George Berkeley

George Berkeley

Full name	George Berkeley
Born	12 March 1685(1685-03-12), Kilkenny, Ireland
Died	14 January 1753(1753-01-14) (aged 67) Oxford, England
Era	18th century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Idealism, Empiricism
Main interests	Metaphysics, Epistemology, Language, Mathematics, Perception
Notable ideas	Subjective idealism, master argument
Influenced by John Locke, Isaac Newton
Influenced David Hume, Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, A.J. Ayer, Jorge Luis Borges

George Berkeley (pronounced /ˈbɑ:kli/ ^[1]) (12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753), also known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne), was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others). This theory contends that individuals can only know directly sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as "matter". The theory also contends that ideas are dependent upon being perceived by minds for their very existence, a belief that became immortalized in the dictum, "esse est percipi" ("to be is to be perceived"). His most widely-read works are A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713), in which the characters Philonous and Hylas represent Berkeley himself and his older contemporary John Locke. In 1734, he published The Analyst, a critique of the foundations of infinitesimal calculus, which was influential in the development of mathematics.

Life

Berkeley was born at his family home, Dysart Castle, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland, the eldest son of William Berkeley, a cadet of the noble family of Berkeley. He was educated at Kilkenny College and attended Trinity College, Dublin, completing a Master's degree in 1707. He remained at Trinity College after completion of his degree as a tutor and Greek lecturer.

His earliest publication was on mathematics, but the first that brought him notice was his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, first published in 1709. In the essay, Berkeley examined visual distance, magnitude, position and problems of sight and touch. Though giving rise to much controversy at the time, its conclusions are now accepted as an established part of the theory of optics.

The next publication to appear was the Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710, which was followed in 1713 by Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, in which he propounded his system of philosophy, the leading principle of which is that the world as represented to our senses depends for its existence, as such, on being perceived.

Of this theory, the Principles gives the exposition and the Dialogues the defence. One of his main objectives was to combat the prevailing materialism of the time. The theory was largely received with ridicule; while even those, such as Samuel Clarke and William Whiston, who did acknowledge his "extraordinary genius," were nevertheless convinced that his first principles were false.

Shortly afterwards, Berkeley visited England, and was received into the circle of Addison, Pope and Steele. In the period between 1714 and 1720, he interspersed his academic endeavours with periods of extensive travel in Europe, including one of the most extensive Grand Tours of the length and breadth of Italy ever undertaken. In 1721, he took Holy Orders in the Church of Ireland, earning his doctorate in divinity, and once again chose to remain at Trinity College Dublin, lecturing this time in Divinity and in Hebrew. In 1724, he was made Dean of Derry.

George Berkeley, D.D., Bishop of Cloyne

In 1725, he formed the project of founding a college in Bermuda for training ministers for the colonies, and missionaries to the Indians, in pursuit of which he gave up his deanery with its income of £1100.

In 1728, he married Anne Forster, daughter of the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He then went to America on a salary of £100. He landed near Newport, Rhode Island, where he bought a plantation in Middletown, Rhode Island – the famous "Whitehall". He lived at the plantation while he waited for funds for his college to arrive. The funds, however, were not forthcoming and in 1732 he left Rhode Island and New England and returned to London. While living on London's Saville Street, he took part in the efforts to create a home for the city's abandoned children. The Foundling Hospital was founded by Royal Charter in 1739 and Berkeley is listed as one of its original governors. In 1734, he was appointed Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland. Soon afterwards, he published Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher, directed against both Shaftesbury and Bernard de Mandeville; and in 1735–37 The Querist.

His last two publications were Siris: Philosophical reflexions and inquiries concerning the virtues of tar-water, and divers other subjects connected together and arising from one another (1744) and Further Thoughts on Tar-water (1752). Pine tar is an effective antiseptic and disinfectant when applied to cuts on the skin, but Berkeley argued for the use of pine tar as a broad panacea for disease in general. It is said that his 1744 book on the medical benefits of pine tar was his best-selling book in his lifetime.^[2]

He remained at Cloyne until 1752, when he retired and went to Oxford to live with his son. He died soon afterward and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. His affectionate disposition and genial manners made him much loved and held in warm regard by many of his contemporaries.

