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Metaphysical Idealism Analysis

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The human mind is unmaterialistic in contrast to the human brain. We can’t sense the mind, i.e., can’t touch it and see it while we can most certainly touch and see the brain. The general crowd would agree that the senses are used to perceive matter. Matter is the atom of the physical existence claimed to be more or less constant. The general boils down to the specific immaterialist and the idealist, George Berkeley who presented a Metaphysical idealism under the famous claim esse est percipi" ("to be is to be perceived").Berkeley’s claim meant that an idea or an object that is not perceived by the mind does not exist since in order for anything to exist it has to be perceived by the mind and that nothing outside the mind exists.
Berkeley’s …show more content…

By saying that all ordinary objects are ideas, Berkeley did not strip the word “substance” from existence. On the contrary, he stated that the only substance that exists is the spirit since the most important aspect of a substance is its activity and the spirit is active in both producing and perceiving ideas. Hence, thinking substances do exist and for them to exist they have to perceive. But we shall point out that the spirit is not perceived since ideas are for the sensible objects and their qualities and we have only notions and not ideas about the spirit.
Matter is neither perceived nor perceives (doesn’t exist). Hence, substances are not made of matter but are on the contrary, mental. What humans count as matter is the idea derived from the sensory perception of physical properties like extension, form, motion…Therefore, the existence of an object is ideal (mental) since it can only be real (exist) if it can perceive or be perceived by the human mind. According to Berkeley, we can certainly abstract, but abstraction is what leads us to think that objects exist independently of the mind and that is not true. Berkeley said that we can say that I can imagine the smell of a rose without thinking of the rose itself but this “conceiving power does not extend beyond the possibility of real existence or perception”. Hence, he claims that abstracting ideas is possible but is very contradicting since he refuses to differentiate between what is real (sensible) and what is in the

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He stated that there is an immaterial essence that is the mind and a material essence, which is the body. These thoughts and feelings are immaterial which means that it exists in the mind and the body exists in the material space. 2. Compare and contrast the views of George Berkeley and Thomas Hobbes on the mind. - George Berkeley’s view on the mind is that direct access to the

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So in order to exist a thinking thing, a thinking matter, it needs to be a mind or a body related to a mind as is

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Karl Marx was a German philosopher and a political revolutionary. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx was written to elaborate on the goals of communism. It explains how class struggles were the main cause of most historical events. This book also makes a clear point about how different classes correlation with each other had a lot to do with the production of that era.

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Conclusion: The mind is substantively different from the body and indeed matter in general. Because in this conception the mind is substantively distinct from the body it becomes plausible for us to doubt the intuitive connection between mind and body. Indeed there are many aspects of the external world that do not appear to have minds and yet appear none the less real in spite of this for example mountains, sticks or lamps, given this we can begin to rationalize that perhaps minds can exist without bodies, and we only lack the capacity to perceive them.

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In A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley differentiates between general and abstract ideas. He gives two arguments against the existence of abstract ideas, both of which are compelling. Berkeley continues to explain how people are misled by language into believing abstract ideas. Although his argument is sound, I will provide an alternative viewpoint on the role of language.

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Furthermore, he claims that there is a finite amount of steps to take to trace each idea to a source. Finally, he states that each idea deviating from the original idea has a less and less basis upon reality. With these assumptions, he states that

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However, for Berkeley materialist philosophers, such as Hobbes, to him left no room for god. Berkley instead expanded on the metaphysical claim of Idealism. Berkeley held the view that all we know about in the world are our sensations. As a matter of

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Thus, he argues that a body can exist without thought, since thinking is not in the essence of a body. As

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In his philosophical thesis, of the ‘Mind-Body dualism’ Rene Descartes argues that the mind and the body are really distinct, one of the most deepest and long lasting legacies. Perhaps the strongest argument that Descartes gives for his claim is that the non extended thinking thing like the Mind cannot exist without the extended non thinking thing like the Body. Since they both are substances, and are completely different from each other. This paper will present his thesis in detail and also how his claim is critiqued by two of his successors concluding with a personal stand.

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He argues that the body and soul are two elements that have the same underlying substance. He maintains that a person’s soul is the same as his nature of body; however, he argues that the mind differed from other parts of the body as it lacked a physical feature. In this case, he maintains that the intellect lacks a physical form, and this allows it to receive every form. It allows a person to think about anything, including the material object. In this case, he argues that if the intellect were in a material form, it could be sensitive to only some physical objects.

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Firstly, it is like-minded with knowledge of humans and brains. Secondly, it accounts for the close relation we think there is between mind and body. When we talk about how a person thinks or believes, we are talking about how a human behaves. Thirdly, it is a monistic theory removing mental substance, which makes it an acceptable theory for materialists.

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But may believe even Descartes isn’t exactly clear on the inner working of the relationship (Robinson, Howard). Spinoza’s substance monism cleverly dissolves this issue by labeling mind (thought) and body (extension) as attributes to a common and singular substance. Other substance pluralist philosophies are also denied when we truly capture the infinite extent of

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