GEORGE BERKELEY - AN INCONSISTENT EMPIRICIST


RELATED QUESTIONS
Ø  Critically evaluate the empiricism of George Berkeley.
Ø Show why George Berkeley cannot be regarded as a consistent empiricist.
 
 
 
THE EMPIRICIST: GEORGE BERKELEY
          George Berkeley, whom was also a bishop, was one of the great philosophers of the early modern period. Aside being a brilliant critic of some of his predecessor philosophers like Descartes, Locke and Malebranche, he is also known for his idealist theory that reality consists exclusively of minds and their ideas. Berkeley is said to possess the personality of an empiricist of idealist orientation. Accordingly, Berkeley’s epistemology is dualist; as his empiricism contains some dose of idealism, but he is still being classified as an empiricist. This very fact does tend to present George Berkeley as an inconsistent empiricist. Thus, we would be evaluating those elements that make Berkeley an empiricist as well as those ones that portray him in the light of idealism.
 
 
EMPIRICIST ELEMENTS IN BERKELEY'S EPISTEMOLOGY
          George Berkeley is fundamentally an empiricist epistemologist and the reasons for this are highlighted below;
§  Berkeley (like every other traditional empiricist) presented experience as the basis and foundation of knowledge. Accordingly, we perceive things through the senses, as they are the ultimate root of our knowledge.
§  The epistemological method via which we come to apprehend things is based on the theory of perception, and perception via the senses. Based on this, it is inferential that he rejects the concept of innate ideas, and also accepts the “tabula rasa” concept. 
 

IDEALIST ORIENTATION IN BERKELEY'S EPISTEMOLOGY
          Furthermore, Berkeley also possesses some traces of idealism in his epistemology and they are also highlighted thus;
§  He made it clear that the mind was a purely mental or spiritual element, as is found in one of his dialogues where he says, “...the brain being a sensible exists only in the mind”. This is unlike John Locke and David Hume, whom both saw the mind as a physical element, as they regarded the brain and mind as one and the same.
§  Berkeley also considered ideas (a mental element) to be superior to physical things and objects of sense perception. As is also found in one of his dialogues where he says that, “...the act of perceiving could be mental...” and that “whatever is immediately perceived is an idea”.
 
 
AN EVALUATION OF BERKELEY'S EPISTEMOLOGY
          Several issues are being considered by Berkeley in his epistemology which arise as a result of his criticisms of his predecessors ideas. Some of these are presented below;
§  Esse est percipi: His criticism of Locke
Berkeley addresses the issue of what he considers to be an unnecessary dualism in John Locke’s empiricism. This dualism that Berkeley finds questionable is on Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities. For Locke, primary qualities are present in concrete substances while secondary qualities are found in the percipient or perceiver of knowledge (via the mind). For Berkeley, this was an unnecessary duplication of reality into the material (primary qualities) and mental (secondary qualities). Thus, in an attempt to avoid this contradiction in Locke, Berkeley had to reject Locke’s theories about material substance and ideas. For him, there’s no way to distinguish primary and secondary qualities. All qualities are secondary and subjective (the objects for me, as they all exist in my mind). In place of this, Berkeley now then speaks of only spiritual substance (mind) which we come to know via intuition and inference. Intuition is the mode via which we come to know of the existence our own mind and spirit, while inference is how we come to know of other (persons) minds and spirits. The main reason why Berkeley rejects the dualism found in Locke’s empiricism is that Locke’s thesis of “...we can only perceive qualities in the substance and not substance itself”, tends to support universal scepticism (the idea that we cannot know things as they truly are) and that it also downgrades the human cognitive power to truly apprehend the essence of things. Hence, it is in response to this that Berkeley then asserts his epistemic theory “Esse est percipi” which means that, “All objects of sense perception are ideas in the mind”. Accordingly, what we actually think we perceive when we sense things are simply ideas in our mind, as it is only when things are perceived by the mind that they truly exist. So for Berkeley, all experience is conscious, or in other words, mental; we experience only “ideas” as we never have direct experience of things themselves.
 
§  The inconsistency of Berkeley’s empiricism
More fundamental issues arise when one critically takes a look at Berkeley’s criticism of John Locke’s empiricism. For example, if according to Berkeley, it was true that the mind is purely mental or spiritual, then how is it possible that the mind gathers character and information via the process of abstraction? Obviously, the mind gathers character and information via the process of abstraction, as ideas (which Berkeley supports) are actually abstractions of reality. Abstraction entails extracting something universal and general from a collection of similar individual entities. Abstraction functions solely on the process of sensation, which is the use of our senses to perceive concrete elements. Thus, Berkeley attitude of wanting to belittle the major role which sensation or concrete elements play in the acquisition of knowledge is problematic. It is problematic because he tries to fuse together as one, the roles which the senses and reason actually play separately. And in doing that, he automatically sidelines the senses and the roles which they play as though they were not important (although he believes they are). This tends to present Berkeley as a supporter of idealism (which intimidates his stand as an empiricist). Obviously, the major reason why Berkeley disagreed with Locke is to show that knowledge of the external world is not possible. This is why Berkeley asserts that immediately we perceive any object, what we perceive is not the object but the idea of the object. Nevertheless, the above assertion of Berkeley does not mean that he does not recognise the existence of physical objects outside the human mind. It rather means that the major important issue about physical objects is that they are being perceived by a mind, which then gives us an idea of the object via which we use to conceptualise reality. This clearly presents Berkeley as an empiricist with an idealist persuasion. He comes across as an inconsistent or confused empiricist as even though he regards the main importance of sense perception in the process of knowledge acquisition, he tends to present ideas as though they were again superior or ultimate to the senses. In conclusion, Berkeley is saying that our ideas of things are real, if not more real than the things we perceive.
 
 
THE PROBLEM WITH BERKELEY’S EMPIRICISM
          The major problem with Berkeley’s empiricism is that he confused sense perception with ideas and vice-versa. Also, he could not clearly separate the elements of mind and sense perception. Thus, he had a confused sense of empiricism as well as a debased sense of idealism. This is the case as he first held that knowledge is based on experience and that whatever the senses perceive is true; yet, he still proceeded to deny the existence of the physical world. For him, the physical world does not exist in so far as there is no mind to perceive it. But the question is raised that if all human life was extinct, does that now mean that the physical world does not exist, since there is no more mind to perceive it? To this, Berkeley fallaciously answers that if the human mind does not perceive a thing, the almighty mind does. Therefore, the physical world would always exist.
 
 




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