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Location:
Lost in the K hole
Registered:
May 2002
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Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge
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Sun, 03 August 2003 08:59
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here goes nothing...
I just dug up an old essay of mine from uni. its a short critical dissection of Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge ('if a tree falls in the forest and noone is around to hear it kind of philosophy). Anyway, i thought i'd chuck it up here and see if we could stir some thought. get the psych conceptual juices flowing...
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Berkeley defines, within his "Principles of Human Knowledge", several elements which form the basis of his knowledge of sensible objets. He maintains there are objects or sensations, which are ideas in the mind, spirit or perceiver, and that these sensations exist in the mind as ideas, from the perception of them. Berkeley asserts that there is no material world, and that no object can 'exist' outside their being perceived, as perception is the only way for a thinking thing to know of the object.
Berkeley is very clear about the dynamics of sensible object knowledge. An object/sensation, is an idea in a perceiver, either through that idea being 'imprinted', being 'perceived' through 'operations of the mind', or through 'abstraction' by the mind. A combination of these ideas, derived from the various sensory types, including colour, taste, smell and figure, is given a name, and is forever reflected upon, under that name, based on learnt combinations of sense data. The existence of a said object, is given no scope outside the mind. It is 'utterly unintelligible', due to the notion that it is perceiving spirits that know whether something 'exists' or not, and that the basis for this perceiving spirit knowing of an objects existence, is it's ability to reflect upon ideas, gained from perception of the object . The question I raise, is where intimate perception of an object/sensation is based, and what dictates how, and to what extent, perception is realised.
Berkeley denies, vehemently, the existence of an 'unthinkable substance which they call matter', by which he means, the existence of a corporeal substance, having 'extension, figure and motion', separate from perception. These ideas can only exist in the mind, as he shows the inability to 'comprehend in what manner body can act on spirit'. Then, by what manner, I ask, does the spirit come to have ideas?. Through perception of sensation, would be the answer. But where in Berkeley's theory, is there scope for the initial rise of sensation? Every idea in the mind comes from sensation. True, I smell a smell, I feel solidity and texture, these are sensations within the mind, and never do I have direct knowledge of an object, as, as Berkeley writes, in what manner can matter upon spirit. Then at what stage of being, is it determined that I will newly encounter a previously unperceived object. I am in my study, I perceive my desk, 'it exists, that is I see and feel it, and if I were out of my study, I should say it existed, meaning thereby that if I were in my study I might perceive it'. What is the basis for Berkeley stating that if he were to return to his study, he might perceive it? I answer, that based on experience, Berkeley returning to his study, finds the sensations which he calls a table. But if one were to remove the notion of experience, dictating that the table will 'exist' upon re-entering the study, what left is there to dictate the sensation of a table, as one would expect.
Reflection on experience shows us that perception of sensations is not random, and would obey some natural law, including object permanence. This Berkeley would attest to the existence of ideas in the mind of some eternal spirit. What say Berkeley, then, to the experiencing of new ideas. An object, quite unlike any abstraction of known ideas, and previously unseen by all, except for the eternal spirit, is about to be perceived by an intelligent observer. Based on experience, or lack of it, the observer does not expect to encounter the sensations of something new, and thus does not say 'it existed meaning thereby…I might perceive it'. What mechanism dictates at what point in space and time these new sensations will be perceived. If it is the eternal spirit, who's knowledge of the idea of the object/sensation, is communicated to the perceiving observer, then two questions are raised. Whereby did the eternal spirit gain knowledge of the object/sensations from ,for it also once had to encounter new objects, and also of how knowledge, held by the eternal spirit, is communicated to the perceiving observer.
The knowledge of the eternal spirit may lie in the fact that it is eternal, an hence has never had o experience new sensations. The term eternal implies , that as one approaches eternity, this spirit either knows all, or nothing, this then assumes the label of God, an implication in Berkeley's work I consider ignorant, yet unarguable. The second query lies in the communication between the eternal spirit, and the perceiving observer. Through what medium does the eternal spirit extend its knowledge of sensations to the observer, who is unaware of both the sensations and the eternal spirit.
By spirit, Berkeley does not 'denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist'. The mind is not an object, it is a system by which sensations are combined into ideas, and manipulated into meaning. For spirits to communicate ideas, there must be a medium through which the ideas must pass, either that, or the spirits must be, in fact, one and the same. If the former is to be true, and ideas are passed through the communication of sensation, what is the medium through which sensation is passed? Berkeley states that the object and sensation 'cannot be abstracted from each other', that they are the same thing. So what quality of an object, distinct from sensation, is there for the quality of sensation to be passed on to the perceiver. Berkeley holds no account for this. The latter assumption of spirit I derived, results in there being only one spirit. Either the observers spirit is the same as God's, and knowledge is shared, in which case the observer has no problems encountering new sensations, as it shares the eternal spirits knowledge. Or the novel case exists, where the observers spirit, and God's spirit are one, implying that the observer is God.
It can be seen that the simplest way for Berkeley's 'Principles' to hold true, is to sufficiently derive a way by which communication of sensation is made. To do this however, it would seem that a quality of an object, distinct from sensation must exist. This would undermine the 'essi is percipi' principle, due to the existence of this distinct quality, away from the bounds of perception, in order to create it.
Berkeley accurately defines his 'Principles of Human Knowledge', most of which is clear, and seems in some cases to be simply stating the obvious. The theory however, is lacking sufficient detail in the area of original perception of sensations by intelligent observers. By maintaining the lack of existence of a material world, or any existence removed from perception, Berkeley finds himself concerned with the spirit world, which, for the author, does not sufficiently explain the phenomena of sensations, and hence the basis of the formation of ideas.
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[Updated on: Sun, 03 August 2003 09:01]
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