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BERKELEY, GEORGE (1685–1753)
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See also:BERKELEY, See also:GEORGE (1685–1753) , Irish See also:bishop and philosopher, the eldest son of See also: Mind is, therefore, See also:prior both in thought and in existence, if for the moment we assume the popular distinction. Berkeley thus diverted philosophy from its beaten track of discussion as to the meaning of See also:matter, substance, cause, and preferred to ask first whether these have any significance apart from the conscious spirit. In the pursuit of this inquiry he rashly invaded other departments of science, and much of the Common Place Book is occupied with a polemic, as vigorous as it is ignorant, against the fundamental conceptions of the infinitesimal calculus. In 1707 Berkeley published two See also:short mathematical tracts; in 1709, in his New Theory of See also:Vision, he applied his new principle for the first See also:time, and in the following See also:year stated it fully in the Principles of Human Knowledge. In these works he attacked the existing theories of externality which to the unphilosophical mind is proved by visual evidence. He maintained that visual consciousness is merely a See also:system of arbitrary signs which symbolize for us certain actual or possible tactual experience—in other words a purely conventional language. The contents of the visual and the tactual consciousness have no See also:element in common. The visible and visual signs are definitely connected with tactual experiences, and the association between them, which has grown up in our minds through See also:custom or See also:habit, rests upon, or is guaranteed by, the See also:constant See also:conjunction of the two by the will of the Universal Mind. But this synthesis is not brought forward prominently by Berkeley. It was evident that a similar See also:analysis might have been applied to tactual consciousness which does not give externality in its deepest significance any more than the visual; but with de-liberate purpose Berkeley at first See also:drew out only one See also:side of his See also:argument. In the Principles of Human Knowledge, externality in its ultimate sense as See also:independence of all mind is considered. Matter, as an abstract, unperceived substance or cause, is shown to be impossible, an unreal conception; true substance is affirmed to be conscious spirit, true causality the See also:free activity of such a spirit, while See also:physical substantiality and causality are held to be merely arbitrary, though constant, relations among phenomena connected subjectively by See also:suggestion or association, objectively in the Universal Mind. In ultimate analysis, then, nature is conscious experience, and forms the sign or See also:symbol of a divine, universal intelligence and will.
In 1711 Berkeley delivered his Discourse on Passive Obedience, in which he deduces moral rules from the intention of See also:God to promote the See also:general happiness, thus working out a theological See also:utilitarianism, which may be compared with the later expositions of See also:Austin and J. S. See also: The following year See also:Miss Vanhomrigh, Swift's Vanessa, left him See also:half her See also:property. It would appear that he had only met her once at See also:dinner. In 1724 he was nominated to the See also:rich deanery of Derry, but had hardly been appointed before he was using every effort to resign it in See also:order to devote himself to his See also:scheme of See also:founding a college in the See also:Bermudas, and extending its benefits to the Americans. With See also:infinite exertion he succeeded in obtaining from See also:government a promise of £ 20,000, and after four years spent in preparation, sailed in See also:September 1728, accompanied by some See also:friends and by his wife, daughter of See also:Judge See also:Forster, whom he had married in the preceding See also:month. Three years of quiet retirement and study were spent in Rhode See also:Island, but it gradually became apparent that government would never See also:hand over the promised See also: In the philosophies of Descartes and Locke a large share of See also:attention had been directed to the See also:idea of matter, which was held to be the abstract, unperceived background of real experience, and was supposed to give rise to our ideas of See also:external things through its See also:action on the sentient mind. Knowledge being limited to the ideas produced could never extend to the unperceived matter, or substance, or cause which produced them, and it became a problem for speculative science to determine the grounds for the very belief in its existence. Philosophy seemed about to end in See also:scepticism or in See also:materialism. Now Berkeley put this whole problem in a new light by pointing out a preliminary question. Before we deduce results from such abstract ideas as cause, substance, matter, we must ask what in reality do these mean—what is the actual content of consciousness which corresponds to these words? Do not all these ideas, when held to represent something which exists absolutely apart from all knowledge of it, involve a See also:contradiction? In putting this question, not less than in answering it, consists Berkeley's originality as a philosopher. The essence of the See also:answer is that the universe is inconceivable apart from mind—that existence, as such, denotes conscious See also:spirits and the objects of consciousness. Matter and external things, in so far as they are thought to have an existence beyond the circle of consciousness, are impossible, inconceivable. External things are things known to us in immediate See also:perception. To this conclusion Berkeley seems, in the first place, to have been led by the See also:train of reflection that naturally conducts to subjective or egoistic See also:idealism. It is impossible to overstep the limits of self-consciousness; whatever words I use, whatever notions I have, must refer to and find their meaning in facts of consciousness. But this is by no means the whole or even the See also:principal See also:part of Berkeley's philosophy; it is essentially a theory of causality, and this is brought out gradually under the pressure of difficulties in the first See also:solution of the early problem. To merely subjective idealism, sense percepts differ from ideas