In Order to be perceived
Unsurprisingly for a guy who argued for the nonexistence of matter, Bishop Berkeley didn’t have much time to get common sense. Really, such a view is not just misguided, it is a”manifest contradiction”.
According to Berkeley, there are 3 kinds of ideas: ideas showcased on our senses, ideas perceived through the passions and operations of the mind, and ideas shaped by the support of imagination and memory. So-called ordinary items — houses, mountains, and rivers — are actually collections of ideas that we call by one name.
A home is at the very least a group of thoughts shaped by our senses, our mental reflection, and our imagination. But is it something more? Is there something substance behind those notions? John Locke claimed that we can differentiate between primary and secondary attributes. While Locke admits that secondary attributes like color, sound, taste, and odor are only thoughts, ” he maintains that main qualities like solidity, number, and mobility are the qualities of objects as such. The solidity of a home exists independently of our perception of it.
In response, Berkeley asked his readers to try imagining the solidity or movement of a thing without giving it”some colour or other sensible quality which is acknowledged to exist only in the mind”. The impossibility of doing so leads him to conclude that esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived.
Berkeley’s arguments were a feeling. Boswell, in his biography of Samuel Johnson, recounts the great literary critic’s reaction to the Bishop’s doctrine:”I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it”I refute it thus.”