CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE BY GEORGE BARKELEY
George Berkeley denied this theory and reduced the reality of the external world to the existence of finite spirits and the infinite spirit (God). There is no material world. For Berkeley, even Locke's concept of substance was merely a name devoid of reality. There exists only the world of spirits, dominated by God, the Supreme Spirit.
Apart from the reference to God and spirits, Berkeley is a strict empiricist not only in the sense that he believes that all the materials for knowledge are derived from sense perception (as Locke, too, believed) hut also in the sense that knowledge is itself founded on sense perception. Locke was not such a complete empiricist; he thought that knowledge in the strict sense is founded on intuition and demonstration, and he made skepticism possible to a certain extent over sense perception because he thought that its verdict could not be completely shown. According to Berkeley, knowledge derived from reasoning must ultimately be founded on knowledge based on sense perception. Sense perception, in turn, is no longer conceived of as having ideas that are produced by objects and may not always represent their causes. Berkeley has given up the representative theory of perception with its assumption that something so underlies our ideas that they may be representative of it. His rejection of the representative theory of perception is the basis of his claim to combat skepticism. Yet, as Hume asserted, it has often seemed a claim that fails to produce conviction, because the claim that what is directly perceived is free from error is true by definition. The question of how we know when we have direct perception still remains, however. Not all ideas are objects of immediate. or direct perception; some are ideas of the imagination. According to Berkeley, these arc less regular, vivid, and constant than ideas of perception, and they are more "dependent on the spirit"; they can he distinguished from ideas of sense by these criteria. But are all ideas of perceptible things ideas of things immediately perceived, and if not, how do we tell which are?
In the first of the three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Berkeley argues that by sight we immediately perceive only light, colors, and figures; by hearing, only sounds; by taste, only tastes; by smell, only odors; and by touch, only tangible qualities. Here he appears to be arguing from the premise that these things are the special or proper objects of the senses. Although it is difficult to know what, if anything is special to sight and touch, it is easy to see what is meant in the case of the other senses. Even if we grant that we hear only sounds, taste only tastes, and smell only odors, it does not follow, however, that we cannot he mistaken about the characteristics of these objects in particular instances. Are we necessarily free from error in hearing when we hear that a sound is loud or soft? Nor is our attribution of colors necessarily free from inference as it should be if the perception of color is immediate. What, then, really counts as an object of immediate perception? In answering this question, Berkeley is subject to the same difficulties that have beset more modern philosophers when they have sought to base the philosophy of perception on the notion of sense data. If the foundations of knowledge are found in the deliverances of the senses, there must be certain perceptions that are incorrigible in the sense that they cannot logically be subject to doubt. But what counts as incorrigible perception? Berkeley tries to answer this question by assimilating perception to having hare sensations. Sensations, however, are not the sort of thing that can be right or wrong. The mere passivity of sensation, as opposed to the will, does not show that error arises from the will. If this criticism is valid, Berkeley's theory does not satisfactorily prevent skepticism in the way that he supposes.
Source: philosophical dictionary
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