Fields - Berkeley: ideas, immaterialism, and objective presence

References to primary sources in the text use the following abbreviations:

Works by Antoine Arnauld

Works by George Berkeley

Works by Ren Descartes

Works by John Locke

Works by Nicolas Malebranche

Works by Thomas Reid

George Berkeley (16841753) notoriously argued that matter does not exist, and that what perceivers typically call the physical world consists entirely of minds and ideas. Some three hundred years after his systematic development of this claim was first published, Berkeleys philosophy is still met with bemusement and wonder. His immaterialism was a reaction to the corpuscularianism of his famous predecessor, John Locke, whose Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) had become required reading (along with works by Descartes, and Malebranche) by the time Berkeley entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700. Corpuscularianism offers causal explanations of natural phenomena in terms of unobservable elemental particlescorpuscleswhose arrangement and motion produce observable effects such as color, figure, odor, flavor, texture, pressure, magnetism, etc. It was quite an improvement over the scholasticism that it sought to displace. Experimental results that scholasticism was ill equipped to explain were rapidly rendering its conceptual framework and methods obsolete. Corpuscularianism offered explanations where scholasticism could not, contributing to widespread enthusiasm for the new method and optimism that knowledge could be advanced indefinitely.

Lockes Essay is an extended attempt to provide a philosophical foundation for corpuscularianism using only the resources provided by experience. The result is a massive, uneven, but unmistakably brilliant work. He defends a compelling account of scientific knowledge; yet, however compelling Lockes project may be, Berkeley remained resolutely unconvinced. He claimed that the external world cannot be materialit cannot be composed of corpuscles or any other form of material substancebecause he found materialism to be an inherently inconsistent position. The challenge for Berkeleys interpreters is to explain, as sympathetically as possible, why he thought this. But Berkeley makes the interpreters responsibility to be sympathetic a difficult burden by supporting immaterialism with equally incredible doctrines. Among them: the heterogeneity of the objects of sight and touch; the view that causation is divine volition; the claim that God sustains objects by perceiving them when humans do not; the claim that an object cannot be conceived without thereby being perceived; his insistence that immaterialism is consistent with common sense whereas materialism is not; and so on. Due to such claims, Berkeleys philosophy is widely considered misguided. Not surprisingly, he is often read with an eye towards exposing his errors. Nevertheless, the sympathetic reader must avoid caricature. In an attempt to do so, the reading presented here rarely pauses for philosophical critique of Berkeley, and labors under the assumption that Berkeley was imperfect but not misguided.