Berkeley And Immaterialism

Berkeley was an idealist and claimed that abstract ideas are the source of all philosophical perplexity and illusion. In his Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge he argued that, as Locke described abstract ideas they cannot, in fact, be formed, they are not needed for communication or knowledge, and they are inconsistent and therefore inconceivable.

In the Principles Berkeley defends two metaphysical theses: idealism (the claim that everything that exists either is a mind or depends on a mind for its existence) and immaterialism (the claim that matter does not exist). His contention that all physical objects are composed of ideas is encapsulated in his motto esse is percipi (to be is to be perceived).

On the first hand, the

But what entails an idea for Berkeley is really diverse and ranges from emotions, passions, products of memory and products of imagination. Today’s common meaning of ideas includes only the last two constituents of the previous definition.

Having introduced his own notion of ideas, and since Berkeley’s famous principle is esse is percipi which means “to be is to be perceived” the author now assumes that since ideas truly do exist, then there should be something that is able to perceive them.

This is how our enlightenment philosopher argues for the existence of the mind. First, ideas were introduced and it was affirmed that we experience ideas directly, so ideas do actually exist. And for them to exist they should be received and contained somewhere: in our minds or spirit, which are two interchangeable terms in Berkeley’s text.

We can notice commonality with the Cartesian way of introducing the existence of the mind. In fact, Descartes asserts that minds do existence because the thoughts he introduces should be somewhere: just like Berkeley argues for the existence of the mind because of it containing

In fact in our every day life we perceive entities like trees, mountains, cars, buildings, all sorts of physical substances with our minds. Second, since ideas can only exist if they are perceived (back to the essi is percipi principle), then we perceive ideas with our minds. Finally, since we perceive all ordinary objects and we perceive ideas, then ordinary objects are nothing but collections of ideas. Thus, adapting this definition of objects of knowledge will lead us to neglect pain as a neuronal activity and accept it as an idea in our mind, neglect sound as sound waves and also accept them as ideas in our mind. Hence, Berkeley offers us a sort of scheme where we have a knower (our minds) something to know (the ideas) and an act, which is perceiving. In fact, he reduces all perceptions to ideas: in sight for example, the mechanics of perception are in the eye but what we see or our perception is in our mind. It is also important to note the author’s distinction between simple and compound ideas. Through the example of the apple we can discriminate between the idea of an apple, a compound one made of many other simpler ideas like its red color, the shape of the apple, it’s taste