of See also:imagination in degree, not in See also:kind; both belong to the individual mind. To Berkeley, however, the difference is fundamental; sense ideas are not due to our own activity; they must therefore be produced by some other will—by the divine intelligence. Sense experience is thus the constant action upon our minds of supreme active See also:intellect, and is not the consequence of dead inert matter. It might appear, therefore, that sensible things had an See also:objective existence in the mind of God; that an idea so soon as it passes out of our consciousness passes into that of God. This is an See also:interpretation, frequently and not without some See also:justice, put upon Berkeley's own expression. But it is not asatisfactory See also:account of his theory. Berkeley is compelled to see that an immediate perception is not a thing, and that what we consider permanent or substantial is not a sensation but a See also:group of qualities, which in ultimate analysis means sensations either immediately See also:felt or such as our experience has taught us would be felt in conjunction with these. Our belief in the reality of a thing may therefore be said to mean assurance that this association in our minds between actual and possible sensations is somehow guaranteed. Further, Berkeley's own theory would never permit him to speak of possible sensations, meaning by that the ideas of sensations called up to our minds by See also:present experience. He could never have held that these afforded any explanation of the permanent existence of real objects. His theory is quite distinct from this, which really amounts to nothing more than subjective idealism. External things are produced by the will of the divine intelligence; they are caused, and caused in a See also:regular order; there exists in the divine mind archetypes, of which sense experience may be said to be the realization in our finite minds, Our belief in the permanence of something which corresponds to the association in our minds of actual and possible sensations means belief in the orderliness of nature; and that is merely assurance that the universe is pervaded and regulated by mind. Physical science is occupied in endeavouring to decipher the divine ideas which find realization in our limited experience, in trying to interpret the divine language of which natural things are the words and letters, and in striving to bring human conceptions into See also:harmony with the divine thoughts. Instead, therefore, of See also:fate or See also:necessity, or matter, or the unknown, a living, active mind is looked upon as the centre and See also:spring of the universe, and this is the essence of the Berkeleian metaphysics. The deeper aspects of Berkeley's new thought have been almost universally neglected or misunderstood. Of his spiritual See also:empiricism one side only has been accepted by later thinkers, and looked upon as the whole. The subjective medhanism of association which with Berkeley is but part of the true explanation, and is dependent on the objective realization in the divine mind, has been received as in itself a satisfactory theory. Sunt Cogitationes has been regarded by thinkers who profess themselves Berkeleians as the one proposition warranted by consciousness; the empiricism of his philosophy has been eagerly welcomed, while the spiritual See also:intuition, without which the whole is to Berkeley meaningless, has been See also:cast aside. For this he is himself in no small measure to blame. The deeper spiritual intuition, present from the first, was only brought into clear See also:relief in order to meet difficulties in the earlier statements, and the See also:extension of the intuition itself beyond the limits of our own consciousness, which completely removes his position from See also:mere See also:subjectivism, rests on See also:foundations uncritically assumed, and at first sight irreconcilable with certain positions of his system. The necessity and universality of the judgments of causality and substantiality are taken for granted; and there is no investigation of the place held by these notions in the See also:mental constitution. The relation between the divine mind and finite intelligence, at first thought as that of See also:agent and recipient, is complicated and obscure when the necessity for explaining the permanence of real things comes forward. The divine archetypes, according to which sensible experience is regulated and in which it finds its real objectivity, are different in kind from mere sense ideas, and the question then arises whether in these we have not again the " things as they are," which Berkeley at first so contemptuously dismissed. He leaves it undetermined whether or not our knowledge of sense things, which is never entirely presentative, involves some reference to this objective course of nature or thought of the divine mind. And if so, what is the nature of the notions necessarily implied in the simplest know-ledge of a thing, as distinct from mere sense feeling? That in knowing objects certain thoughts are implied which are not presentations or their copies is at times dimly seen by Berkeley himself ; but he was content to propound a question with regard to those notions, and to look upon them as merely Locke's ideas of relation. Such ideas of relation are in truth the stumbling-See also:block in Locke's philosophy, and Berkeley's empiricism is equally far from accounting for them. With all these defects, however, Berkeley's new conception marks a distinct See also:stage of progress in human thought. His true place in the See also:history of See also:speculation may be seen from the See also:simple observation that the difficulties or obscurities in his scheme are really the points on which later philosophy has turned. He once for all lifted the problem of metaphysics to a higher level, and, in conjunction with his successor, See also:Hume, determined the form into which later See also:meta-physical questions have been thrown. Moral Science (1872). See also See also:Sir L. See also:Stephen, English Thought in the 18th See also:Century (3rd ed., 19o2); J. S. Mill's See also:Dissertations, vols. ii. and iv.; T. See also:Huxley, Critiques and Addresses, pp. 32o seq.; G. S. See also:Fullerton, System of Metaphysics (New See also:York, 19o4); See also: AD.; J. M. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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