Philosophy 306  George Berkeley

OVERALL ARGUMENT OF BERKELEY'S PRINCIPLES

 

Parenthetical numbers refer to the paragraph/section numbers.

  1. Besides God, reality consists of objects that are, or inhere in, mental substance or material substance or both.

  2. Framing the proposal about material objects requires a meaningless abstract idea (10-17).

  3. We cannot know there is any such thing as material substance (18)

  4. The supposition of material substance is useless (explains nothing) (19).

  5. The notion of material substance is logically incoherent (because it is supposed to be both like and unlike sensible ideas)  (22-24?).

  6. Therefore, reality is wholly mental.

  7. Therefore, reality consists of minds (mental substance) and ideas.

  8. The order, regularity and coherence of our ideas (some of them) and the fact that we do not cause them proves that they have an external cause.

  9. This cause must be God (an infinite mind).

  10. The totality of all ideas and the spirits in which they inhere, is the universe. God eternally perceives the whole. All reality thus consists in being perceived or perceiving.

 

 

 

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