Contributions to philosophy

Berkeley stated that individuals cannot think or talk about an object's being, but rather think or talk about an object's being perceived by someone. That is, individuals cannot know any "real" object or matter "behind" the object as they perceive it, which "causes" their perceptions. He thus concluded that all that individuals know about an object is their perception of it.

Under his theory, the object a person perceives is the only object that the person knows and experiences. If individuals need to speak at all of the "real" or "material" object, the latter in particular being a confused term that Berkeley sought to dispose of, it is this perceived object to which all such names should exclusively refer.

This raises the question whether this perceived object is "objective" in the sense of being "the same" for fellow humans. In fact, is the concept of "other" human beings, beyond an individual's perception of them, valid? Berkeley argued that since an individual experiences other humans in the way they speak to him—something that does not originating from his own activity—and since he learns that their view of the world is consistent with his, he can believe in their existence and in the world being identical or similar for everyone.

It follows that:

1. Any knowledge of the world is to be obtained only through direct perception.
2. Error comes about through thinking about what individuals perceive.
3. Knowledge of the world of people, things and actions around them may be purified and perfected merely by stripping away all thought, and with it language, from their pure perceptions.

From this it follows that:

1. The ideal form of scientific knowledge is obtained by pursuing pure de-intellectualized perceptions.
2. If individuals pursue these, we can obtain the deepest insights into the natural world and the world of human thought and action available to man.
3. The goal of all science, therefore, is to de-intellectualize or de-conceptualize, and thereby purify, human perceptions.

It is worth noting in this regard that: in sections 1-51 of his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, Berkeley argued against the classical scholars of optics by holding that: spatial depth, as the distance that separates the perceiver from the perceived object is itself invisible; namely, that space is perceived by experience instead of the senses per se.^[3]

Theology

A convinced adherent of religion, Berkeley believed God to be present as an immediate cause of all our experiences.

The course of the Irish bishop’s thought is interesting. He did not evade the question of the external source of the diversity of the sense data at the disposal of the human individual. He strove simply to show that the causes of sensations could not be things, because what we called things, and considered without grounds to be something different from our sensations, were built up wholly from sensations. There must consequently be some other external source of the inexhaustible diversity of sensations (such is the logic of the subjective idealist)… The source of our sensations, Berkeley concluded, could only be God; He gave them to man, who had to see in them signs and symbols that carried God’s word.^[4]

Here is Berkeley’s proof of the existence of God:

Whatever power I may have over my own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by Sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses; the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other Will or Spirit that produces them (Berkeley. Principles #29)

And that "other Will or Spirit" is God. Hence, it follows that

Berkeley’s mystic idealism (as Kant aptly christened it) claimed that nothing separated man and God (except materialist misconceptions, of course), since nature or matter did not exist as a reality independent of consciousness. The revelation of God was directly accessible to man, according to this doctrine; it was the sense-perceived world, the world of man’s sensations, which came to him from on high for him to decipher and so grasp the divine purpose.^[5]

God is not the distant engineer of Newtonian machinery that in the fullness of time led to the growth of a tree in the university quadrangle. Rather, my perception of the tree is an idea that God's mind has produced in mine, and the tree continues to exist in the quadrangle when "nobody" is there, simply because God is an infinite mind that perceives all.

Berkeley’s inference from the sense data to God’s existence is sometimes taken lightly. A number of critics believe that such a “proof” is merely a stroke of tactics, and Berkeley's transition to a stance of objective idealism is meant to avoid solipsistic consequences of the “esse est percipi” formula. It is traditionally accepted that a logical development of Berkeley’s immaterialism leads to solipsism, to the assertion that nothing but the self exists. Berkeley’s contemporaries had already imputed solipsism to him. Thomas Reid’s reaction is typical. In Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (II, X), he argues that Berkeley’s system

seems to take away all the evidence we have of other intelligent beings like ourselves. What I call a father, a brother, or a friend, is only a parcel of ideas in my own mind. … I can find no principle in Berkeley's system, which affords me even probable ground to conclude that there are other intelligent beings, like myself. … I am left alone, as the only creature of God in the universe, in that forlorn state of egoism into which it is said some of the disciples of Des Cartes were brought by his philosophy.^[6]

It was Berkeley whom Diderot bore in mind speaking to d’Alambert about a mad “harpsichord”:

There came a moment of madness when the feeling harpsichord thought that it was the only harpsichord in the world, and that the whole harmony of the universe resided in it. (Diderot. Conversation between D'Alembert and Diderot)

Similar interpretation of Berkeley’s philosophy finds wide support among scholars at present.^[7]

Berkeley identified objects with sensations, and that was the ineradicable fault of his essentially solipsistic theory.^[8]

Berkeley himself admitted that his immaterialistic principles provoked doubts about the existence of other minds:

It is granted we have neither an immediate evidence nor a demonstrative knowledge of the existence of other finite spirits. (Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, III)

According to Berkeley, a verisimilar, feasible logical conclusion based on analogy is the only ground for one’s belief in other minds (Principles #145—148).

