George Berkeley - Biography
George Berkeley, who became the Bishop of Cloyne, was born in 1685 in Kilkenny, Ireland and died in Oxford in 1753. He made great contributions to the fields of philosophy, mathematics and economics. He advanced the theory of “immaterialism” and is considered one of the great philosophers of the early modern era. He is known for his famous quote “esse est percipi” (“to be is to be perceived”). His most-studied works are An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, 1709; A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710; and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, 1713. Along with John Locke and David Hume, George Berkeley is one of the most famous Empiricists. Berkeley’s work has become increasingly popular since the mid 20th century as he wrote on so many modern issues such as perception and the importance of language.
Although his father was English, George Berkeley considered himself Irish. He attended Kilkenny College for several years before going to Trinity College in 1700. He completed his Masters degree in 1707 and became a Senior Fellow in 1717. George Berkeley was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1710, which was common at the time for British academics. He remained at the college until 1724 as a tutor and a Greek lecturer. He also spent time away from Trinity visiting London where he associated with important intellectuals such as Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and Alexander Pope. As well, George Berkeley also visited Europe extensively as he accompanied both the Lord Peterborough (1713-1714) and St. George Ash, the son of the Trinity College Provost, (1716-1721) on their continental tours.
George Berkeley wrote his most well known works while he was at Trinity College. He began philosophical notebooks (often called the Philosophical Commentaries) in 1707. Through the critique of Descartes, Locke, Malebranche, Newton, Hobbes and other philosophers, these “commentaries” document the early philosophical development of Berkeley’s immaterialism and idealism. They were personal, however, and were never intended for publication. In 1709, George Berkeley published An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, followed by Part 1 of A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, the following year. Two years later he published Passive Obedience, which was dedicated to moral and political philosophy. In 1713, he published Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. Then, after his two major trips abroad he published De Motu (on Motion) in 1721.
When George Berkeley was appointed as Anglican Dean of Derry in May 1724, he resigned his position at Trinity College. He was very involved during this time in the establishment of a seminary in Bermuda so he was never actually a Dean in residence. He soon left for Newport, Rhode Island in America on August 1, 1728 with his new bride, Anne Foster. Even though he had secured private donations and a charter for the initiation of a new seminary, he waited three years, unfortunately in vain, for the grant for his seminary project. Regardless, George Berkeley made good use of his time, as an acting cleric and continuing his writing. He wrote most of Alciphron: or the Minute Philosopher, which defended Christianity against freethinking, during this time. As well, he met many prominent American intellectuals, such as Samuel Johnson. Yet without the necessary political support for the Bermuda seminary, they canceled the project and George Berkeley and his wife returned to Britain in 1731. He continued his humanitarian work though in London in which he participated in establishing a home for abandoned children.
Once back in London, George Berkeley was very busy with his writing. He wrote a defense of his earlier work on vision entitled The Theory of Vision, Vindicated and Explained (1733). He then wrote The Analyst; or, a Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician (1734), a cutting critique of the foundations of Newton’s calculus. George Berkeley then completed Alciphron: or the Minute Philosopher (1732) followed by other various prodigious publications, such as A Sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1732); A Defense of Free-Thinking in Mathematics (1735); Reasons for not Replying to Mr. Walton’s Full Answer (1735); and revised editions of the Principles and the Dialogues (1734).
George Berkeley was considered a good bishop concerned with both Protestants and Catholics. He was made Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland in 1734 and remained primarily there until his retirement. While there he wrote his most successful book in his lifetime called Siris (1744). It primarily dealt with the medical virtues of tar-water, as well as the contemplation of God. He later moved to Oxford in 1753 to oversee the education of his son George, one of his three surviving children. He passed away shortly thereafter, in 1753.
