page 3 of Berkeley's Argument for Immaterialism

Of course, the ideas that constitute the world are the effects of God's causal influence on our sensory modalities, and are therefore encountered as level 2 physical objects in the standard way. But Berkeley argues that from the character of these ideas and their relations we grasp something further, viz. that a particular sort of mind wills them (this is part of his argument for taking it that the world's substance is a deity somewhat of the personal type offered in revealed religion. ) Parallel reasoning applies to finite spirits. In DeM Berkeley discusses the kind of experience that has self-awareness as its object; he calls it "reflexion" (DeM 40). But at P27 and elsewhere we learn that we have knowledge of spirit by its effects, and infer therefore that notions too are the objects of awareness: a second-order awareness, so to speak, consisting in grasp of the significance of ideas acquired in the standard sensory way. The signal point is that without experience as such we do not come by notions; so Berkeley's empiricism is unequivocal (P22, 1D200).

The second and third commitments ‹ that possibility is an epistemic concept, viz. conceivability; and that there are no abstract ideas ‹ arise from the first (P Intro. 9 et. seq., P4, 1D177, 3D194). His chief form of argument is indeed a conceivability argument: we cannot conceive colour apart from extension, ideas apart from mind, existence apart from perception (P4, 7, P Intro. 8, 9). In both cases the dependence on the empirical commitment is direct. Concepts lack content unless they are empirically derived; the thesis is forcefully stated in V where Berkeley asks whether it is possible for anyone "to frame in his mind a distinct abstract idea of visible extension or figure exclusive of all colour: and on the other hand, whether he can conceive colour without visible extension?" and replies, "For my own part, I must confess I am not able to attain so great a nicety of abstraction: in a strict sense, I see nothing but light and colours, with their several shades and variations" (V130). To "frame in the mind" is to conceive; the "strict sense" is the level 1 or phenomenological sense; concepts of extension and figure therefore derive their content wholly from their experiential source, namely, visual minima of "light and colour".

There is an important point to be noted at this juncture, anticipated in the presentation given above of Berkeley's P1-7 argument. It is that where Berkeley uses his habitual locution "without the mind" we do better to use "without reference to mind." The point of this recommendation is illustrated by what is at stake in contemporary debates about "realism" and "anti-realism". In this connection realism is the claim that the entities in a given domain exist independently of knowledge or experience of them. The anti-realist denies this. One way of sketching why he denies it is offered by the idiom of relations. Thus recast, realism is the view that the relation between thought or experience and their objects is contingent or external, in the sense that description of neither relatum essentially involves reference to the other. On the anti-realist's view, to take the thought-object relation as external is a mistake at least for the direction object-to-thought, because any account of the content of thoughts about things, and in particular the individuation of thoughts about things, essentially involves reference to the things thought about – this is the force of the least that can be said in favour of notions of broad content. So realism appears to offer a peculiarly hybrid relation: external in the direction thought-to-things, internal in the direction things-to-thought. It is a short step for the anti-realist to argue that thought about (perception of, theories of) things is always and inescapably present in, and therefore conditions, any full account of the things thought about; the poorly-worded "Master Argument" in Berkeley, aimed at showing that one cannot conceive of an unconceived thing, is aimed at making just that elementary point (P23, 1D200). The best example of such a view is afforded by the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, in which descriptions of quantum phenomena are taken essentially to involve reference to observers and conditions of observation. Such a view does not constitute a claim that the phenomena are caused by observations of them; no more does anti-realism claim this in respect of the subject-matters in which it argues its case, for it is not a metaphysical but an epistemological thesis. This is why anti-realism is not idealism, for idealism is a metaphysical thesis about the constitution of reality (namely: that reality is mental), not, as anti-realism is, an epistemological thesis about the relation of thought or experience to that reality. In expressing his view the anti-realist therefore does best to say: "anti-realism is the thesis that, with respect to a given domain, any full description of the objects of thought or experience in that domain has to make essential reference to the thinker or experiencer and the conditions under which the thinking or experience occurs".

And this is the least that Berkeley means by "within the mind". Of course, it is clear that Berkeley is not only an anti-realist but also an idealist, and that the latter, metaphysical, thesis, depends crucially on his argument for the former, epistemological, thesis. The fact that anti-realism and idealism are independent theses (one can be committed to either without being committed to the other) is masked in Berkeley's case by the fact that his "in the mind" idiom does duty both for "with essential reference to mind" and "made of mind-stuff". But it is not hard to know which reading is intended at any point in his exposition.

