Questions tagged [berkeley]
Bishop Berkeley is the lead example, within academia today, of the metaphysical belief of idealism. His "A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge" can be summed up in a single phrase: "esse est percipi", meaning, all that is is perceived.
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Is Berkleian Idealism a Paralogism?
I've been trying to understand Kant's rejection of Berkleian idealism. In addition to his "Refutation of Idealism" in the Critique of Pure Reason, which seems to stress the importance of an ...
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How Does Berkeley's View of Reality Integrate Free Will and God's Story?
I’m trying to better understand Berkeley's view of reality. From what I gather, things exist only if we perceive them. In Sophie’s World, for example, characters exist solely in the mind of God (or ...
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Responding to Berkeley's Likeness principle
I would really appreciate some ideas regarding possible responses to Berkeley's Likeness principle as an attack against representative/indirect realism. My understanding of the role of the Likeness ...
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Is Moral Attraction the Key to Avoiding Berkeleyean Solipsism?
Bishop Berkeley’s philosophy is often characterized as idealist, but this is a hasty generalization and false advertising. It is deeply empirical, grounded in observations about human perception and ...
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is subjective idealism or solipsism debunked because of the existence of "Brain" and "Surprise"? related to mind- body problem
reading this might help you understand my point
Idealism, Narrative and the Mind-Brain Relation
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44807008
how does someone like Berkeley explain the fact that there is ...
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Did Berkeley change his mind on his latest work "Siris" (1774)?
While studying Bishop Berkeley in depth I have faced some interesting arguments regarding his philosophy is shifted and changed on his later life.
The main source of this argument is from his not ...
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How does Berkeley distinguish between illusion and reality and what are his arguments?
Does anyone know that how does he explains the effects of mind altering drugs according to his ideology? For example If God is the master perceiver, Does God also perceive the pink elephant or the ...
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If George Berkeley was an Anglican bishop, how his master arguments can be against biblical teachings which states that matter exists?
We all know that George Berkeley was a bishop.(Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland) However, how can a Christian ordained member of the clergy can make arguments against biblical ...
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How can this argument by the philosopher Berkeley in favor of idealism be resisted?
I'd like to know how the following argument by George Berkeley can be challenged:
(1) If primary qualities cannot be abstracted from secondary qualities, then
primary qualities cannot exist apart from ...
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Help sourcing a quote - "There is no doctrine so invalid..."
Recently a quote popped into my head, which I recall as a Bishop Berkeley proposition. But on further looking into the matter, I can't seem to find it. It's within the general area of the following:
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What does Kant refer to when writing about "dreaming (träumenden) idealism" and "visionary (schwärmenden) idealism"?
In Note III to §13 of the Prolegomena, Kant seems to be answering some critics that have compared his transcendental idealism to the philosophies of Descartes (at least the skeptical part of it) and ...
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A question about Berkeley's attack on Locke's distinction of primary and secondary qualities
I'm reading W. T. Jones account of Berkeley's theory, and I find that in general Berkeley convincingly demonstrated some weak points that are fundamental to Locke's theory. But there is one of his ...
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What exactly is an unthought-of object?
Hello fellow philosophers!
I'm currently in the process of reading about George Berkeley's Idealism.
At one point, it is mentioned that Berkeley's Master Argument fails due to a conflation of ...
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Does Locke's saying "the mind has no other immediate object but its own ideas …." deconstruct his own general theory and agree with Berkeley’s?
Locke says: "Since the mind ... hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them."
If we take ...
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Does the Strong Anthropic Principle lead to Idealism?
I have to admit this question isn't very neatly thought out, but I've always been a bit puzzled by the Anthropic Principle. I realize there are various forms or "strengths" of the idea, and ...
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What's Kant defense of a noumenal world actually existing?
There is a sharp distinction according to most commentaries between Berkeley and Kant - and perhaps it's purely due to the fact that Kant doesn't render experience in-itself enough to make sense of ...
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Is there any inconsistency in Berkeley's philosophy?
Does Berkeley's empiricist philosophy contain any inconsistencies? What are the inconsistent sides of Locke's or Hume's philosophies? How is Berkeley's world different from a Matrix-like world?
The ...
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Are there any good arguments against Berkeley's immaterialism?
Basically, Berkeley writes that the only things that are real or existing are either (1) the active, perceiving mind or soul, or (2) the passive perceived things. He argues that we can only have ...
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Problems with Other Minds in Idealism
If everything is immaterial and just ideas like Berkeley states then how are ideas and experiences shared among minds to create our common reality? Does God just transmit these ideas to everyone's ...
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How does Berkeley justify existence of other minds?
I don't understand how Berkeley justifies existence of other minds in his system. Is it something that he takes for granted? Because, his position seems very close to that of a solipsist except for ...
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Subjective idealism of Berkeley and Social reality
If one were to accept immaterialist position that Berkeley takes. how can it explain social reality?
From what I understand, Berkeley does not deny existence of physical objects, he says that ...
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Are the Argument From Perspectival Variation and the Argument From Perceptual Relativity one and the same?
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains Perspectival Variation as follows:
Perspectival variation is the kind of variation in one's sensory
experiences that normally attends changes in ...
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Is there a special language for expressing subjective idealism?
Subjective idealism is the monistic metaphysical doctrine that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that material ...
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Was Berkeley NOT making the Master Argument?
