Berkeley

II. The Eighteenth Century

Matter as a Meaningless Term

Locke had said that substance, or matter, “supports” or acts as a “substrate” to the qualities we sense. In Berkeley’s First Dialogue between Hylas and Philonus, Hylas expressed Locke’s view: “I find it necessary to suppose a material substratum, without which (qualities) cannot be conceived to exist.” Philonus replies that the word substratum has no clear meaning for him and that he would want to “know any sense, literal or not literal, that you understand it.” But Hylas admits that he cannot assign any definite meaning to the term substratum, saying, “I declare I know not what to say.” From this the conclusion is drawn that “the absolute existence of unthinking things (matter) are words without meaning.” This is not to say that sensible things do not possess reality but only that sensible things exist only insofar as they are perceived. This of course implies that only ideas exist, but Berkeley adds that “I hope that to call a thing idea makes it no less real.” Aware that his idealism can be ridiculed, Berkeley writes, “What therefore becomes of the sun, moon, and stars? What must we think of houses, rivers, mountains, trees, stones; nay even of our own bodies? Are all these so many chimeras and delusions of fancy?” By his principles, he says, “we are not deprived of any one thing in nature. Whatever we see, feel, hear, or any wise conceive or understand, remains as secure as ever, and is as real as ever. There is a rerum natura, and the distinction between realities and chimeras retains its full force.” If this is the case, why say that only ideas, instead of things, exist? In order, says Berkeley, to eliminate the useless concept of matter: “I do not argue against existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection … The only thing whose existence we deny, is that which philosophers call matter or corporal substance. And in doing of this, there is no damage done to the rest of mankind, who, I dare say, will never miss it.” 

Science and Abstract Ideas 

Since it was the science of his day, particularly physics, that relied so heavily upon the notion of matter, Berkeley had to come up to terms with its assumptions and methods. Science had assumed that we can, and must, distinguish between appearance and reality. The sea appears blue but is really not. Berkeley challenged the scientists to show whether there is any other reality than the sensible world. In this analysis Berkeley was pursuing the principle of empiricism and was trying to refine it. Physicists, he said, were obscuring science by including metaphysics in their theory: they used such words as force, attraction, gravity and thought they referred to some real physical entity. Even to speak of minute particles, whose motions caused the quality of color, is to engage in a rational and not empirical analysis. What disturbed Berkeley most was that scientists used general or abstract terms as though these terms accurately referred to real entities, particularly to an underlying material substance in nature. No where, Berkeley argues, do we ever come upon a substance, for substance is an abstract idea. Only sense qualities really exist, and the notion of substance is a misleading inference drawn from observed qualities: “as several of these (qualities) are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain color, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple; other collection of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book and the like sensible things.” Similarly, when scientists observe the operation of things, they use such abstract terms as force or gravity as though these were things or had some real existence in things. But force is simply a word describing our sensation of the behavior of things and gives us no more knowledge than our senses and reflections give us.

Berkeley did not mean to destroy science any more than he wanted to deny the existence of the “nature of things.” What he did want to do was to clarify what scientific language was all about. Terms such as force, gravity and causality refer to nothing more than clusters of ideas which our minds derive from sensation. We experience that heat melts wax, but all we know from this experience is that what we call melting wax is accompanied by what we call heat. We have no knowledge of any single thing for which the word “cause” stands. Indeed, the only knowledge we have is of particular experiences. But even though we do not have first hand knowledge of the causes of all things, we do know the order of things. We experience order, that A is followed by B, even though we have no experience of why this occurs. Science gives us a description of physical behavior, and many mechanical principles can be accurately formulated from our observations that are useful for purposes of prediction. Thus, Berkeley would leave science intact, but he would clarify its language so that nobody would think that science is giving us anything more than we can derive from the sensible world. And the sensible world shows us neither substance nor causality.

 God and the Existence of Things 

Since Berkeley did not deny the existence of things or their order in nature, it was necessary for him to explain how things external to our minds exist even when we don’t perceive them and how they achieve their order. Thus, elaborating his general thesis that to be is to be perceived, Berkeley says that “when I deny sensible things and their existence out of my mind, I do not mean my mind in particular but all minds. Now it is plain they have an existence exterior to my mind, since I find them by experience to be independent of it. There is therefore some other mind wherein they exist, during the intervals between the time of my perceiving them.” And because all human minds are intermittently diverted from things “there is an omnipresent external Mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a manner and according to such rules as he himself hath ordained, and are by us termed the Laws of Nature.” The existence of things depends upon the existence of God, and God is the cause of the orderliness of things. 

Again, Berkeley did not want to deny, for example, that even if he left the room, the candle would still be there, and when he returned after an interval of time, it would have burned down. But this meant for Berkeley that experience has a certain regularity that makes it possible for us to predict what our future experiences will be. To say that candles burn even when I am not in the room still does not prove that material substance exists independently from a mind. It seemed a matter of common sense to Berkeley to say that one can know about the candle only because he actually experiences a perception of it. In a similar way, one knows that he exists because he has an awareness of his mental operations. 

If, then, I try to describe or interpret reality in terms of my experience, I come first to the conclusion that there are other persons like myself who have minds. From this it can be assumed that as I have ideas, other persons likewise have ideas. Apart from my finite mind and the finite minds of others, there is a greater Mind analogous to mind, and this is God’s mind. God’s ideas constitute the regular order of nature. The ideas that exists in our minds are God’s ideas, which He communicates to us, so that the objects or things that we perceive in daily experience are caused not by matter or substance but by God. It is God, too, who coordinates all experiences of finite minds, assuring regularity and dependability in experience, which in turn, enables us to think in terms of the “laws of nature.” Thus, the orderly arrangement of ideas in God’s mind is communicated to the finite minds or spirits of men, allowance being made for the differences in competence between the Divine and finite minds. The ultimate reality, then, is spiritual, God, and not material, and the continued existence of objects when we are not perceiving them is explained by God’s continuous perception of them.

To say, as Berkeley does, that men’s ideas come from God implies a special interpretation of causation. Again, Berkeley did not deny that we have an insight into causation; he only insisted that our sense data do not disclose to us a unique causal power. We do not, for example, when considering how and why water freezes, discover any power in cold that forces water to become solid. We do, however, understand causal connections through our mental operations. We are, for example, aware of our volition: we can will to move our arm, or, what is more important here, we can produce imaginary ideas in our minds. Our power to produce such ideas suggests that perceived ideas are also caused by mental power. But whereas imaginary ideas are produced by finite minds, perceived ideas are created and caused to be in us by an infinite Mind. 

Berkeley was confident that through his treatment of his formula esse est percipi he had effectively undermined the position of philosophical materialism and religious skepticism. Locke’s empiricism inevitably implied skepticism insofar as he insisted that knowledge is based upon sense experience and that substance, or the reality behind appearances, could never be known. Whether Berkeley’s arguments for the reality of God and spiritual things successfully refuted materialism and skepticism remains a question, for his arguments contained some of the flaws he held against the materialists. His influence was nevertheless significant, but it was his empiricism and not his idealism that had lasting influence. Building upon Locke’s empiricism, Berkeley made the decisive point that the human mind reasons only and always about particular sense experiences, that abstract ideas refer to no equivalent reality.