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Page 95
The Idealists: George Berkeley
‘To be is to be perceived’ (esse est percipi) rish philosopher and Bishop of Cloyne, Berkeley is renowned as the father of philosophical idealism, who endeavoured to show how, using their own assumptions, the materialism of Locke and Newton was untenable. His most famous adage is ‘esse est percipi’ (‘to be is to be perceived’). Following Locke’s own causal theory of perception, Berkeley, like others, noted that it implies a logical gap between the subject and reality. This logical gap, often called by philosophers ‘the veil of perception’, is generated in the following way. The causal theory of perception holds that objects in the external world have a causal effect on our senses and in so doing produce ideas in the mind of the observer. Thus an ordinary vase begins a chain of causal events first in the retina of the observer, and subsequently in the neural pathways of the observer that lead him to see ‘a vase’. The seeing of the vase, however, is a construct inside one’s mind, a fact seemingly supported by the existence of hallucinations, and visual images in dreams. If the perception of the vase is a construct – or ‘idea’ to use Berkeley’s term – in the mind, then it follows that what we actually see is not the real cause of the idea, the actual vase, but only the idea itself. Accordingly, it is a matter of conjecture to suppose that the cause of the construct actually resembles what we perceive. It could be, for all we know, that ideas of vases are caused by something wholly un-vase like. But since all our perceptions of the world are generated inside the mind, we have no way of telling whether reality really does resemble our ideas or not. Using a series of arguments employing this ‘veil of perception’, Berkeley concludes that since we never perceive anything called ‘matter’, but only ideas, it is an untenable conjecture to presume that there is a material substance lying
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behind and supporting our perceptions. Locke and others had resisted this suggestion by making the distinction between primary qualites, such as solidity, extension and figure, and secondary qualities, such as colour, taste and smell, claiming only secondary qualities are mind-dependent. But Berkeley’s arguments appear to show that there is no valid distinction between primary and secondary qualities in perception. As a result, everything turns out to be mind-dependent. If something fails to be an idea in someone’s mind, it fails to exist, hence Berkeley’s famous saying ‘to be is to be perceived’. Of course, such a view leads to an immediate criticism, which is that if there were no material substrate behind our ideas, how is it that things persist when no one perceives them? When I close the door on the bedroom, it would seem to fail to exist according to Berkeley, if there is no one inside to continue perceiving it. Berkeley’s reply is that our perceptions are ideas produced for us by God. God perceives everything at all times, so the closed room still exists since it is perceived in the mind of God. The following limerick by Ronald Knox sets out the objection to Berkeley and his reply: There was a young man who said, ‘God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be When there’s no one about in the Quad.’ Reply: Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd: I am always about in the Quad. And that’s why the tree Will continue to be, Since observed by Yours faithfully,
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