Further in the paragraph, Berkeley offers a challenge in this regard to anyone who can have ideas of the powers of will and understanding, or of substance or being in general. These spiritual realities in Berkeley's view cannot “be represented by any idea whatsoever.” For Berkeley, only notions can be had of minds, or souls or spirits, and their operations, such as willing, or loving, or hating or the like. Recall in any case that this is similar to Locke's view concerning our inability to know the substratum which holds the qualities of material substances together. The distinction in this regard is that we do not know material substances because they do not exist to begin with, and we do not know minds or spirits because they exist beyond the realm of ideas, even though they do exist independently.
According to Collins, the only strictly immediate knowledge is the perceptual content of one's own mind. Collins goes further to state in this regard: “Berkeley tries his best to avoid the solipsistic implications of this description of the cognitive situation. He bases his escape from solipsism mainly upon the demonstration of God's existence which is both intelligible to the average man and yet strictly demonstrative.” Collins further states: “Perceiving is an operation of the mind, but what we perceive lies beyond our control. Some other active principle must be invoked in order to account for the actual presentation of sensory contents to our mind, since we cannot voluntarily determine its content. Now, the sole source of the ideas cannot come from material substance, the existence of which has been disproved.” Collins pursues the discourse further by showing how sensible things cannot be responsible for ideas in the mind, since they “partake of the inert, casually inefficacious character of all ideas”; and so the active source of all ideas of sense for Berkeley is “some spiritual substance.” For Berkeley, this spiritual substance is not finite, since it should be able to convey to the finite mind the entire natural order. This spiritual substance would rather be infinite, and the ideas of sense contained in such an infinite mind would be communicated willingly and intelligently. God, for Berkeley, is this infinite mind, and is the first principle of cogitation. Collins states in this regard: “Berkeley relies implicitly upon the existence of God, as an infinite and actual perceiver, in order to secure the identification between esse and percipi.
Having explored the Berkeley's argument in favor of spirits in the foregoing, it is pertinent to evaluate the argument so as to determine if it is successful or not. The argument in my estimation in successful. For Berkeley, there are only two things: passive ideas of sense (where the objects of sense themselves do not exist independently of the mind), and active spirits, who do the perceiving. So, reality is either that which perceives (mind, spirit, soul), or that which is perceived, and nothing else. We do not know material substances very simply because they do not exist. They are ideas contained in the mind. And we do not know spirits because they are beyond the finite capacity of ideas in the mind. God, the infinite mind or spirit, however knows everything, and communicates to the individual mind notions of spirits and the activity of spirits (perceiving), in such a fashion that knowledge of reality ultimately depends on God's existence. As an exercise in idealism, it is a coherent and plausible argument. It may not necessarily appeal to common-sense, as we ordinarily think of common-sense. But recall that earlier in this paper, it was shown that Berkeley saw his view to be better in keeping with the dictates of common-sense than the materialist (and “impious”) views of empiricists such as Locke and Newton.
According to Collins, the only strictly immediate knowledge is the perceptual content of one's own mind. Collins goes further to state in this regard: “Berkeley tries his best to avoid the solipsistic implications of this description of the cognitive situation. He bases his escape from solipsism mainly upon the demonstration of God's existence which is both intelligible to the average man and yet strictly demonstrative.” Collins further states: “Perceiving is an operation of the mind, but what we perceive lies beyond our control. Some other active principle must be invoked in order to account for the actual presentation of sensory contents to our mind, since we cannot voluntarily determine its content. Now, the sole source of the ideas cannot come from material substance, the existence of which has been disproved.” Collins pursues the discourse further by showing how sensible things cannot be responsible for ideas in the mind, since they “partake of the inert, casually inefficacious character of all ideas”; and so the active source of all ideas of sense for Berkeley is “some spiritual substance.” For Berkeley, this spiritual substance is not finite, since it should be able to convey to the finite mind the entire natural order. This spiritual substance would rather be infinite, and the ideas of sense contained in such an infinite mind would be communicated willingly and intelligently. God, for Berkeley, is this infinite mind, and is the first principle of cogitation. Collins states in this regard: “Berkeley relies implicitly upon the existence of God, as an infinite and actual perceiver, in order to secure the identification between esse and percipi.
Having explored the Berkeley's argument in favor of spirits in the foregoing, it is pertinent to evaluate the argument so as to determine if it is successful or not. The argument in my estimation in successful. For Berkeley, there are only two things: passive ideas of sense (where the objects of sense themselves do not exist independently of the mind), and active spirits, who do the perceiving. So, reality is either that which perceives (mind, spirit, soul), or that which is perceived, and nothing else. We do not know material substances very simply because they do not exist. They are ideas contained in the mind. And we do not know spirits because they are beyond the finite capacity of ideas in the mind. God, the infinite mind or spirit, however knows everything, and communicates to the individual mind notions of spirits and the activity of spirits (perceiving), in such a fashion that knowledge of reality ultimately depends on God's existence. As an exercise in idealism, it is a coherent and plausible argument. It may not necessarily appeal to common-sense, as we ordinarily think of common-sense. But recall that earlier in this paper, it was shown that Berkeley saw his view to be better in keeping with the dictates of common-sense than the materialist (and “impious”) views of empiricists such as Locke and Newton.
No comments:
Post a Comment