BERKELEY and empiricism

In this lesson from a TEACHER we offer you a brief Summary of Berkeley Thought and Empiricism. This Irish philosopher denied extensive matter, defending a subjective idealism or immaterialism. Among his best-known works areTreatise on the principles of human knowledge in the year 1710 and The three dialogues between Hylas and Philonuson 1713. It is a fictional dialogue between Locke, who is represented by the first and Berkeley, who is represented by the second. Another of his fundamental works is The analyst, where he makes a harsh criticism of the foundations of science and was key in the development of mathematical science.

We started this roundup of Berkeley and the empiricism talking about the philosophical conception of him. Berkeley it's a radical empiricist that he not only denies that objects can be known, but he asserts that only an object can be known if there is a mind that perceives it. Matter is unknowable to humans and ensures that the properties of mathematics and sensory properties are the same.

It's not possible, therefore, knowledge of an object. It is only possible to perceive it. Nothing justifies the presumption that there is a real substance that supports bodies.

Yes Locke He was talking about abstract concepts, Berkeley will radically deny them, they are nothing more than a product of the imagination, an illusion. The own thing of the ideas, is the language, and not the abstract, which allows generalize through the observation of the particular.

Only perceived objects they are capable of being known. To say that something is real is to perceive it. Extension is nothing more than a perception. If this is so, are things the same for all humanity? Are objects objective? Do human beings exist beyond perception?

Berkeley states that the existence of human beings and the similar perception of the world, can be assumed because we interact with other human beings, we talk to them, and we know that our vision of the world it's the same.

“That there is no such thing as that which philosophers call material substance, I am firmly convinced; but if I were made to see that there was something absurd or skeptical about that, I would renounce it for the same reason that I believe that at present I have to reject the opposite opinion.”

We see, then, that the empiricism Berkeley is extreme.

What is the world for this philosopher? Berkeley assures that only through the direct perception it's possible know the empirical world. If we delete everything thought and attending only to pure perception, it is possible to obtain a pure knowledge of the world. But if we have as far as the particular of perceptions, no knowledge is possible.

The scientific knowledgeBerkeley says, he should look for the pure perceptions and forget about thinking. In this way, it would be possible to know all that until now has remained hidden, both in relation to the world and to the individual. And purifying perceptions means removing all thoughts from them. His radical empiricism cannot be denied.

“Even if it was possible that solid substances, endowed with determinate and movable figures, existed without the mind and outside of it, corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies, how would we get to know everything this? It must be either through the senses or by reason”.

We end this summary of Berkeley and empiricism to talk about transcendent reality. The defender of the most radical empiricism assures that there is a transcendent reality and that this can be known. Because if bodies are only real from the moment they are perceived, it can be assumed that the subject who perceives them exists. The only substance is the spirit who perceives and who thinks. Outside of the spirit, there is no substance whatsoever.

God acts on the spirit so that the ideas of the same, be consistent. Our perception of the physical world is like this because God has wanted it to be so. But the human being cannot know God, because the only thing he can know are the perceptions, the apparent.

God does not design the world in the manner of an architect, but the world is nothing more than an idea of ​​God. And if an object is no longer perceived, it does not disappear, since it is being observed by God. God is therefore the guarantee of a order in the world.

“It is obvious to anyone who examines the objects of human knowledge that these are ideas. (...). In addition to this innumerable variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is also something that knows them or perceives and performs various operations with them, (...) an active being that we call mind, soul, spirit, me.”