George Berkeley: Part 1

Most of us think of George Berkeley as just the connecting link between Locke and Hume. Thi view does not do justice the complicated and evolving philosophy of Berkeley. This is the reason for this series of essays on the philosophy of Berkeley. Berkeley is usually thought of as the inferior partner in the trio of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, but this is a mistake. Berkeley may have been the greatest intellect of the three. So let us observe the evidence for this claim. Berkeley did work on optics, and found flaws in (minor flaws) in Newton's math. These contributions still stand today, neither of which can be claimed by for Locke and Hume. This is not to say that Berkeley's philosophy is free from problems. It is only to make the case he is worth examining more thoroughly than is usual. Berkeley is not a philosopher like Spinoza who offers a completed system. Instead, he is like Nietzsche, and Schelling. Berkeley's thought is a transition from Locke to Plato. So we shall start by examining Berkeley's early thought. To begin we must understand what it is Berkeley is trying to accomplish. Berkeley's early thought is a revolt against abstraction, and universals. Berkeley wanted to make philosophy concrete. A philosophy, or logic of the concrete was his goal. A description of how we experience our everyday world. So we shall start with his first important book: " Towards a New Theory of Vision." Berkeley seeks to develop a new logic; a logic of the concrete experience, instead of a system of abstract symbols that are manipulated by the law of no-contradiction. So how does one go about creating a logic? All our present logic systems are based around around the law of non-contradiction. this basis we shall follow Berkeley in calling the principle of order. So Berkeley to create a new logic must change the principle of order. He does this by replacing the law of non-contradiction with space. It is space that determines our interaction with the everyday world. Berkeley seems to be the first thinker to realize the strong visual bias in thinking. So let us examine Molyneux's problem to begin our examination. William Molyneux was a friend of John Locke, and he proposed a questions that would act as an inspiration of much of British empiricism. To state Molyneux's problem: imagine a person born blind, who can tell the difference between a cube and sphere by touch. Then this person suddenly is given sight. Could the person tell the difference between the cube and sphere by sight alone. The short answer is no, but it leads to some very interesting insights. Berkeley's position is that all visual perception must be translated into tangible sensation to be useful information for humans. In other words, we must be able to take visual data and turn it into where objects are located in space. Of course, we remember all of Locke's primary qualities are all tangible qualities. It is too bad Locke did not argue that secondary qualities must be resolved into primary qualities to be useful, It would have made his distinction between primary, and secondary qualities stronger. An interesting everyday example of this is the Locke's primary quality of quantity. We observe how quantity acts as a tangible quality when we watch someone count a number of units by moving the units from one pile to another. To put this insight into simple words: no matter how well you can see, if you walk into walls seeing is not doing you any good. So space becomes the principle of order in "Towards a New Theory of Vision". Berkeley then abandons this position in his next book, and this is the book that Berkeley in most known for: "Principles of Human Knowledge." It is in "Principles of Human Knowledge" that we get the positions that Berkeley is most known for, the denial of matter and, the denial of primary and secondary qualities. We shall first deal with the denial of matter. Locke inherited the position that matter is a substratum that all qualities inhere. Berkeley's argument against matter is simple. Matter by this definition is unknowable, so how can we know an unknowable exists? So Berkeley denies the existence of matter since there is no evidence for its existence. Only qualities are known or perceived, and only things perceived exist. Of course this is the context of Berkeley's famous quote: "To be is to be perceived." The trouble is what holds the qualities in existence so they can be perceived? And here Berkeley gets himself into a lot of trouble. It is the mind of God that holds the qualities in existence. Berkeley has gotten rid of matter, only to propose a more absurd solution. The denial of a difference between primary and secondary qualities follows from Berkeley's denial of matter. No quality can be more privileged than any other if they are only know by perception, and all equally exist in the mind of God. This is a denial of his earlier point of view expressed on his works on vision. This is of course, the reason why Berkeley was accused of solipsism. A charge which is justified. This discussion leads right into Berkeley's denial of universals. All qualities are equal none are prior to other qualities. The only reason we have category names is because we group a number of qualities together under a common name. An example would be the category name "red". We group a number of shades from red-brown to to pink into the category name of red. There is no universal or red, only a number of shades we associate together. Here again we have positions that Berkeley will abandon. In the writings "Towards a New Theory of Vision" and "Principles of Human Knowledge" Berkeley is still under the influence of Locke. It is both instructive and interesting to compare Berkeley's early philosophy with that of a twentieth century philosopher that had similar goals of getting rid of universals and getting back to the concrete: Ludwig Wittgenstein. It seems ironic that the analytic school of philosophy after banishing the Metaphyscian would embrace an Oracle.like all Oracles Wittgenstein speaks in puzzles, riddles, and parables. We shall examine the the underlying principles that hold together Wittgenstein's thought later. Wittgenstein denies the existence of universals like Berkeley. This is where Wittgenstein introduces his famous theory of family resemblances. Of course, this is just another formulation of Berkeley's idea that we group qualities together under a category name. What neither does is supply a consistent rationale of why certain qualities are included and why some are left out of the category name. To be fair the latter Wittgenstein of "On Certainty" asserts it is done for pragmatic reasons. Again like all Oracles Wittgenstein is not consistent in all his pronouncements. Wittgenstein's philosophy seems to have two underlying principles. These are the correspondence theory of truth, and the second principle follows on the correspondence theory of truth, being that the only certain knowledge is that which has third person point of view. It is hard to find another thinker that has a greater visual bias than Wittgenstein. That valid knowledge must be confirmed by a uninvolved third party. This is the only way knowledge can be validated. An example would Wittgenstein's claim that we do not know where a pain is located, until we can point to the location of the pain; where a third party can observe the pointing. An ostensive definition in Wittgenstein's terminology. Although like everything with Oracles there are ambiguities. In "On Certainty" Wittgenstein seems to endorse the coherence theory of truth, without abandoning the correspondence theory of truth. I know it is currently unpopular to take a psychological view of a thinkers philosophy, but I do not subscribe to this view. The reason being that we encounter thinkers that had a peculiar psychology that have given us valuable insights that were missed by those with a more normal psychology. Two examples of this would be Nietzsche and Bohme. In any case Wittgenstein's psychology is so transparent that I cannot resist. Wittgenstein was gay, but he was not happy or accepting of his sexual orientation. In simpler terms, his inner life probably resembled that of a Lovecraft character. That he was being controlled by eldritch forces (his sexuality) that were leading him to his doom. This is also this is probably the source for all of Wittgenstein's compulsions,and obsessions. To compensate for his hellish inner life, Wittgenstein became an inverse of Heidegger. Heidegger was concerned with a person's emotional engagement with the world, and found it inauthentic to get lost in trivial abstractions. A person who identifies with trivial abstractions sees to become one of the "they" in Heidegger's terminology. Wittgenstein holds the opposite or inverted view, that it is only in trivial abstractions (third person point of view) that we find real knowledge. It seems clear Wittgenstein fled into trivial abstractions to escape his self-loathing. To sum up, let us observe what insights we can still learn from in the early Berkeley. These are two; the ideal on logic and Berkeley's recognition of the visual bias in human thinking. The insight in logic is how to create other logic, by changing the principle of order. This is illustrated in Berkeley trying to come up with a concrete logic using "space' as the Principe of order. That it is space the relation between objects that dictates how we interact with our world. The second is of course related to the first. That until Berkeley overcame the visual bias he could not come up with a theory of optics. That secondary qualities must be made to collaborate tangible qualities (primary qualities). The trouble with Berkeley is his most famous book "Principles of Human Knowledge" is also his worst book.