This following article challenges the idea Berkeley was making the Master Argument against an ontologically mind-independent reality
: Link to Article on Berkeley
Wikipedia notes that:
"Some claim ...
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What is Light in Berkeley's Metaphysics?
What is light before we see it?
For Berkeley, everything that has not been perceived doesn't exist, but light needs to exist unperceived before it reaches the eyes. How is this possible in Berkeley'...
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According to Russell, are sense data NOT the only things immediately known, or are they not purely mental?
In Russell's Problems of Philosophy, in refutal Berkeley's argument for idealism -in Russel's words "whatever can be immediately known must be in a mind"- he states:
Berkeley was right in ...
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Empiricism out the door
I remember having read something like
No matter how long we debate about the existence of the external world, at the end of the evening we all exit the room through the door
Or something like ...
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For Berkeley, how do subjective experiences exist?
In Three Dialogues, Berkeley advances a theory of subjective idealism. Things only exist as experiences of individual consciousnesses. These things are static and themselves unthinking, as they are ...
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Is there an atheistic idealism that rejects noumena but isn't solipsism?
I know of one answered question on a similar subject, but mine is not quite the same thing.
Berkeley's idealism holds that to be is to be perceived---nothing can exist, or can be thought to exist, ...
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How does Berkeley's idealism differ from others that might be called idealist
Having read Berkeley's work, I am aware of his theory, and definitely disagree with large parts of it - I would like to know how his idealism compares with that of other philosophers, particularly ...
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How did George Berkeley justify his disbelief in matter?
I recently read Berkeley's work entitled "Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous" in which he gives an account very similar to that of Kant.
"Appearances, so far as they are thought as objects ...
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Objection to Berkeley's Master Argument
The Master Argument (roughly) states that it is not possible for sensible objects to exist without a mind. Now part of Berkeley's Argument goes as follows:
Suppose something exists without being ...
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Is the difference between logical possibility and physical possibility an argument against Idealism?
In typical sci-fi scenarios, the characters realize that they are living in a simulation, or that everything is a dream, etc....once they notice that the laws of physics don't always hold, or that ...
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Why do current academics refuse to acknolwedge idealism as viable?
Berkeley is often sited as the "ideal" of idealism. Most of the academic arguments attack his various points, but his finer points seems to escape the academic community. Kant gives some effort in ...
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Are Kant and Berkeley in closer philosophical relation than Kant wanted to believe?
Kant called Berkeley a "material idealist" on the grounds that Berkeley stated you are not and cannot experience objects outside a mind because the mind wouldn't understand what that means.
Kant ...
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Does the Denial of the External World Lead to Solipsism?
Denying the external world essentially denies the existence of everyone else. I become only sure of that which I am aware of myself. I thought perhaps Berkeley might have undergone a similar ...
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How is Kant's transcendental idealism related to Berkeley's subjective idealism?
My understanding is that Berkeley considered the outside world to have no existence at all, and took the statement "It's all in the mind" literally, whereas Kant argued that the outside world exists ...
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Are consistent solipsists limited to the singular when referencing themselves?
If you are an Idealistic Solipsist, is it not true that you must say "I am a Solipsist." or "I am the Solipsist."?
One cannot say "I am one of the Solipsists" for example.
Are there other ...
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Berkeley's idealist view of physical objects
Berkeley sees objects as a set of ideas. His strict view on objects allows for cases like his relativity of perception argument (where a bucket of water can be both warm and cold, one person can find ...
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How would Kant defend the concept of the noumenon against Berkeley's charge?
Berkeley asserts that it is meaningless to speak of things-in-themselves that are not subject to human evaluation. Given that, no ampliative judgements can be made by postulating a causal relation ...
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What are the rebuttals (if any) to Berkeley's dismissal of "primary qualities"?
I am rereading Berkeley's Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous and am curious about any subsequent works which actively rebut his dismissal of primary qualities.
From the first dialogue:
Phil. ...
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Is there any similarity between Parmenides and Berkeley on this score?
J. Barnes says: "Berkeley's argument is in direct line of descent from Parmenides” (The Presocratic Philosophers, p171). This sentence shows up right after he interpreted what Parmenides means by "...
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What are the main differences between Berkeley's and Locke's view of ideas?
I'm currently taking Modern Philosophy at my university, and we went over Berkeley and Locke in a span of ten minutes in order to get to Hume. As far as what they (Berkeley and Locke) thought about "...
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Has modern physics undermined Berkeley's idealism?
To make a long story short, Bishop Berkeley argued that the idea of matter existing independently of perception was incoherent, since the properties of matter are (or were in Berkeley's time) defined ...
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In which text does Berkeley develop his philosophy of subjective idealism?
A while ago, I asked this question about Borges's philosophical influences, which yielded Berkeley.
Reading the wikipedia page on Berkeley, I can see that as far as philosophers go, his philosophy of ...
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Why has the philosophy of Bishop Berkeley fallen out of favor in academic philosophy?
I studied George Berkeley as an undergraduate, and though I absolutely loved his work and his philosophy, many of my peers, and even some of my professors, found his philosophy wholly unappealing, ...
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Did Malebranche believe both the idea in the mind and the movement in the body are caused by God?
My senior thesis explored the notion of action under George Berkeley's system, and one claim I tried to address was that Berkeley contradicts himself when discussing will.
In his Philosophical ...
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