Berkeley
As man progressed through the various stages of evolution, it is assumed that at
a certain point he began to ponder the world around him. Of course, these first
attempts fell short of being scholarly, probably consisting of a few grunts and
snorts at best. As time passed on, though, these ideas persisted and were
eventually tackled by the more intellectual, so-called philosophers. Thus,
excavation of "the external world" began. As the authoritarinism of the ancients
gave way to the more liberal views of the modernists, two main positions
concerning epistemology and the nature of the world arose. The first view was
exemplified by the empiricists, who stated that all knowledge comes from ...
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believed that material substance did
not exist is George Berkeley. In truth, it is the immaterialist position that
seems the most logical when placed under close scrutiny.
The initial groundwork for Berkeley's position is the truism that the
materialist is a skeptic. In the writing of his three dialogues, Berkeley
develops two characters: Hylas (the materialist) and Philonous (Berkeley
himself). Philonous draws upon one central supposition of the materialist to
formulate his argument of skepticism against him; this idea is that one can
never perceive the real essence of anything. In short, the materialist feels
that the information received through sense experience gives a representative
picture of the outside world (the representative theory of perception), and one
can not penetrate to the true essece of an object. This makes logical sense, for
the only way to perceive this real essence would be to become the object itself!
Although the idea is logical, it does contain a certain ...
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Secondary qualities are those things that are
concrete (sense oriented), such as color, smell, sound, and taste. The
materialist feels that these primary qualities persist even when the secondary
ones are not there. Thus, if a person were blind, then that individual would not
be able to hear or to touch items; yet the so-called real qualities such as
figure would remain existent in the objects. As previously shown, the
materialist is agnostic in his belief of these real (primary) qualities. It is
here that Berkeley directs an alternate hypothesis: that the abstract primary
qualities don't exist at all. In fact, the immaterialist position states that
these qualities are merely ...
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CITE THIS PAGE:
Berkeley. (2006, November 9). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Berkeley/55281
"Berkeley." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 9 Nov. 2006. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Berkeley/55281>
"Berkeley." Essayworld.com. November 9, 2006. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Berkeley/55281.
"Berkeley." Essayworld.com. November 9, 2006. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Berkeley/55281.
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