Where did I say that if you reject b's premises you are a dogmatist?

I said I disagreed that sensations only resemble other sensations. Why must I accept that premise?

Where did I say that if you reject b's premises you are a dogmatist?

So I reject that premise.

The things which are responsible for your mind having something to assimilate. — Marchesk

Yes - concepts without percepts (=mind with nothing to perceive) are empty, but percepts without concepts (=perception with no mind to organise them) is blind.

If you take 'the universe' and remove from it all structures, all features, all relative distances, and the framework of time - what do you see?

Should we bring Meillassoux and fossils into the discussion? Evolution has already been mentioned. — Marchesk

Reminds me to dig up a critique of Mellasioux I noticed recently - Here, but it's pretty dense.

So? I didn't say it, did I?
I said that a dogmatist is someone who starts with a worldview and then rejects premises that conflict with it. Which is what you did.

Now, if you want to do philosophy, try and reject one of Berkeley's premises without assuming that materialism is true.

So to do philosophy, one must start by assuming idealism is true? This argument has turned into sophistry. Nobody is forced to accept Berkeley's premises, and plenty of philosophers haven't for whatever reasons.

Er, no. Christ. Reason is not strong with this one! You start with self evident truths of reason. You don't start with any worldview at all.

self evident truths of reason. — Bartricks

They don't seem self evident to me. What then?

Then you learn a trade

Do you have an explanation why there are philosophers who disagreed with Berkeley's arguments to this day?

Yes. They acuse him, falsely, of committing a fallacy.

Then you learn a trade — Bartricks

:rofl:

Then you learn a trade — Bartricks

It is dangerous to desire knowledge too strongly. To say the reality consists merely in our thinking is fantastic poetry because it is so fantastical. To doubt or deny the existence of an external world is to be stuck continually reminding oneself of this. It creates one of those annoying subjective itches

Do you have an explanation why there are philosophers who disagreed with Berkeley's arguments to this day? — Marchesk

Berkeley's major problem is that he's a strict empiricist, meaning that his nominalism won't admit the reality of universals. So he has no coherent account of the function of reason. When Kant's first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason was published, some of his reviewers thought he was simply re-stating Berkeley's philosophy, which infuriated him, so in the second edition he included his Refutation of Idealism

Kant intends to refute what he calls problematic idealism, according to which the existence of objects outside us in space is “doubtful and indemonstrable” (B274). His strategy is to derive the claim that such objects exist from my awareness that my representations have a specific temporal order. At the present time I am aware of the specific temporal order of many of my past experiences, an awareness produced by memory. But what is it about what I remember that allows me to determine the temporal order of my experiences? There must be something by reference to which I can correlate the remembered experiences that allows me to determine their temporal order.

But it's also important to say that Berkeley' arguments and rhetoric are ingenious and persuasive, and remain a challenge to this day. There are some excellent editions of Berkeley's dialogues on Early Modern Texts and if you take time to peruse them you will see that he anticipates and disposes of many seemingly obvious objections to his philosophy.

What on earth are you on about?

It is dangerous to desire knowledge too strongly. — Gregory

Ok, oh wise one. Is there some knowledge you would like us not to seek after, such as how on earth you afforded that helicopter?

To say the reality consists merely in our thinking is fantastic poetry because it is so fantastical. — Gregory

What? That's not what an idealist thinks, at least not a sensible one. And that's not poetry either, but a thesis. Poems are poems. This is a poem: Gregory, Gregory, Gregory, how does your thinking go? With a fallacy here and a non-sequitur there, and several confident misunderstandings all in a row.

To doubt or deny the existence of an external world is to be stuck continually reminding oneself of this. — Gregory

That is not what an idealist thinks.

It creates one of those annoying subjective itches — Gregory

All itches are subjective. What's an objective itch?

Now, if you want to do philosophy, try and reject one of Berkeley's premises without assuming that materialism is true. — Bartricks

:fire:

Only a true blue philosopher would say that!

Berkeley's major problem is that he's a strict empiricist, — Wayfarer

No he isn't.

He's known as one of the great British empiricists.

He wasn't British or an empiricist.

Berkeley is most decidedly not an empiricist. Berkeley appeals to self-evident truths of reason. He takes it to be self-evident - as did Descartes, of course - that thinking requires a thinker. And on this basis he thinks minds exist.

Note, minds are not empirically detectable. Yet Berkeley believes in them. If he was an empiricist, he wouldn't.

Again: he takes it to be manifest to reason that thoughts require thinkers (and that sensations require sensors).

That's at the heart of his case. It's not an empirical truth - one cannot see, touch, hear, smell or taste that thoughts require minds. It is a manifest truth of reason.

And he takes it to be manifest to reason that our sensations must resemble what they're providing us with some awareness of.

And he takes ti to be manifest to reason that sensations can only resemble other sensations. Just as a texture can't be like a sight, or a sound like a texture, so too no sensation can be like something that is not a sensation.

From this it follows that the sensible world our sensations tell us about must itself be composed of the sensations of a mind.

