Intellectual History, Liberal Arts, Metaphysics

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

by Dave Seng
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 – 1947), Metaphysical Realist

This is part three of a three part examination of Berkeleyan subjective idealism. Part two can be found here. Part one can be found here.

When it comes to epistemology, the mind through its innate intellectual capacity to make judgments, utilizes the laws of logic as the starting points of understanding reality. The first principles of knowledge are innate intellectual capacities or functions of the mind by virtue of the mind’s ability to know reality and make judgments about it. Realists, therefore, are innatists, meaning that certain functions of the mind are innate, simply because the mind is an essential feature of being human. Judgment is a natural part of the human intellect. One may not immediately understand the first principles they are using, but they may be easily affirmed and recognized through education and reflective questioning just as Plato demonstrated with the slave-boy in the Meno dialogue, and as Aristotle affirms as intuitively correct in his Posterior Analytics1. Therefore, the human mind has an innate, or natural capacity to understand reality through judgment but knowledge is developed explicitly through discussion, questioning, examination, and education. Even the empirically-minded Aquinas believes that the mind has a natural tendency for understanding first principles. Aquinas explains, “Each power of the soul is a form or nature, and has a natural inclination to something. Therefore each power desires by the natural appetite that object which is suitable to itself” (Ia q. 80, a. 1, ad. 3). And, “The natural appetite is that inclination which each thing has, of its own nature, for something” (Ia, q. 78, a. 1, ad 3). For Aquinas, and most forms of realism, human beings have innate first principles or cognitive functions of the intellect. When these mental capacities are given the content of sense experience, human beings are able to come to a correct knowledge of reality. This also means that deductive rational reasoning and empirical experience work together symbiotically.

Of course, one could examine many other first principles of reality such as the law of universality, the principle of causality, the principle of finality, or the more narrow principles of induction or empiricism, but the most important are the laws of logic because they apply equally to metaphysics and epistemology. Just as there are different faculties of the mind, there are logical first principles which are related ontologically and epistemically. These first principles come from the innate cognitive faculty of judgment and are derived from reality itself because one cannot deny what is. In fact, the foundational principles of knowing and logic are properties of being itself. Aquinas thinks that understanding the basic first principles of being is an act of wisdom,

“Now to know the meaning of being and non-being, of whole and part, and of other things which follow on being, which are the terms of which indemonstrable principles are constituted, is the function of wisdom … And so wisdom makes use of indemonstrable principles which are the object of understanding not only by drawing conclusions from them, as other sciences do, but also by passing its judgment on them, and by vindicating them against those who deny them.” (I-II, q. 66, a. 5, ad. 4)

Here, it becomes important to review the first (or primary) laws of logic, because they relate to both existence (what can or cannot be), and how one knows it (what can or cannot be known). The laws of logic have both metaphysical and epistemic implications. As such, they set forth the first principles of reality and knowledge. The first principle of knowledge is the law of noncontradiction. The law of noncontradiction states that nothing can both be, and not be at the same time and same respect. This is a metaphysical and ontological claim because being cannot both exist, and not exist in the same manner (no object has that property including being itself). This principle is simply expressing the notion that being and nonbeing are ontologically different things and is why the law of noncontradiction is a property reality itself. The first judgment the mind makes when it experiences anything is that something is rather than is not, which makes it also an epistemic principle of reality. The law of excluded middle is equally important. The law of excluded middle is the principle that something either is, or it is something else, but cannot be both at the same time.2 Something must either be, or not be. A sea creature is either a fish, or a cephalopod, but not both at the same time or something in-between. Metaphysically, something cannot both be and not be in the same manner. Language depends on this principle as well—a statement is either true or false, but not both at the same time. If that were not the case, all meaningful communication would collapse into incoherence. Finally, the law of identity indicates the unity of things and being itself. Metaphysically, the law of identity draws one’s attention to the fact that a thing is what it is. The unity of being speaks to the fact that being is, and is intelligible. There are fundamental universal consistencies of being which make something what it is and intelligible to the mind. Epistemologically, a true statement must be true, a false statement must be false. These are the first principles of reality and all human knowledge. These principles are not mind dependent, they are properties of objective being and reality.

The innate ability of the mind to make determinations and judgments about reality does not mean that the mind is ultimate in determining reality. Contrary to Berkeley, being is not a construct of the mind. The mind apprehends being, but does not create it. Rather, the first principles of knowledge point to the fact that the mind is subservient to being. It first receives being, then makes a judgment according to what is or is not (the law of noncontradiction). But “what is” is unaffected, unchanged, and essentially untouched whether or not it is perceived. The only reason I can say that Los Angeles is in California and that I exist is because reality is that way. Berkeleyan idealism holds that all reality is mind-dependent and a construct of mental perception (whether one’s own or an eternal spirit’s). Realists maintain that the mind does not construct reality, it conforms to it. When I fly on an airplane to Los Angeles, I must adjust to this objective reality—including the ultimate principles that will get me there—the principle of causation, the principle of predictive uniformity, and various other laws of physics which are properties of being, and exist completely independently of what I think about them, or whether or not I perceive them. Berkeley’s subjective idealism reduces being to mind alone, and fails to account for the ontological first principles of objective external reality.

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.

1For Plato’s account of the slave-boy see Plato, Vol. 6, 180 – 184. Aristotle acknowledges that rational deduction is one part of knowing reality and affirms Plato’s account in his Posterior Analytics, Vol. 7, 97. Aristotle, however, fine tunes Plato’s argument and suggests that both rational deduction and inductive empirical observation are needed to come to a true and full understanding of reality.

2The principle of either/or is what makes logic gates and modern digital computing possible.

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.