So it seems like sensible objects must exist in God’s mind in order for Him to create them in our minds. I don’t see a way out of this difficulty about how God creates without positing matter as an individuating principle of universals and thus abandoning Berkeley altogether.