perceive a continual succession of ideas; some are anew excited, others are changed or totally disappear. There is therefore some cause of these ideas whereon they depend, and which produces and changes them. That this cause cannot be any quality or idea, or combination of ideas, is clear from the preceding section. It must therefore be a substance; but it has been shown that there is no corporeal or material substance; it remains therefore that the cause of ideas is an incorporeal active substance or spirit …
I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as oft as I think fit. It is no more than willing, and straightway this or that idea arises in my fancy; and by the same power it is obliterated, and makes way for another … But whatever power I may have over my own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other will or spirit that produces them.
The ideas of sense are more strong, lively, and distinct than those of the imagination; they have likewise a steadiness, order, and coherence, and are not excited at random, as those which are the effects of human wills often are, but in a regular train or series – the admirable connection whereof sufficiently testifies the wisdom and benevolence of its Author. Now the set rules or established methods, wherein the mind we depend on excites in us the ideas of sense, are called the Laws of Nature; and these we learn by experience, which teaches us that such and such ideas are attended with such and such other ideas, in the ordinary course of things.
Specimen Questions
1 Examine Berkeley’s argument that ‘houses, mountains and rivers’ do not have an existence apart from being perceived.
2 Explain the role of God in Berkeley’s conception of reality.
3 Berkeley argues that it is contradictory to entertain the notion of a world of mind-independent objects (physical objects that exist unobserved). What is his argument and is it successful?
Suggestions for Further Reading (Including Internet Resources)
1 G. Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge [1710]. See also Three Dialogues [1713] in Philosophical Works, ed. M. Ayers (London: Dent, 1975).
2 Useful introductions to Berkeley’s thought are J. Dancy, Berkeley: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987); J. O. Urmson, Berkeley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); G. Warnock, Berkeley (3rd edn, Oxford: Blackwell, 1982).
3 More detailed studies are: A. Grayling, Berkeley: The Central Arguments (London: Duckworth, 1986); I. C. Tipton, Berkeley: The Philosophy of Immaterialism (London: Methuen, 1974); K. P. Winkler, Berkeley: An Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989); R. Fogelin, Berkeley and the Principles of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2001).
4 For online resources, go to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/ (by L. Downing), and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy at https://www.iep.utm.edu/berkeley/ (by D. E. Flage).
5 P. Millican discusses Malbranche and Berkeley in a podcast lecture 2.5 of his General Philosophy series (2010) at Oxford University, http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/25-nicolas-malebranche-and-george-berkeley, and Berkeley’s idealism as a response to Locke in lecture 6.3 at http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/63-abstraction-and-idealism.
6 Another useful online site for Berkeley is maintained by D. Wilkins (Trinity College, Dublin) at https://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/Berkeley/.
Notes
* George Berkeley, Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge [1710; 2nd edn 1734], Part I, paras 1–10, 14, 19, 23–6, 28–30; with omissions, and some changes of spelling and punctuation. There are many available editions of the Principles, including one with a full introduction for students, ed. J. Dancy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). See also the handy collection, Berkeley: Philosophical Works, ed. M. Ayers (London: Dent, 1975).
1 1 Various.
2 2 ‘Without’, as often in eighteenth-century English, here means ‘outside’.
3 3 Repugnancy: contradiction.
7 The Limits of Metaphysical Speculation: David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*
A bewildering array of metaphysical theories of reality was on offer by the mid-eighteenth century. We have already looked at three: Locke’s world of objects characterized by real primary qualities inhering in an unknown material substrate; Leibniz’s theory of individual substances as active centres of energy; Berkeley’s total denial of material substance, or indeed anything outside the perceptions of a mind or Spirit. In his Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), the Scottish philosopher David Hume asserted that the notion which Locke had referred to, of an unknown ‘something’ supposed to ‘support’ qualities was an ‘unintelligible chimera’.1 Our knowledge cannot go beyond our experience (see Part I, extract 7, above), and ‘our ideas of bodies are nothing but collections formed by the mind of the ideas of the several distinct sensible qualities of which objects are composed’.2
In the following extracts from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), Hume divides all the objects of legitimate human inquiry into two classes, which he terms Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact. The former, typified by the truths of mathematics, are established a priori (independently of experience), ‘by the mere operation of thought’. But they form a closed system, arising merely from how our ideas or concepts are defined: they do not give us any information about what really exists in the world. Matters of fact, by contrast, concern what really exists, but no propositions of this kind can be conclusively demonstrated: there is no contradiction in denying them (that the sun will not rise tomorrow ‘is no less intelligible and implies no more contradiction than that it will rise’). Instead, such truths are based entirely on experience; but all that experience reveals is what has actually been observed to happen up till now.3 Hume goes on to underline our inability to predict, in advance of experience, how even the most familiar objects will behave: for all we know a priori, when one billiard ball hits another, both balls ‘may remain absolutely at rest’. Moreover, though the scientist may aim to reduce all observed phenomena to a set of simple laws or principles, any attempt to speculate further about the ultimate reality responsible for these general truths is in vain: the most perfect natural science only ‘staves off our ignorance’, since ‘the ultimate springs and principles’ of reality are ‘totally shut up from human curiosity and enquiry’.4 Finally, in our concluding passage (from the last part of the Enquiry) Hume summarizes his position on the two classes of truths we can know, and issues a firm warning about the futility of metaphysical inquiry going beyond these limits. Relations between ideas may be investigated by the ‘abstract reasoning’ of mathematics; this aside, all claims to further our knowledge about what exists must be based on experience – yet this can tell us only about actually observed phenomena, and is ‘entirely silent’ about any supposed ultimate reality underlying them. The closed, a priori reasonings of mathematics, on