The philosophy of David Hume concerning causality and objectivity is an elaboration of another aspect of Berkeley's philosophy. As Berkeley's thought progressed, his works took on a more Platonic character: Siris, in particular, displays an interest in highly abstruse and speculative metaphysics not to be found in the earlier works. However, A.A. Luce, the most eminent Berkeley scholar of the twentieth century, constantly stressed the continuity of Berkeley's philosophy. The fact that Berkeley returned to his major works throughout his life, issuing revised editions with only minor changes, also counts against any theory that attributes to him a significant volte-face.

Over a century later Berkeley's thought experiment was summarized in a limerick by Ronald Knox and an anonymous reply:

There was a young man who said "God

Must find it exceedingly odd

To think that the tree

Should continue to be

When there's no one about in the quad."

"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;

I am always about in the quad.

And that's why the tree

Will continue to be

Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God."

In reference to Berkeley's philosophy, Dr. Samuel Johnson kicked a heavy stone and exclaimed, "I refute it thus!" A philosophical empiricist might reply that the only thing that Dr. Johnson knew about the stone was what he saw with his eyes, felt with his foot, and heard with his ears. That is, the existence of the stone consisted exclusively of Dr. Johnson's perceptions. What the stone really consisted of (given that such a question can in fact be asked sensibly) could be entirely different in construction to what was perceived - it existed, ultimately, as an idea in his mind, nothing more and nothing less.

John Locke (Berkeley's predecessor) states that we define an object by its primary and secondary qualities. He takes heat as an example of a secondary quality. If you put one hand in a bucket of cold water, and the other hand in a bucket of warm water, then put both hands in a bucket of lukewarm water, one of your hands is going to tell you that the water is cold and the other that the water is hot. Locke says that since two different objects (both your hands) perceive the water to be hot and cold, then the heat is not a quality of the water.

While Locke used this argument to distinguish primary from secondary qualities, Berkeley extends it to cover primary qualities in the same way. For example, he says that size is not a quality of an object because the size of the object depends on the distance between the observer and the object, or the size of observer. Since an object is a different size to different observers, then size is not a quality of the object. Berkeley refutes shape with a similar argument and then asks: if neither primary qualities nor secondary qualities are of the object, then how can we say that there is anything more than the qualities we observe?

Berkeley's Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge was published three years before the publication of Arthur Collier's Clavis Universalis, which made assertions similar to those of Berkeley's. However, there seemed to have been no influence or communication between the two writers.

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote of him: "Berkeley was, therefore, the first to treat the subjective starting-point really seriously and to demonstrate irrefutably its absolute necessity. He is the father of idealism…"^[9].

The Analyst controversy

In addition to his contributions to philosophy, Bishop Berkeley was also very influential in the development of mathematics, although in a rather indirect sense. In 1734, he published The Analyst, subtitled A DISCOURSE Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician. The infidel mathematician in question is believed to have been either Edmond Halley, or Isaac Newton himself—though if to the latter, the discourse was then posthumously addressed, as Newton died in 1727. The Analyst represented a direct attack on the foundations and principles of Infinitesimal calculus and, in particular, the notion of fluxion or infinitesimal change, which Newton and Leibniz used to develop the calculus. Berkeley coined the phrase Ghosts of departed quantities, familiar to students of calculus (see Ian Stewart's book From Here to Infinity, chapter 6), which captures the gist of his criticism.

Berkeley regarded his criticism of calculus as part of his broader campaign against the religious implications of Newtonian mechanics – as a defence of traditional Christianity against deism, which tends to distance God from His worshippers.

