ABSTRACT
In Chapter VI we found, discouragingly, that Berkeley fails in his attempts to demonstrate the truth of his fundamental principles-in particular, that he fails to prove the crucial principle (I) that he shares with Locke, namely that in sense perception, what the perceiver directly (or immediately) perceives in every case is just one or more ideas of sense. He fails, too, as we saw in Chapter VII, to prove that Locke’s representational realism is false or unintelligible. But these failures should not of themselves cause us to abandon Berkeley and his immaterialism. They should, rather, make us realize that Berkeley’s aims here are too ambitious, that such aims cannot be achieved by any philosopher, or anyway not by the methods that Berkeley has at his disposal. Instead of trying to demonstrate-i.e., prove with certainty-that his fundamental metaphysical and epistemological principles are the correct ones, Berkeley might better treat them as hypotheses that cannot be established with absolute certainty, but are judged better or worse depending on how well or how badly they fit into a general philosophical system (which is itself a more comprehensive hypothesis) that is satisfactory, by whatever criteria of satisfactoriness philosophers have. (Berkeley himself mentions this interpretation of his philosophy: see PHK I 133.)
I suggest that the most sensible way to read Berkeley is to regard him as a philosopher who simply assumes principle (I), along with Locke and most other thinkers of the time, and who tries to build a metaphysical system that includes (I) and is better than any of its competitors-and the most visible competitor is, of course, Locke’s system. Although Berkeley seeks to demonstrate the truth of (I), the principle plays the same logical role in his system that it would play if it were, for him, a (mere) hypothesis, and we may therefore so view it, without doing violence to his arguments. In this way we can, as it were, set aside Berkeley’s unsuccessful attempts to demonstrate such propositions as principle (I), and thereby see the rest of his philosophy for what it is-a masterpiece of metaphysical system building. (Note that to the extent that Berkeley’s system turns out to be adequate, the principles on which it is built will to that degree receive support; not the absolutely firm support that Berkeley thinks he provides for them, but the only kind of support, perhaps, that they are capable of having.)
It is time now to examine the system that Berkeley builds on his fundamental principles. (For expository purposes, I shall, in the discussion to follow-most of the time, anywayjoin Berkeley and Locke in assuming the truth of principle (I).) We know that Berkeley rejects Lockean material substances, thinking that no sense can be attached to the hypothesis that such things exist. But if Lockean material objects are swept away, we seem then to be deprived of the entire physical world in which, as we naturally think, we live, breathe, and have our being. Without them, aren’t we left in nothing but an unreal dream world, alone with our own ideas? Indeed, if the existence of Lockean material objects is denied, what can then be understood by ‘sense perception,’ ‘ideas of sense,’ and related notions? For
anyone who accepts principle (I), it would seem, sense perception can only be thought of as a process in which real physical objects (processes, events, or whatever)—i.e. Lockean objects (or processes, events, and so on, in which they figure)—cause various ideas of sense to arise in the minds of the perceivers of those objects (processes, etc.); so if there are no Lockean material objects, we cannot understand what sense perception, ideas of sense, and the rest, can possibly be. Certainly on that conception of sense perception and ideas of sense (and what other conception of these is there?), there can be, in Berkeley’s system, no such thing as sense perception, and no ideas of sense. As far as objectivity goes, then, this means that all of our ideas are on a par, and there is no distinction to be made between, on. the one hand, our awareness of real things-for the real things have been eliminated!—and, on the other hand, what we would normally call figments of our imagination, day dreams, ordinary dreams, after-images, and the like.
