BERKELEYS IDEALISM Maybe we all accept that our
BERKELEY’S IDEALISM
Maybe we all accept that our senses provide us with a mental picture of the world, but not everyone understands what this implies. It means that we are only indirectly aware of the world via our inner, mental representations of it. If you are a skeptical sort, you might wonder how we know that our mental images really represent the stuff out there. George Berkeley’s astonishing answer to this skeptical worry was idealism— denying the existence of everything, other than minds and the ideas within them. There is no room for skepticism about the external world, because there is no external world, no matter underpinning our experience. There are still things, in a sense.
We group our regularly occurring, sensory experiences together and give them names. “Apple” is our word for a consistent collection of sweet, red, crunchy sensations. That’s all an apple is, for Berkeley. To suppose that it is something more, something out there, is to go beyond the evidence of experience. Worse, it is to think the absurd thought that sweetness can exist untasted, that red can exist unseen. If you disagree, bear in mind that you are the one claiming something more, some material substratum in addition to the evidence of our senses. The burden of proof, Berkeley might say, rests with you.
3 -MINUTE THOUGHT If this apple can only exist in the mind that perceives it, does it just wink out of existence whenever I close my eyes? Berkeley argues that God perceives, and therefore sustains, the whole of the universe, whether we happen to be looking at it or not. For Berkeley the continued existence of everything is proof not only of God’s existence, but also His benevolence.
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