What exactly does Berkeley’s esse est percipi imply? Does it imply…
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So 2) means that the perception and the perceived are still two distinct things, but you just can’t have one without the other.
#1 does not even make sense.
#2 applied to Berkeley is patently false.
What the statement means is that existence is dependent upon perception. --That when something is not being percieved, then it does not exist. Hardcore subjective idealism. What it might be taken to imply is that the sycamore tree does not in fact continue to be, when there’s noone about in the quad. But for Berkeley, it isn’t so odd, since God is always looking about in the quad.
As I understand Berkeley, he is essentially trying to answer the question “when a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?” He’s hitting on the point that for many properties of things, it makes no sense talk about their having those properties without someone to perceive those properties. Does it make sense to call an apple red if no one is around to see it as red?
But I don’t see how this ties in to the very existence of a thing. Why can’t the apple continue to exist but just not be red (or any color, or have any perceptible properties)? Why does he need an omniscient perceiver to keep everything in existence?
I think Berkeley would want to ask you what remains of the apple after you subtract away all of its perceptible properties. Not just color, but mass, extension, etc. He’d probably say “nothing”—and that the apple just ceases to exist. If the debate is framed this way, I’d have to agree with him. It’s an odd question of you to ask why an apple can’t continue to exist but be nothing like an apple, and really, nothing like anything at all. Why don’t we just say it ceases to exist?
As for your last question: I don’t think he needs an omniscient perciever to keep everything in existence. Lots of odd conclusions result if you don’t have one—but no inconsistency, I don’t think. I think he has one, though, just because he’s that kinda guy. Yom sayin.
I am a river to my people.
So what makes the apple red in the end? Is it my perceiving it as red or God’s? If it’s God’s, then what happens when I look at it? Is the redness “reinforced” or something?
It seems to means that one can only say of a thing that it exists when one is aware of it, “sees” it.
Otherwise it is not an object, there is no it, no existing of a particular kind.
people need company, even if only from a pet or imaginary friend to feel that they really exist.
I’m not sure what Berkeley would say to the question about what makes an apple red. I would want him to tell you to go talk to a scientist. But again, that someone (i.e., a scientist) will give you a complicated answer involving the presumption of an external world does not make that world external. Just as a less sophisticated person holding a hand up to their face (or kicking a rock) will want to tell you that the hand (or rock) is “outside their mind”, but in fact he would be missing the point, according to Berkeley at least. I don’t understand your last couple questions.
I am a river to my people.
It seems like Berkeley is trying to say that in order for things to be real, they need the power of some percipient. Well, when I’m looking at the apple, there’s at least two percipients giving the apple its reality - me and God; so is double the perception double the realness? What would that even mean???
Sure, why not?
If we’re speaking in degrees of reality, then it would mean that one has more. Double, in fact. Although, it would be impossible for you to have any perception that god did not have, therefore all of your perceptions likely have the same degree of reality.
I am a river.
Berkeley’s God is an active spirit (rather than inert mediate matter). Perception is immediate and active, therefore it can’t be matter and there’s no need to posit the mediate stage of matter, of which we have no immediate perception - so to posit mediate matter is only a superfluous mistake anyway.
We are simply a perceiving receiver to God’s immediate, active world.
God sees the world when we do not, so it still exists when we do not see it. Something has to be perceived to exist because all we ever label as “existent” is that which we or someone has perceived (through ANY of our senses, not just sight). Existence necessitates perception first.
It doesn’t matter that both we and God perceive the world - it’s still real. It’s just only real to us as well when we perceive it, and always real to God who always perceives all of it.
As Silhouette has already pointed out, the apple doesn’t have double the reality when I perceive it; rather: my perception gives it a human reality.
Well, if we accept the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, perception seems to play a fundamental role in wavefunction collapse - things basically come to be the moment they’re perceived.
Furthermore, what could be meaningfully said to exist (to be) after tomorrow, if tomorrow the sun were to explode, and all life, sentience, and human history were subsequently wiped out 8 minutes later?
There may be other sentient beings elsewhere, but for all we know, all is lost. Without sentience, nothing can be said to exist in any meaningful sense.
What gives a sentient being the feeling that he is a perceiver perceiving? Doesn’t perception require a perceiver? When the senses detect something and there is no linking up to other regions in memory, is there perception yet? Unless what you’re saying is that when light reflects on the retina and signals are sent through the optic nerve to the brain, that’s perception. I just don’t see how there can be perception without capturing what is detected within the framework of knowledge had of the object.
