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Berkeley – Principles 1

Berkeley – Principles 1. Charles Manekin. Topics of Discussion . Objections to Immaterialism The Religious Significance of the Doctrine. Arguments against Absolute Time and Space. Objections and Replies. How can we distinguish between dreaming or imagining and sensing?

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Berkeley – Principles 1

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  1. Berkeley – Principles 1 Charles Manekin Modern Philosophy PHIL320

  2. Topics of Discussion Objections to Immaterialism The Religious Significance of the Doctrine. Arguments against Absolute Time and Space Modern Philosophy PHIL320

  3. Objections and Replies How can we distinguish between dreaming or imagining and sensing? Sensing is not dependent upon my will. Vividness of perception in sensing Haven’t you eliminated the real world? No, I have eliminated matter. Isn’t real fire different from imagined fire? Isn’t real pain different from imagined pain? Modern Philosophy PHIL320

  4. Objections and Replies We see things at a difference? Strictly speaking, we do not observe distance. Things are constantly popping in and out of existence. What about colors, and what’s wrong with continual creation? What about the perceiver who neither slumbers nor sleeps? Modern Philosophy PHIL320

  5. Objections and Replies If figure and extension exist in the mind, doesn’t that make the mind shaped? Nah! What about the new mechanical theories of corpuscular motion? Are atoms observable? But we say that fire causes heat We also say that the sun rises. Modern Philosophy PHIL320

  6. Berkeley as the Ally of Common Sense Philosophy gets people into trouble, and a misuse of language gets philosophy into trouble. Demonstration of the immateriality of God, or the natural immortality of the soul. Deep religious overtones of the philosophy Modern Philosophy PHIL320

  7. The Attack on Abstract Ideas The Lockean Explanation of the Process of Abstraction “Does it not require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle...for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once. In effect it is something imperfect that cannot exist, an idea wherein some part of several different and inconsistent ideas are put together. Berkeley -- Ideas are general, not abstract Modern Philosophy PHIL320

  8. The Attack on Abstract Ideas The Medieval Background of all this The problem is one of language, and the idea that general nouns name abstract ideas. ..."Whereas in truth there is no such thing as one precise and definite signification annexed to any general name, they all signifying indifferently a great number of particular ideas. Philosophical controversies dismissed as “merely verbal” Modern Philosophy PHIL320

  9. What are the objects of human knowledge? Either the ideas actually imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind. In addition, there are the perceivers, i.e., mind, spirit, soul, self. Modern Philosophy PHIL320

  10. Objections and Replies Everybody believes that matter exists independently. Everybody believes that colors exist independently. But this abolishes science. What about unperceived things, such as the earth moving around the sun? We still can rely on astronomers What about the inner workings of nature? Modern Philosophy PHIL320

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