The difficulties raised by Berkeley were still present in the work of Cauchy whose approach to infinitesimal calculus was a combination of infinitesimals and a notion of limit, and were eventually sidestepped by Weierstrass by means of his (ε, δ) approach, which eliminated infinitesimals altogether. More recently, Abraham Robinson restored infinitesimal methods in his 1966 book Non-standard analysis by showing that they can be used rigorously.

Commemoration

The city of Berkeley, California, was named after him, although the pronunciation has evolved to suit American English: (/ˈbɜrkli/ BURK-lee). The naming was suggested in 1866 by a trustee of the then College of California, Frederick Billings. Billings was inspired by Berkeley's Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America, particularly the final stanza: "Westward the course of empire takes its way; The first four Acts already past, A fifth shall close the Drama with the day; Time's noblest offspring is the last." A residential college and an Episcopal seminary at Yale University also bear Berkeley's name, as does the Berkeley Library at Trinity College, Dublin.

Veneration

Berkeley is honored together with Joseph Butler with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on June 16.

In popular culture

• George Orwell. "Nineteen Eighty-Four^[10]
• "The Dean of Thin Air" (a film about Berkeley)^[11]
• Don Juan by Lord Byron:

• Letters to his Son by The Earl of Chesterfield

• Stanisław Lem Ze wspomnien Ijona Tichego: I (1960) ^[12]

Stanislaw Lem's story Professor Korkoran tells about a scientist who out experimented with electronic brains lying in boxes and fed to special devices which created the illusion of real life: "There are special tapes with recorded electric impulses corresponding to a hundred or two hundred billion phenomena which man can come across in a life rich of experience and impressions... Sultry nights in the south and the murmur of sea waves, bodies of animals, the batter and thunder of guns, funerals and booze-ups, the taste of apples and pears, blizzards, evenings in a family circle at a burning fireplace, desperate shouts on the deck of a sinking ship, mountain peaks, cemeteries, nightmares... an entire world..." (By Yekaterina Drobyazko)

Professor Korkoran showing artificial brains to Ijon Tichy calles them Leibniz’s monads. In fact, the electronic brains created by Korkoran remind „finite spirits” of Berkeleian philosophy. Both „finite spirits” and electronic brains perceive sensible things that do not exist exterior to the mind. And yet the sensuously perceived world of things has its external source. To Berkeley, such a source is “archetypes” existing in the mind of God (Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, III). In Korkoran’s experiment similar “archetypes” are electric impulses which are produced by special devices and create the sense data in electronic brains.

Berkeley's writings

• Philosophical Commentaries (1707–08, notebooks)
• An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709)
• A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I (1710)
• A Discourse on Passive Obedience (1712)
• Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713)
• De Motu (1721)
• Alciphron: or the Minute Philosopher (1732)
• The Theory of Vision or Visual Language … Vindicated and Explained (1733)
• The Analyst (1734)
• The Querist (1735–37)
• Siris (1744)
• Further Thoughts on Tar-water (1752)

Writings on Berkeley

• Jessop T. E., Luce A. A. A bibliography of George Berkeley. 2 edn., Springer, 1973. ISBN 90-247-1577-6, ISBN 978-90-247-1577-0
• Turbayne C. M. A Bibliography of George Berkeley 1963—1979 [DOC, DjVu] // Berkeley: Critical and Interpretive Essays. (EPUP, Google Books) Ed. by C. M. Turbayne. Manchester, 1982. P. 313—329.
• Parigi, Silvia. Berkeley Bibliography (1979—2008) — A Supplement to those of Jessop and Turbayne
• A bibliography on George Berkeley — about 300 works from XIX century to our days
• Tomy C. A. & Varadarajan N. A bibliography on George Berkeley

See also

• Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
• List of people on stamps of Ireland
• Yogacara and Consciousness-only schools
• George Edward Moore The Refutation of Idealism (1903) - a famous criticism of Berkeley's principle "to be is to be perceived" (esse est percipi).
• Roy Wood Sellars Referential transcendence // "Philosophy and Phenomenological Research" (Philadelphia) 1961, vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 1–15. - Against Berkeley's analysis of perception.
• Arthur Collier
• Solipsism
• Brain in a vat

Eminent Berkeley scholars

Primary

The Works of George Berkeley. Ed. by Alexander C. Fraser. In 4 Volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901.

• Vol. 1
• Vol. 2
• Vol. 3
• Vol. 4

Ewald, William B., ed., 1996. From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics, 2 vols. Oxford Uni. Press.