^^
As far as I know it’s the same if you simply place another particle next to those being observed, I don’t think particles perceive do you? Hence what we are probably seeing is mechanistic rather than mental, it’s the way particles interact ‘physically’ and when we look at something that’s occurring its the same as when a machine or particle ‘observes’.
wouldn’t you say that making an assumption that god is also viewing the trees in the forest isn’t very good philosophy, first of all he should be asking if there is a universal observer or that such an observation is otherwise being made. Then you define how that works, then you may attempt to correlate that to other ideas you may think ‘god’ is about.
If you mean that the object is a product of the perception being made, or that the perception is made upon information/ideas prior to its inception, then I’d ask from what would either derive? As I see it you need the information to be there before it can be ‘projected‘, so you need perceptions of that from which the info derives before you could include the object as within the perception.
Perception is - if I may, a kind of vision but not dependent upon its object being light ~ which we then call seeing. I don’t think that a camera analogously is dependent upon that which it is filming or taking an image of. So it would seam that you can have one without the other.
Are you including ‘knowing’ within the meaning of the term ‘perception‘? I was visualising knowing as what the mind may or may not do with what it perceives, although I understand that conversely what we know has an effect upon what we see/perceive.
…there was an interesting episode of ‘horizon’ on TV the other day, where they showed that a tribe in Africa saw different colours simply because they used only 5 terms and they were non specific, rather one word would include many shades of green and blue, another greens and browns.
So it’s pretty much a fact that knowledge affects what we see and experience generally, but I wonder if that’s because the mind makes up an image of what it expects the world to be prior to getting all of the facts?
It would seam that after a while if we look hard enough and know all the facts, then we would then see the same shades. …although not always.
In short, I think we need to imagine our vision to be at once like a camera and projector. Perception is what informs or builds the picture the projector projects/displays.
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Excellent summary!
And this goes for a consciousness in a specific way: it comes to be the moment something perceives itself.
This may be a bit far out, but not inconceivable - some kind of pure consciousness, or awareness, may ultimately be the foundation of all things.
Pure, cosmic consciousness may be omnipresent, permeating everything, even solid matter, which would explain how things seemingly exist independent of perception.
In this case, things are always in touch with some form of consciousness. Berkeley may have conceived of God in such a fashion.
^ yup, something like that.
Frankly, no, I wouldn’t say that at all. It would be hypocritical at best, especially for a sciency type. You use explanatory fictions almost every sentence, the existence and nature of which you hypothesize about without ever even trying to prove. It frankly doesn’t matter if quarks actually exist. Their status is sustained by their utility. If you have a problem with Berkeley’s use of ‘God’, you’ll do nothing better than replace it with another such fiction. --As with the bedrock of any theory. As I said before, Berkeley’s use of ‘God’ is entirely unnecessary for the consistency of his theory. —It is just the piece de resistance for his otherwise religious sensibilities. In a nutshell, nothing I’ve attributed to Berkeley is bad philosophy.
…I am a river to my people. So was Berkeley.
That would mean, if true and if reality requires perception, everything is real. But that would go against immaterialism. While I like it as a god-concept, would Berkeley?
You experience the world as real. Objects are there regardless of your perceiving them.
The objects out there represent a presence that is around you. The existence of objects around you simultaneously constitutes a relationship comprising ‘you’ as the center point of reference. Apart from knowing and believing in the objects out there and all around you, ‘you,’ as a center would not exist.
A reel of film contains the whole story in individual frames of information at one moment in storage without movement. To perceive the story, a projector is needed to give motion to the knowledge captured in each frame. The same is true with all forms of perception.
First, ‘you’ comes into being as the projector. When signals are detected on the retina and transferred to the brain through the optic nerve, the memory cells are activated and the frame(s) of knowledge are projected onto the object(s). It is the knowledge projected onto the objects that creates ‘you.’ Without objects being around you, ‘you’ would not exist as a center. So perception lies in the (knowledge of) objects and creates you as the subject. There is no subject there creating the objects. The eyes do not perceive in this sense; they only transfer information. Consciousness makes what is out there and what is in you to be the same. And consciousness is memory. “You” is memory and maintained as the constant utilization of it, and as you project in onto the world, you perceive.