Intellectual History, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Berkeley, Classical Realism, and the Metaphysical First Principles of Being, Part Two

by Dave Seng
St. Thomas Aquinas, also called Doctor Angelicus (Latin: “Angelic Doctor”),  born 1224/25,—died March 7, 1274.

Part one can be found here. This is part two of a three part series which reflects on Berkeleyan idealism in light of classical realism.

A foundational concept in Berkeley’s philosophy is that reality depends on a perceiver in order for it to be (the esse in his famous dictum). And this is the point of contention for classical realists. Is it correct to say that reality is structured in such a way that it must be perceived to exist? (Additionally, an outright denial of the existence of matter seems problematic and is, in fact, Gnostic.) Classical realism takes both perception and objective reality seriously because sense experience is the only connection one has to the world. The realist finds the entire project of proving an external world to be supremely uninteresting and quite unnecessary. Regarding the faculties of the mind, the act of perception is different from other cognitive abilities like thought, memory, or imagination. Thinking is not the same as having a sense perception. One can think through an issue or problem, recall a memory, or use one’s imagination (such as reading a work of fiction or pondering the existence of centaurs). When these faculties, or acts of the mind, are engaged one can always ask the additional reflective question of whether or not they exist in external reality. When it comes to the faculty of perception, however, one cannot separate one’s perception of an object from its actual existence in reality. Normal perception is always the perception of an external object. If that were not the case, there would be no difference between reality and hallucination. When one asks about hallucinations, external objective reality is assumed in the question, or it would not be a question.1 Perception is what gives human beings the ability to distinguish between appearance and reality (in order to correct a faulty sense appearance, one simply has another sense experience). The faculty of imagination, however, consists of the ability to think of objects that do not exist in reality. In contrast, the faculty of perception is always of something, an external object. Classical realists hold that humans are cognitively structured to be of, about, and oriented towards reality. It makes little sense to say one has a physical perception of a tree and, at the same time, that the tree does not exist. The logical laws of non-contradiction, identity, and excluded middle still hold with sense perception. It does no good to deny external reality. When the mind works correctly, there is no need to prove an external world. Human perception is always of something. In metaphysical terms, that which is cannot be denied.

Berkeley’s conflation of thinking with perception utterly confuses the most important aspects of reality itself—the subjective and objective, appearance and reality, being and becoming, the one with the many, and ultimately equates thought, or mind, with Being. Instead of clarifying reality or explicating the nature of reality, Berkeley only adds more confusion to these ultimate questions. If Berkeley’s interpretive scheme of reality is correct, there is no way to explore the metaphysical nature of reality. The field of metaphysics, itself, would be impossible. The rejection of any reality external to one’s mind undermines the task of metaphysics which is to discover the objective first principles of being as being, at least according to the Aristotelian definition of metaphysics.

Further, classical realists hold to compresence—the idea that minds and objects are both part of reality and co-related. Because human beings live in a common world of sense, they can also share a common world of thought and intellectual engagement. As Alfred North Whitehead explains, “I do not understand how a common world of thought can be established in the absence of a common world of sense” (178). Human beings share the same basic reality and the mind is tuned to the concrete requirements of objective existence. Reality has its own intractable way of being and it is objectively intelligible, discoverable, and shareable with others through the tools of reason—sometimes by way of induction, other times by deduction, and sometimes both working together. Being itself is the unifying standard of all thought and physical activity. The realist, therefore, maintains that all thought and human action takes place in objective time and space.

As extreme as Berkeley appears to be, it is important to take a closer examination of his perspective, and we will explore this further in upcoming posts. For now, keep in mind that no great philosopher or author is completely wrong. Berkeley’s idealism forces one to think about the nature of reality at a deeper level. Perhaps one reason for including Berkeley as one of the great Western philosophers that (although epistemically wrong), he forces one to think more carefully, rationally, and critically about the most fundamental questions of reality. Even when a thinker is wrong, an examination of the position is still instructive. Berkeley raises several questions that the realist wisely takes seriously. How should one think about reality or being? What role does the mind have in knowing reality? And what are the ultimate principles of reality, if any?

