The Idealism of George Berkeley Critique

In philosophy, it is described as a group of metaphysical philosophies which incorporates reality that possesses the human mind and what they actually see and think. In addition, it is usually mentally constructed and immaterial in nature. Viewing idealism epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the outcomes that are possible of understanding and knowing what the mind views independently. For Berkeley the question he tries to put across is the meaning of the term "exists. " and what do we really mean when we use that term in various discussions. 1 It believes that the mind is the origin of the material world and focuses in expanding its ideologies in explaining the existence of materials on various principles that are created by the mind.

In addition it matters to me since it emphasizes on human ideas especially in values and beliefs that usually define a society and the human mode of existence. On ontological doctrine, idealism according to Berkeley crosses boundaries and deduces that all entities are usually created and perceived by the mind or spirit. It goes further by rejecting physicists and dualist theories that describes the priorities to the mind of human beings. On a wider scope, his works divides his ideas into two groups which include subjective idealism and objective idealism. These two notions motivate Berkeley to question materialism. George Berkeley possess his master argument when he says … I am content to put the whole upon this issue; if you can but conceive it possible for one extended moveable substance, or in general, for any one idea or anything like an idea, to exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it, I shall readily give up the cause… the argument seems to establish that human beings are not rational thinkers and cannot in the real sense conceive an independent mind towards objects.

4 This means that the objects exist unperceived and unthought-of. This is because in order to conceive any of these things first we must conceive them ourselves. This includes thinking about them. Berkeley stresses that we have absolutely no empirical evidence that matter does exist since we never experience it directly or indirectly. In addition, according to Berkeley he believes that the only types of existence are the minds and the perceptions. First Dialogue and relativity arguments Philonous begins his arguments on the first dialogue by bringing sensible qualities such as heat and deuces that they are not far away from pleasure or pain. He continues to stress that they are allowed by the state of the mind and they must be factual feelings for the sensible qualities.

On the first argument, the challenges that surpass the argument are whether we should allow a particular sensory quality to be evoked and whether we should categorize together the sensory qualities as Berkeley would like us to do. 7 The true picture behind the material body is that they are usually composed of particles with different sizes, have different shapes, can move and rest and are solid. The argument says that our actions are usually triggered by our sensory ideas of particles from our sense organs and minds. This makes Berkeley to oppose the mechanism and he believes that it is skeptical and bodies are not like the sensory organs. The reply he gets from philonous are: the same sort of relativity arguments are made against secondary qualities can be constructed from the primary ones and lastly, we cannot construct primary qualities such as shape from secondary ones like color hence it is challenging to create mechanist material bodies which are extended.

Finally, after a long argument, Hylas agrees to philonous that the existence of the entire mind dependent is factual and he unhappily agrees with heavy reluctance. He points out that the most crucial element that are seen in the reality and the imaginary contains a given order and occurs on regular patterns hence strongly supports the law of nature. The laws of nature that he supports are the set of rules or established methods where the mind controls the excitement we have and triggers our sense of ideas. They are thus regular and coherent, that is, they constitute a coherent real world. Critique of the Article In his article and the three dialogues, George Berkley makes mistakes in worrying about the existence of a society and a community.

The worrying makes him doubt the existence of a supernatural being who is God and who perceives everything at all times. From that perspective, he could have argued easily on the form of idealism and he could be more rational on the religious belief. The liberal thinkers of clone compared his sentiments as models of rationality. On the other side, there is weakness in Berkley’s proof on the existence of God. I agree with the idea of sense a need cause and our minds can be the main causes, the big question that it never tells us is that, if the same mind is the cause of all ideas and sense, might there be several minds that works together at once? However, Berkeley would find various explanations for justifying the existence of God.