What is the connection between perception and reality? With Berkeley we move away from rationalism and to a particular type of empiricism.
Here's the conversation with Dr. Schulz and me to get you going on this master metaphor.
Here's the conversation with Dr. Schulz and me to get you going on this master metaphor.
| mastermetaphorsberkeleystable_mixdown2.mp3 |
Now, for the Berkeley text:
Dr. Schulz gives this advice for wrestling with this text:
Berkeley’s Table
a) Read Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge. There is an enjoyable version of Berkeley at http://sqapo.com/berkeley.htm. Let’s agree not to tell anyone that we are using Glyn Hughes’ Squashed Philosophers or Berkeley’s Principles squashed down to 35 minutes of reading!
A full edition of Principles is downloadable at www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/Berkeley/HumanKnowledge/1734/HumKno.pdf.
There is a nice, free self-quiz at http://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780195342604/student/chapt3/quiz/berkeley/.
b) George Berkeley (1685 – 1753) is the only major philosopher in the modern period for whom the God of the Bible is taken seriously as a lynchpin in his philosophy. A key Bible passage for Berkeley is Acts 17:28. Be sure to reread Acts 17:16-34 and then to invest at least a few minutes looking up verse 28 in a study Bible or in your favorite Greek NT commentary.
c) Berkeley is taking on the empiricist philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). To get a quick understanding of empiricism, please see especially Part 2. Regarding John Locke at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SPE), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/.
I’ve attached my own annotated version of part of the SPE article on Berkeley’s philosophy below.
d) Berkeley challenges Locke’s materialistic empiricism (that extramental entities automatically deliver their ideas into our minds via our senses). In answer to the problems that Locke’s materialism poses, Berkeley differentiates between inanimate entities and mindful beings. The essence of inanimate beings, Berkeley argues, is to be perceived (esse est percipi), whereas the essence of mindful beings is to perceive (esse est percipere). Epistemologically speaking, then, it makes no sense to talk about epistemology or knowledge without a mindful being, a perceiving being such as a human being – or at least the God of the Bible – doing the perceiving and knowing. No knower, no epistemology. So, something much more robust that a materialist empiricism is called for – something such as God Himself, “in whom we live and move and have our being”!
BTW, Metaphysics = Ontology + Epistemology
e) Berkeley’s challenge to Locke’s materialism has been put into poetry:
Berkeley Limericks by Ronald Knox:
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."
God's 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, God.
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