While idealists such as Berkeley insist that reality is determined by the mind, or immaterial spirit, realists like Aristotle and Aquinas pose a different strategy for understanding reality and offer a way to think about being that neither denies the role of the mind, nor rejects external reality. When it comes to epistemology, realists believe that there must be first principles of knowledge. An examination of these first principles will demonstrate the role that the intellect plays in knowing reality. The first principles of knowledge are self-evident and foundational to all other knowledge.

All the sciences are derived from basic self-evident first principles. Aquinas puts it this way, “The principles of any science are either in themselves self-evident, or reducible to the knowledge of a higher science” (Ia, q. 1, a. 2 ). And, “The word ‘principle’ signifies only that from which another proceeds: For anything from which something proceeds in any way we call a principle” (Ia, q. 33, a. 1). Self-evident truths are principles that are foundational to all knowledge, and are impossible to deny (such as logical truth, the law of noncontradiction, mathematical truth such as the axioms of geometry, and moral truths such as the proposition that it is always wrong to rape women)2. Self-evident truths are the starting points for any scientific or philosophical inquiry. First principles do not provide the content of reality, rather, they are what make knowledge of reality possible. Classical realists do not deny that the mind has a role when it comes to understanding reality.

Aquinas also refers to first principles that are reducible to the knowledge of a higher science. This occurs when, for example, one understands that music relies on mathematical formulas, or the scientific method rests on the ultimate metaphysical principles of the law of causality, law of predictive uniformity, law of noncontradiction, and others. In fact, it was Aristotle who claimed that it was the mark of an uneducated person not to realize that there must be certain first principles of reality such as the foundational law of noncontradiction (Aristotle, Vol. 7, 525).

In our next post, we will discuss the first principles of being, which are properties of reality and through which we come to understand what is. The first principles of reality are both ontological and epistemic in nature.

1Hallucination is pathological. When the mind is functioning correctly, perception is not pathological, it is normative. When determining between reality and hallucination, external objective existence is assumed.

2Self-evident truths, or first principles, are often intuitive but they can become explicit, usually through education. They are impossible to deny because they must be assumed in any attempt to deny them.

Works Cited

Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica: 1. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 17. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle: 1. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 7. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Berkeley, George. The Principles of Human Knowledge. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 55. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 55. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Intellectual History, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Berkeley, Classical Realism, and the Metaphysical First Principles of Being, Part One

by Dave Seng
George Berkeley

Introductory Note: In 1995 Dr. Mortimer Adler wrote that idealism is “the greatest of all modern philosophical mistakes” (Adler 118). I believe that Dr. Adler is correct. Today, much of postmodernism, post-structuralism, and critical theory in all its forms is the result of idealism. To echo Richard Weaver, ideas have consequences. The next few posts will examine a particular form of idealism as represented by the Anglican bishop George Berkeley (1685 – 1753). The following posts will only look at Berkeley’s subjective idealism in general terms and then follow with the classical realist response. Berkeley’s most important and specific errors will be addressed later (such as his implicit Gnosticism). For now, just keep St. Athanasius in mind — That which is not assumed is not redeemed.

When it comes to understanding what is ultimately real (metaphysics), many of the truly great authors in the Western intellectual tradition can be divided between those who hold to idealism (that reality consists of mind and its ideas), and realism (that objects of sense perception exist independently of their being known). For the idealist, the mind is ultimate in determining reality, while the realist holds that being, or reality itself, is the proper starting point for philosophical reflection. The realist asserts that the realms of both consciousness (mind) and external objects exist and belong to the overall structure of Being. In one form or another, idealists believe that the contents of the mind are all that can be really known and the mind is the arbiter and, in some ways, creator of reality. In the history of Western thought, Berkeley, Kant, and Hegel hold to forms of idealism, and Aristotle, Aquinas, and Whitehead represent realism.1 The next few posts will explore George Berkeley’s subjective idealism in light of classical realism (understood from the perspective of Aristotle and Aquinas), and assess the merits of holding to both mind and matter as the essential structure of reality, and explores whether or not Berkeley’s metaphysical position takes into account the first principles of being.

