Do things really exist? What I mean is: George Berkely maintained that things only exist so long as someong is percieving them. Berkley claims that we do not actually percieve the object itself, but rather we pericev the object’s “sensable qualities”. For instance: Does the sound of a bird chirping, itself, really exist? Berkely argues no. He reasons that sound is only percievable by one of the sensory organs (the ear), anmd intepreted only by the brain. Hence, sound can only exist as a “mental entity” rather than as a “physical entity”. Without a human/animal/etc. present at the time the bird is chirping, the sound is unpercievable and unpercieved. This continues on into Berkleys famous dilemma: “If a tree falls in the forest, but no one hear’s or sees it, did it really fall?”.
Now, in my humble opinion, I disagree with a lot of Berkelies statements, but I find it nonetheless fascination to follow his line of thinking. He is a hardcore empiracist in every sense of the word.
Huh? Pardon my slowness, but I don’t fully get what you are trying to say…wanna rephrase for me (please). Thanks.
Are you trying to say that Berkely argued that things continue to exist since “God is allways observing all things”?
BTW:
I believe that Berkely became a Bishop after he was already done with his philosophical pursuits…not this matters, but I just thought I’d add it as a factoid.
The soundwaves that project through the air and in turn are recieved by your ears are measurable, physical phenomenon. It exists as much as a gust of wind (which Berkely would undoubtedly say doesn’t) or a poke in the ribs.
Berkely is a quack
true, he argued that everything was perceptable, but he thought that everything perceived was a part of god… much like spinoza (who was a rationalist not an empiricist) …
There is a slight doubt even with Descrate’s “I think therefore I am”.
Because “I think” is a continum. Thought is continum. There is no one thought that is ‘you’, but a series of thought. An each thought is never identical to the next.
How can we say, we have thought, therefore we exist. When each individual fragment of thought is never the same. So we are constantly dying, then being reborn. e.g if thought is a river, can you jump into the same river twice.
I kinda lost you here…I got the “thought is a continum” part, but I lost you here (the statement I quoted above). Mind re-phrasing? thanks.
Okay…good. this makes sense…I agree. While I’m not saying that it “justfies” Descartes overlooking the issue you pointed out with his axiom, I don’t think Descartes meant for us to read into his axiom that deeply.
On the surface level, his axiom looks impeccable (hence why we consider it to be a vallid axiom to this very day). But I can see that he may have overlooked some things…
…poor Descartes! ILP has really dimished his credibility!
“There is no one thought that is ‘you’, but a series of thought.”
that basically means we are constantly changing. thought continuously change. You can not point to one thought (thought about oranges) and say that thought is you at that particular time. It is like you can’t jump into the same river or thought twice.
The “jump into the same river twice” was thought by a Greek philospher couple of thousand years ago. It seems Descrates did not study Greek philosophy.
Young children have difficulty understanding that there is a world outside their own needs, their own wants. A baby can not comprehend that it’s mother needs some relaxation to sustain mental health, it cries anyway. It’s completely selfish and ignorant to the needs of others. The baby’s world doesn’t extend beyond it’s shallow vision.
Anyway, that’s what this whole notion of solid, concrete objects being stricken from existence… all because an individual isn’t around to percieve and note their existence.
It’s preposterous. Granted, our senses do soak up the abundant stimuli in our world. They allow us to experience our environment. But to think that a mighty oak falling doesn’t produce a sound that rips through the forest, interrupts the cackling of the birds, silences the swush of the river running just because no one’s around to hear it!!!
I would say such a theory is ignorant.
Then again, I am (or could be) ignorant for writing such a post.
If a person observes an object one day in a specific state and in another instance observes it in a different state, doesn’t that signify that something happened while no one was there to observe it?
For example if there’s no snow on the ground when I go to sleep, and when I wake up there IS snow on the ground…am I to assume nothing happened when I was asleep?
I think that we make observations and correlate occurrences with them. I thought that was the basis of logic but I could be wrong. Descartes, in my mind, restarted the process of logic with his statement, “I think therefore I am.” He stole reason out of a branch of philosophy only so that it would be born again with more concrete principles. I’m not a historian and I should read more but that’s at least the impression I’ve recieved from the education I’ve undertaken so far.
CEs think that it is preposterous to claim knowledge of things we cannot reach by our senses–that is, knowledge reached by intuition or reasoning. But some in the tradition of [insert other philosophy] say this is a naive view–not that it is stupid–just missing some points.
Ah, I understand now! Thanks for explaining it to me. Interesting conceots there. I never realy thought of it that way, but now that I understand what you are saying, I agree.
I have not yet heard of Heraclitus. And as for trashing Descartes…well, I know that many of us (specifically, Americans) have recently changed their opinions of the French (sorry…had to add that )
…but leave Descartes alone.
If any philosopher should be trashed here at ILP, in my humble opinion, it should be Kant-the-Inconsistant (in regards to an thread on kant I post several weeks ago — I did end up reading two more of his Critques…& I did not care much for his arguments).
Thanks for pointing that out. I only used “hardcore empirasist” to describe Berkely because I felt that Berekely had gone to the extreme with his epiracall(sp?) views.
Berkley was of course the first idealist, and since idealism is based on internal representations it is deeply logically flawed - see my post on Internal Representations.
i’m not sure how many times i’ve heard this argument and i’ll counter it the same way i always do. if your ears are there to recieve the measurable, physical phenomenon, then all you’ve proved is that things DO exist while you are there.
