1. Chapter 11
Idealism

2. Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism
There are two kinds of idealism in the modern period:
Subjective idealism and absolute idealism
Subjective idealism is the view that only minds & their thoughts & feelings are real
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3. Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism
Absolute idealism expanded the mental substance of Berkeley to include:
The whole world, and unifying the individual minds of subjective idealism into:
A single all-encompassing world soul or mind
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4. Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism
The only reason for introducing the fiction of an unperceived underlying matter:
Was to provide some unifying foundation for many different properties of physical objects
Berkeley vs. John Locke
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5. Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism
Where the subjective idealists see the world as a collection of minds & their ideas
Absolute idealists sees everything in the world as a part of an all-embracing universal mind
According to Berkeley’s analysis:
Seeing an object such as a tomato is the same as having sensations of a certain sort
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6. George Berkeley: Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous
Irish philosopher & Anglican Bishop of Cloyne
Argued for his idealistic metaphysics principally in two works:
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Three Dialogues Between Hylas & Philonous
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7. George Berkeley: Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous
In Opposition to Skeptics and Atheists
The First Dialogue
Sensible things
material substance
Pain
Motion
Colors, sounds, tastes
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8. Challenges for Berkeley’s View
It encounters the problem we would expect any idealist to have to confront;
Namely, how to account for our ordinary belief in physical objects
Second, it faces the more unexpected and surprising difficulty of how to account for:
Our knowledge of our own minds
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9. Challenges for Berkeley’s View
No philosopher wants to appear to directly contradict common sense
The relation in Berkeley’s philosophy:
Between the mind of God and the reality of the physical world
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10. Challenges for Berkeley’s View
Though some find Berkeley’s appeal to God in handling this challenge unsatisfying
Berkeley is being thoroughly consistent in going this route
David Hume’s opinion
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