• 1707. Of Infinites, 16–19.
• 1709. Letter to Samuel Molyneaux, 19–21.
• 1721. De Motu, 37–54.
• 1734. The Analyst, 60–92.

Secondary

• This article incorporates public domain text from : Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & Sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.
• R.H. Nichols and F A. Wray (1935). The History of the Foundling Hospital. London: Oxford Univ. Press.  p. 349.
• John Daniel Wild (1962). George Berkeley: a study of his life and philosophy. New York: Russell & Russell. 
• Muehlmann, Robert G. (1992). Berkeley's Ontology ^[13]. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. ISBN 0872201465. 
• New Interpretations of Berkeley’s Thought. Ed. by S. H. Daniel^[14]. N. Y.: Humanity Books, 2008, 319 pp. ISBN 978-1-59102-557-3.
• Edward Chaney (2000), 'George Berkeley's Grand Tours: The Immaterialist as Connoisseur of Art and Architecture', in E. Chaney, The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the Renaissance, 2nd ed. London, Routledge.
• Costica Bradatan (2006), The Other Bishop Berkeley. An Exercise in Reenchantment, Fordham University Press, New York

Secondary literature available in the Internet

• Most sources listed below are suggested by Dr. Talia M. Bettcher in Berkeley: a Guide for the Perplexed (2008).^[15]

1. Berman, David. George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
2. The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley. Ed. by Kenneth P. Winkler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0521450330 ISBN 9780521450331
3. Daniel, Stephen H., ed. Reexamining Berkeley’s Philosophy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. ISBN 0802093485 ISBN 9780802093486
4. Johnston G. A. (1923). The Development of Berkeley's Philosophy. London: Macmillan. 
5. Luce, A. A. Berkeley and Malebranche. A Study in the Origins of Berkeley's Thought. Oxford: Oxforf University Press, 1934. (2nd edn, with additional Preface, 1967).
6. Muehlmann, Robert G., ed. (1995). Berkeley’s Metaphysics. Structural, Interpretive, and Critical Essays.. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Press. ISBN 9780271026565. 
7. Olscamp, Paul J. (1970). The Moral Philosophy of George Berkeley ^[16]. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 
8. Philipse, Herman. “Transcendental Idealism”^[17] in The Cambridge companion to Husserl. Ed. by Barry Smith & David Woodruff Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 239-322.
9. Roberts, John. A Metaphysics for the Mob: The Philosophy of George Berkeley (EPUP, Google Books, and in PDF format). New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.^[18] — 172 p. ISBN 978-0-19-531393-2
10. Russell B. Berkeley // Bertrand Russell A History of Western Philosophy 3:1:16
11. Tipton, I. C.^[19] Berkeley, The Philosophy of Immaterialism London: Methuen, 1974. ISBN 0-416-70440-9 ISBN 978-0-416-70440-2
12. Winkler, Kenneth P. Berkeley: An Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. ISBN 0198249071 ISBN 9780198249078

External links

• George Berkeley entry by Lisa Downing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• George Berkeley article by Daniel E. Flage in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• International Berkeley Society
• Berkeley Studies (formerly the Berkeley Newsletter) - annual bulletin concerning update events in Berkeley Scholarship. Issues are available for download and viewing (see: Bertil Belfrage "Senior Editor’s Note" in The Berkeley Newsletter 16).
• A list of the published works by and about Berkeley as well as online links
• Berkeley's Life and Works
• Works by George Berkeley at Project Gutenberg
• Works by George Berkeley in free audio format from LibriVox
• Another perspective on how Berkeley framed his immaterialism
• Original texts and discussion concerning The Analyst controversy
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "George Berkeley", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Berkeley.html .
• More easily readable versions of Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues, and Alciphron
• An extensive compendium of online resources, including a gallery of Berkeley's images
• A version of Berkeley's PHK condensed and rewritten for faster reading.
• Electronic Texts for philosopher Charlie Dunbar BROAD (1887—1971):
  1. Berkeley’s Argument About Material Substance N. Y., 1975 (Repr. of the 1942 ed. publ. by the British Academy, London.)
  2. Berkeley’s Denial of Material Substance — Published in: «The Philosophical Review» Vol. LXIII (1954).
• Rick Grush syllabus Empiricism (J. Locke, G. Berkeley, D. Hume)

Notes