No, that’s not even the position of Berkley. Actually read the Three Dialogues (even just the first one), it’s not what he says and he’s pretty clear in demarcating the difference. I think Berkley’s philosophy is ultimately flimsy because his ontology requires God in order to “make sense,” but given that, what you are talking about is something that he very patronizingly but thoroughly explains is not his position very early on.
I’ve listened to an audiobook of the First of the three dialogues, and so far it seems that Berkely’s theses is “the world exists only in the mind”, which I agree I conveyed badly here, but at the same time isn’t all that far off.
He says that qualities we perceive things as, color, sound, taste, heat, size, shape, texture, etc, exists only in the mind, and that since it’s impossible to conceive of a substance without any quality matter must exist only in the mind. He then says that we only know of objects through ideas (memories, thoughts, etc) and that since our ideas and perceptions of objects are always changing while the “real” object itself is static, therefore “real” objects cannot exist outside our minds.
That doesn’t seem that far from what I wrote as far as I can tell, and I have to say I didn’t notice anything in the text so far that was “clearly demarcating the difference”.
I’ll continue listening to the rest later since it is pretty interesting and well written, but so far I don’t understand your point.
and so far it seems that Berkely’s theses is “the world exists only in the mind”,
Yes, he does basically say this.
and that since it’s impossible to conceive of a substance without any quality matter must exist only in the mind
If I remember right, “matter” in this scenario is treated as the materialist noumena, so what he’s saying is that matter does not exist and the world is its perceived qualities with no “substrate” underneath.
and that since our ideas and perceptions of objects are always changing while the “real” object itself is static, therefore “real” objects cannot exist outside our minds.
What he is saying here is that our perceptions of things are highly relativized (temperature is his strongest example, but you can make many others), and therefore must not directly correspond to a noumenal object’s features. It’s a reframing of Locke’s argument about “primary” and “secondary” qualities, arguing that in fact everything is a “secondary” quality, though he doesn’t mention Locke by name. Since our senses are the only way to “directly observe” matter and it turns out that they don’t do that, they are at best mediated through whatever process is relativizing them, we have no ability to directly observe matter. That’s not a rejection of science, to be clear (and you’ll notice that he was engaging with the science of sense perception as well as the phenomenology), he still recognizes the regularity with which the world behaves, his argument is strictly about metaphysics, not physics.
I have to say I didn’t notice anything in the text so far that was “clearly demarcating the difference”.
To my memory, Berkley isn’t concerned with our perceptions being “inaccurate,” that’s closer to a Descartes, he is saying that the notion of matter (something independent of minds) is unjustified because it requires positing something as the immediate foundation of everything at every level of observation that cannot be observed, and claims that things are their perceived qualities (and perhaps their stable relations with other things) with no need to involve the existence of an unconceived-of extra thing. They are not an illusion, they are what is real, short of God. He in fact argues that the position of the materialist is closer to saying that perceived things are illusions, because of their positing unconceived-of objects that our senses and minds cannot touch while we are given these shifting shadows “of them” (but not) in our senses, while he says that things generally really are what they look like with no secret extra thing underneath, and that this is the common sense position that reflects how most people relate to the world.
The other part, and I suppose this was unfair because he gets into it in the subsequent dialogues but I do allude to it in my previous comment, is that he does discuss why there could still be the elements of constancy that we do observe in them (e.g. the moon not disappearing), which he connects to God and therefore is a much less interesting argument. Being charitable, I think this was partly him being a product of his time, because he was writing from a time when God was necessarily an assumption and the features he ascribes to God are basically what were already ascribed to God for many centuries (particularly omniscience). It probably didn’t help that he was a bishop . . .
Anyway, there are obviously complaints that you could make about all of this, but my point wasn’t that Berkley was right, but merely that he was being misrepresented. I’m glad to hear that you’re going to keep investigating the subject on your own and look forward to any refutations you choose to make in the future based on those investigations.
No, that’s not even the position of Berkley. Actually read the Three Dialogues (even just the first one), it’s not what he says and he’s pretty clear in demarcating the difference. I think Berkley’s philosophy is ultimately flimsy because his ontology requires God in order to “make sense,” but given that, what you are talking about is something that he very patronizingly but thoroughly explains is not his position very early on.
I’ve listened to an audiobook of the First of the three dialogues, and so far it seems that Berkely’s theses is “the world exists only in the mind”, which I agree I conveyed badly here, but at the same time isn’t all that far off.
He says that qualities we perceive things as, color, sound, taste, heat, size, shape, texture, etc, exists only in the mind, and that since it’s impossible to conceive of a substance without any quality matter must exist only in the mind. He then says that we only know of objects through ideas (memories, thoughts, etc) and that since our ideas and perceptions of objects are always changing while the “real” object itself is static, therefore “real” objects cannot exist outside our minds.
That doesn’t seem that far from what I wrote as far as I can tell, and I have to say I didn’t notice anything in the text so far that was “clearly demarcating the difference”.
I’ll continue listening to the rest later since it is pretty interesting and well written, but so far I don’t understand your point.
Yes, he does basically say this.
If I remember right, “matter” in this scenario is treated as the materialist noumena, so what he’s saying is that matter does not exist and the world is its perceived qualities with no “substrate” underneath.
What he is saying here is that our perceptions of things are highly relativized (temperature is his strongest example, but you can make many others), and therefore must not directly correspond to a noumenal object’s features. It’s a reframing of Locke’s argument about “primary” and “secondary” qualities, arguing that in fact everything is a “secondary” quality, though he doesn’t mention Locke by name. Since our senses are the only way to “directly observe” matter and it turns out that they don’t do that, they are at best mediated through whatever process is relativizing them, we have no ability to directly observe matter. That’s not a rejection of science, to be clear (and you’ll notice that he was engaging with the science of sense perception as well as the phenomenology), he still recognizes the regularity with which the world behaves, his argument is strictly about metaphysics, not physics.
To my memory, Berkley isn’t concerned with our perceptions being “inaccurate,” that’s closer to a Descartes, he is saying that the notion of matter (something independent of minds) is unjustified because it requires positing something as the immediate foundation of everything at every level of observation that cannot be observed, and claims that things are their perceived qualities (and perhaps their stable relations with other things) with no need to involve the existence of an unconceived-of extra thing. They are not an illusion, they are what is real, short of God. He in fact argues that the position of the materialist is closer to saying that perceived things are illusions, because of their positing unconceived-of objects that our senses and minds cannot touch while we are given these shifting shadows “of them” (but not) in our senses, while he says that things generally really are what they look like with no secret extra thing underneath, and that this is the common sense position that reflects how most people relate to the world.
The other part, and I suppose this was unfair because he gets into it in the subsequent dialogues but I do allude to it in my previous comment, is that he does discuss why there could still be the elements of constancy that we do observe in them (e.g. the moon not disappearing), which he connects to God and therefore is a much less interesting argument. Being charitable, I think this was partly him being a product of his time, because he was writing from a time when God was necessarily an assumption and the features he ascribes to God are basically what were already ascribed to God for many centuries (particularly omniscience). It probably didn’t help that he was a bishop . . .
Anyway, there are obviously complaints that you could make about all of this, but my point wasn’t that Berkley was right, but merely that he was being misrepresented. I’m glad to hear that you’re going to keep investigating the subject on your own and look forward to any refutations you choose to make in the future based on those investigations.