Berkeley's Argument on Reality

Berkeley's difficult and dense argument is not exactly that material objects are really just figments of the imagination, but that reality is mental and that material objects, including the ideas that the mind may form, do not have the primary reality that the mind does. The reality of the thing-in-itself, or what makes the thing real, is perceived by the senses or conceived and abstracted by the mind. But that is different, in Berkeley's view, from having a self-sufficient reality. Reality is always and everywhere and only tied to sense experience.

In the early part of his argument, Berkeley refuses to distinguish "the existence of sensible objects from their being perceived, so as to conceive them existing unperceived" (152). The perception of the thing cannot be divided from the existence of the thing as far as human experience is concerned. Where division occurs is where contradiction surfaces. The human mental experience of perceiving is therefore the primary reality. Perception of material reality is inseparable from and fused with human imagination. The sense perception of the idea or the thing may be as far as the human mind can go, but that in Berkeley's view does not prove that the mind exists and that the objects of mental perception exist independently of it. Indeed, Berkeley says that the proof cannot be made: "extension, figure, and motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable. Where therefore the other sensible qualities are, there must be th

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Category: Philosophy - B