That's his positive case for idealism.
He also has a destructive case: materialism doesn't make any sense. There is no need to posit any material objects. Plus a material object is extended in space by its very nature. But any object that is extended in space will be infinitely divisible. Yet nothing can be infinitely divisible, for that would involve it having infinite parts - which is to posit an actual infinity. There are no actual infinities in reality, thus there are no extended things.

Now the fallacy that Berkeley is often accused of having committed is the fallacy of confusing a vehicle of awareness with an object of awareness. It's a fallacy that many here commit. The fallacy involves going from "I think that p" to "p is therefore a thought". Lots of you commit it when you try and think about morality. You go from "I feel some acts are wrong and feel some acts are right" to "rightness and wrongness are feelings of mine". That's the fallacy.

Berkeley is said to have committed it, for he is thought to have argued that as we know the sensible world by sensation, then the sensible world is a sensation.

Yet clearly that is not something he argued. He drew that conclusion, but not in that way. He did not think the world our sensations give us an awareness of is made of those sensations - the sensations that give us an awareness of it. Our sensations are 'of' the world, but do not compose it (thus at no point does he confuse a vehicle of awareness with its object - our sensations are the vehicles of awareness, and the sensations constitutive of the world are their object). HIs point is that in order for them to be 'of' the world, they would need to resemble it. And it is from that, combined with the claim that sensations can only resemble other sensations, that we get to the conclusion that the world is made of sensations (and thus the sensations of a mind).

Perhaps the argument is unsound, but it's not fallacious.

Oh, and he was Irish, not British. The part of Ireland he was from was not part of Britain.

He's known as one of the great British empiricists. — Bartricks

Berkeley is most decidedly not an empiricist. — Bartricks

He is known as an empiricist due to his emphasis on the primacy of sensations. I don’t think the rest of your interpretation stands but as you invariably begin to insult and belittle anyone who dares disagree with you I have no desire to engage.

But any object that is extended in space will be infinitely divisible. Yet nothing can be infinitely divisible, for that would involve it having infinite parts - which is to posit an actual infinity. There are no actual infinities in reality, thus there are no extended things. — Bartricks

There's no reason an extended object in space needs to be indefinitely divisible. Atomic theory would say atoms making up the object are indivisible. Today it would be subatomic particles. Or even possibly space itself is atomic. At any rate, length below the plank level is considered meaningless. This is where armchair philosophizing by first principles gets philosophers in trouble. The world need not play by our rules.

I'm skeptical of actual infinities, but what makes Berkeley so sure? What about the argument that space extends forever? That would constitute an actual infinity.

Yes, like many common sayings, it is wrong.

He was not British. And he was not an empiricist.

Empiricism is a stupid view that, by its own lights, has no support.

He was not an empiricist.

It's a label that he would not have known and that was applied to him later by people who hadn't bothered to read or understand him.

Any region of space can be infinitely divided. And an extended object occupies some space. So it can be infinitely divided.

Explain why an extended object could not be divided. It would have a top and a bottom and sides, yes? And there would be some space in between, otherwise it is not occupying any space and is not a material object. Now why couldn't that object be divided?

Maybe a segment loops around on itself in self creation as if I go North all the way until I arrive from where I started

Yes, that definitely made sense.

There are some excellent editions of Berkeley's dialogues on Early Modern Texts and if you take time to peruse them you will see that he anticipates and disposes of many seemingly obvious objections to his philosophy. — Wayfarer

:up:

:up:

try and reject one of Berkeley's premises without assuming that materialism is true. — Bartricks

Here you go – from old thread:

"To be, is to be perceived"
— chiknsld

If so and if, however, it doesn't make sense to say "perceiving is perceived", then "perceiving" cannot be; therefore "to be" has to be other (more) than "to be perceived" ... — 180 Proof

Berkeley is known as one of the three principle British empiricists - he himself was Irish - along with John Locke and David Hume. And the reason why he is classified as such, is because, with Locke and Hume, he believed that knowledge is acquired solely through experience, rejecting the ‘innate ideas’ of Platonism and the Aristotelian idea of universals. He was of course famously opposed to materialism, but he was still regarded as an empiricist philosopher due to that emphasis on the primacy of sensations. He said ‘I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence we deny, is that which philosophers call matter or corporeal substance.’ Of course it’s also true that his philosophy depends entirely on belief in God, without whom there would be no foundation or support for anything whatever, so the sceptic will claim that he appeals to a fictitious deity in support of a fanciful philosophy.

As I mentioned previously, Berkeley’s dialogues are a model of ingenious philosophical prose, although I don’t regard his system as a satisfactory form of idealism, mainly because of his nominalism. But I don’t reject it outright, either.

Nice summary. Teasing out the disparate strands of thinkers in brief like this is helpful.

I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence we deny, is that which philosophers call matter or corporeal substance.’ — Wayfarer

Marvellous quote.

I don’t regard his system as a satisfactory form of idealism, mainly because of his nominalism. — Wayfarer

I don't see how modern versions of idealism like Hoffman can be reconciled with type of realism that is opposed to nominalism (that of Anselm of Canterbury, Albertus Mangus, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus) although I see Hoffman as consistent with Kant