It is helpful to understand Berkeley’s version of subjective idealism before presenting and explicating classical realism. For Berkeley, perception is not simply direct sensation, it includes all the physical senses and mental ideas, including thinking, memory, imagination, and other faculties of the mind. In other words, perception extends to ideas, thoughts, consciousness, or mind. In fact, Berkeley specifically includes thinking with perception, “But my conceiving or imagining power does not extend beyond the possibility of real existence or perception. Hence, as it is impossible for me to see or feel anything without an actual sensation of that thing, so is it impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it” (414). He further explains, “For the existence of an idea consists in being perceived” (413). For Berkeley, every thought, imagination, and memory, constitute perception and, further, all that one really has access to is idea or mental experience. The cognitive faculties of the mind—our images (including memory, imagination, or imaginary figures such as unicorns), concepts (conceptual truths such as mathematics and the laws of logic), and physical percepts all reside in the mind, and it is mental experience that is all one can know. All reality is ultimately reducible to mind or consciousness. Perception is mental experience and all reality equates to perception, “What do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensation” (413)? Accordingly, Berkeley insists that something must be perceived by the mind in order for it to be considered real, “It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding” (414). For Berkeley, the individual perceiver is all-determining, since every thought, idea, and object is included in Berkeley’s definition of perception. This is Berkeley’s subjective idealism because all reality ultimately depends on the personal mental experiences of the perceiver.

Berkeley further explicates this notion with his famous phrase “esse is percepi”—to be is to be perceived, “For as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their esse is percepi, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them” (414). For Berkeley, the idea of an external reality that exists independently of the mind, or perception is conceptually incoherent. If a thing is not perceived, it does not exist. Essentially, Berkeley’s idealism follows this line of reasoning—all perceptions, concepts, and thoughts are ideas and can only exist in the mind. Therefore, everything exists only in minds. This does not mean, however, that something does not exist, or goes out of existence if it is not perceived or is no longer perceived. As an Anglican bishop, Berkeley believes God perceives everything and is the foundation of all reality. Because God perceives something, it is real and exists in reality (as part of God’s mind) even if no other individual is around to perceive it:

Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit—it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a spirit. (414)

In this manner, Berkeley suggests, as he does throughout his Principles of Knowledge, that he really does believe in an external reality because God or an Eternal Spirit perceives all things. For Berkeley, reality of a sort is possible and he narrowly escapes solipsism, which is often the end result of subjectivism. Nonetheless, all reality is fundamentally a mental perception or experience of the mind. For Berkeley, all reality is immaterial and ultimately exists in the mind of God.

As reality is not based on external matter, but on mind or a perceiving spirit, matter itself is illusory (429, 439-440). Only the most ignorant would believe that matter actually exists (423). In fact, Berkeley rejects the notion that a material world exists apart from mind, “But why should we trouble ourselves any farther, in discussing this material substratum or support of figure and motion, and other sensible qualities? Does it not suppose they have an existence without the mind? And is not this a direct repugnancy, and altogether inconceivable” (416)? Further, “The only thing whose existence we deny is that which philosophers call Matter or corporeal substance” (419).2 Berkeley posits that immaterial mind is the foundation of all reality. For Berkeley, if there is a conflict between mind and matter, the subjective and objective, or appearance and reality, all one needs to do is simply eliminate external material existence and the problem is solved. What is left is mind-dependent subjective appearance.

In the next post, we will explore why Berkeley thought it was important for something to be perceived in order to exist which is the point of contention for classical realists.

1Both idealism and realism show up in Western thought in various forms. The categorization of these thinkers is for the purpose of a general grouping while acknowledging that particular differences and emphases can be found in each individual thinker. Neither school is monochrome in its outlook.

2Italics in the original. It is not clear to which specific philosophers Berkeley is referring. However, it is likely he has something like Aristotle’s definition of substance as a combination of matter and form in view.

Works cited

Adler, Mortimer. Adler’s Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher’s Lexicon. Scribner, 1995.

Berkeley, George. The Principles of Human Knowledge. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 55. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.