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George Berkeley, an 18th-Century Irish philosopher, held that esse est percipi, or “to be is to be perceived.” When I perceive a black dog, according to many philosophers in the early modern period, I am in possession of a representational state – that is, my mind is affected by a physical thing, the dog, which in turn causes my mind to generate a mental representation of the dog. What I perceive, then, is really only a representation, from which I infer the existence of the thing represented. This is called indirect realism.Berkeley challenged this traditional picture in the following way.1 First, when we take a representation to accurately represent an object in the world, we do so on the assumption that the representation resembles the object in some way. But, Berkeley argues, we are in no position to say that our ideas resemble anything other than other ideas. According to Berkeley, we cannot compare ideas with material objects since to have knowledge of a material object would require that we know it via some idea. Thus, all we ever encounter are ideas themselves, and never anything material.If Berkeley is right, then we never have knowledge of anything material whatsoever; we only ever know our own ideas. This is part of a larger attack in which Berkeley argues that we are not entitled to believe that matter exists, in which case the only things that do exist include minds, ideas, and God. Berkeley is putting forth a view that is sometimes called subjective idealism: subjective, because he claims that the only things that can be said to exist are ideas when they are perceived. Thus, my black dog exists only when I am currently in possession of the idea of my black dog. If I leave my dog behind when I walk to the store, she no longer exists, and so her existence is purely dependent upon a subject’s perception of her.In addition to the resemblance argument above, and to strengthen his attack on realism and materialism, Berkeley also argues that matter is impossible.The basic idea goes like this: Matter is defined as physical stuff which can exist independently of our minds. We ordinarily take matter to be the stuff that makes up reality, and this stuff is supposed to go on existing whether we are perceiving it or not. That is, we think of matter as stuff that can exist unconceived. But we can never conceive of matter except through some idea. If so, then we cannot conceive of matter as something unconceived. In fact, it would be absurd to say so, since necessarily in conceiving of matter, we are conceiving of an idea, and surely we cannot conceive of an idea that is unconceived. If all of this is true, then, Berkeley argues, matter as it is defined is impossible.2 If matter is impossible, then no material objects exist, and it is only possible for minds, ideas, and God to exist.
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