In his 1709 essay on vision, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (NTV), George Berkeley made a significant contribution to the psychology of vision. This work was meant “to shew the manner wherein we perceive by sight the distance, magnitude, and situation of objects. Also to consider the difference there is betwixt the ideas of sight and touch, and whether there be any idea common to both senses.” George Berkeley argues that we do not perceive distance based on natural geometry and uses the example of a pale face. When viewing this face one perceives fear and in this perception there is no geometry involved. He discusses the immediate ideas that mediate the perception of distance and concludes that there is not a necessary connection, but a merely a customary connection between ideas and distance. A necessary connection can be understood in true arithmetic equations in which the addition of two numbers equals a new number (1+1=2). Not only does one have a necessary connection, but also one cannot imagine the situation to be otherwise. George Berkeley argues that touch and sight are not necessarily connected but rather are merely customary. Sight perceives distance by a mediation of visual and non-visual ideas. Molyneux’s “man-born-blind-made-to-see” is often used by George Berkeley to illustrate his theory of vision. The argument here being that if a person born blind was taught how to distinguish a sphere from a cube via touch, they would need to relearn this if his or her sight was regained.
Furthermore, George Berkeley argues that while touch provides immediate access to the world, visual ideas of an object depend upon distance to that object and are perceived more by an experience of such instead of upon the senses. He postulates that visual ideas are merely signs of tactile ideas and that their relationship is similar to the relationship between words and their meanings. If one hears the word “tree,” one thinks of the object it denotes. He claims it is the same with vision and that one thinks of the corresponding idea of touch. George Berkeley names this the secondary (mediate) object of sight. Neither of these cases demonstrates necessary connections between the ideas and the associative connection is again based on experience.
His discussion of magnitude follows the same line of reasoning as his discussion of distance. George Berkeley argued that there were not any necessary connections between the objects of sight and touch as well as the objects of sound and touch; therefore the objects must be distinct. Although George Berkeley does not specifically address immaterialism in his first book, one senses its coming development in this essay. There has been much debate among scholars about NTV and its connection or non-connection to his other works. NTV further discusses distinctions between primary/secondary qualities and abstraction, which are further expounded upon in his later works.
In Principles of Human Knowledge George Berkeley attacks abstraction. According to John Locke, the doctrine of abstraction elucidates how knowledge can be communicated and then increased. George Berkeley does not hold true the belief in the necessity of abstract thought for communication. He also disagrees that abstract thought leads to a more complex and advanced development in thought. He explained that abstraction was unnecessary and refuted its plausibility by arguing that he himself could not imagine some of the examples used by John Locke, for example, an abstract general triangle. He found Locke’s example inconsistent, which then causes their impossibility and thus, are rendered inconceivable. George Berkeley also puts forth the impossibility of conceiving a mode apart from a substance which counters the abstractionist model for a three-fold distinction as presented in Arnauld and Nicole’s Logic or the Art of Thinking.
George Berkeley also argued against the feasibility of primary and secondary qualities of things and said it was impossible to make a distinction between the two. For if one were able to argue a distinction this would refute George Berkeley’s claim to objects being mind-based. He goes on to argue in Principles that even the so-called primary qualities cannot exist apart from the mind. George Berkeley takes this line of logic one step further and attempts to find the reason for the continual succession of ideas in our minds since he claims that our ideas are causally inert. He believes the cause for this is a spiritual substance in which he demonstrates the existence of God.
In the end, George Berkeley was an immaterialist. He believed that objects were merely collections of ideas and rejected the notion that material things were mind-independent or substances (here the term “materialism” is used to mean “the doctrine that material things exist”). He argued that when we perceive ordinary objects (a house for example), we perceive only ideas (the idea of house as opposed to the thing house); therefore, ordinary objects are ideas. To him the world was made up of nothing but minds and ideas. For example in his discourse on vision he explains how ones’ vision is learned by the perception of touch which then allows one to judge distance, magnitude and so forth. The ideas of one sense evolve into the signs of ideas of other senses. For George Berkeley, this is how we construct our understanding of the world, and its application is far-reaching. Based on this argument scientific constructs are thus disregarded; Newtonian time and space vanish and time becomes the progression of ideas in individual minds, mathematics is simplified to a system of signs in which words and numerals signify simply words and numerals, and science is a system of natural signs.
His belief in immaterialism also related to his argument against the likeness principle that asserted a likeness between an idea and a non-ideal mind-independent material object. George Berkeley reasoned that it was not possible for an idea to represent a material object because the mind can only compare its own ideas, which by hypothesis are the only things directly perceivable. Furthermore, as a devoted believer of God, George Berkeley felt that materialism promoted skepticism because it meant that our senses could not be fully trusted. He also felt that it promoted atheism as it discounts the importance of God if the world could run without his assistance.