The Argument Restated

Equipped with this account of Berkeley's commitments and method, we can restate his argument as follows. If we examine the phenomenology of consciousness (level 1) we see that it consists of sensory data, notions, and compounds of either or both of these. Experience is generally orderly, giving rise to the familiar phenomena of level 2 – apples and trees, stones and books (P1). We are also intimately acquainted with ourselves as the subjects of this experience, and not merely as passive recipients of it but causally active participants who will, imagine, and remember (P2). Nothing of level 1 can be conceived without reference to the minds for which they exist as the contents of consciousness. But because the phenomena of level 2 are constituted by data of level 1, neither therefore can the phenomena of level 2 be conceived independently of the minds for which they are phenomena (P3). It is commonly held that sensible objects exist independently of mind; but this, on the foregoing, is a contradiction, which rests on the mistaken doctrine of abstraction (P4, 5). It follows that the only substance there can be is mind or spirit (P6, 7).

The argument has made no explicit mention of material substance; the first full-dress appearance of matter, as the focus of "received opinion" in this debate, has to wait a further ten paragraphs (P16-17). But the denial of its possibility has already been registered, for if things are ideas, and ideas are essentially mental, then nothing other than mind can substantiate them. The doctrine that there is "unthinking stuff" which is the substance of things qua collections of ideas is accordingly an obvious "repugnancy" (contradiction): for how can an unthinking thing have ideas? (P7)

A crucial consideration for Berkeley in rejecting the concept of material substance is that there are no empirical grounds for it; its philosophical supporters (he has Locke in mind) "acknowledge they have no other meaning annexed to those sounds, but the idea of being in general, together with the relative notion of its supporting accidents" (P17). Berkeley finds the concept of "being in general" the most "abstract and incomprehensible" he has ever encountered, and he has no time for the metaphor of "support" invoked to explain the relation between matter and its accidents. But more importantly still, the only thing which we are entitled to say is causally efficacious is spirit or mind (P26-7); ideas are the effects of the causal activity of mind, whether our own or that of an infinite spirit (P28-33).

In the course of unfolding his argument Berkeley tells us that although there is a distinction between primary and secondary qualities, they are the same in one crucial respect: they are both sensible properties, and therefore cannot exist otherwise than as ideas, and therefore again cannot exist otherwise than in relation to mind (P9-15). He also points out that since nothing but an idea can be like an idea, the seductive thought that ideas are resemblances or copies which represent non-ideas makes no sense: can we, he asks, "assert that a colour is like something which is invisible; hard or soft, like something which is intangible; and so of the rest"? (P8)

Ideas, Perception and Mind

A key concept in the foregoing is that of ideas. Berkeley uses "idea" to mean "any immediate object of sense or understanding", but as already noted he is careful to distinguish this from what, in the second paragraph of P, he had described as "such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind", which he later calls notions. The distinction is as follows. Ideas are always sensory; they are either the content of states of sensory awareness, or the copies of these in memory and imagination. Notions on the other hand are concepts of spirit – of self, mind and God – and have a more complex origin. As regards self-knowledge, notions originate in immediate intuition; as regards other minds, in interpretation; and as regards God, in "reflexion and reasoning" (P42, 140-2, 3D232).

Two features of ideas are crucial for Berkeley: their inertness and their mind-dependence. They are the latter simply in virtue of being ideas. Their being the former is a more intricate matter. Anticipating Hume, Berkeley argues that there are no necessary connections between ideas; they are individual entities "with no power or agency included in them. So that one idea or object of thought cannot produce or make an alteration in another" (P25). We verify this by introspecting, which reveals, says Berkeley, that "there is nothing in [ideas] but what we perceive," and we perceive no power or activity in them (ibid.). We have a "continual succession" of ideas, some arising and others disappearing; but because they are causally inert, they are not themselves responsible for these changes, so there must be some other cause of them (P26). The only candidate remaining for this role is spirit or mind. Since my mind is causally responsible for very few ideas and their changes, there must be "some other spirit that produces them" (P29).

Berkeley gives the name perception to any way of having ideas and notions before the mind, in sensing, conceiving, imagining, remembering, reasoning, and the rest. It is accordingly a generic term, and is not restricted to sensory perception alone. "Perceiving" denotes a causal relation: minds perceive ideas either by causing them (as when finite minds imagine or dream, and as when the infinite mind wills the existence of the universe) or by being causally affected by them (as when finite minds receive the ideas caused by God, = encounter the physical world).

Any inference to the nature of the spirit that is causally responsible for ideas and their changes must start from the nature of those ideas and their changes. "The ideas of sense," says Berkeley, again anticipating Hume, "are more strong, lively, and distinct than those of imagination; they have likewise a steadiness, order, and coherence, and are not excited at random, as those which are the effects of human wills often are, but in a regular train or series" (P30).

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