Wednesday, October 31, 2012
What You See Is What You Get?
Berkeley argues that skepticism is only possible if there is a distinction between appearance and reality. Furthermore, he claims that that distinction collapses once we deny the existence of material substance. Given these two premises, he concludes that skepticism in false. But is he correct? Does the distinction between appearance and reality collapse if idealism is true? Is it possible for God to perceive an object differently than me? Does that possibility redrawn the line between appearance and reality? Are there other problems with this argument?
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Here is Berkeley's argument to prove skepticism:
ReplyDelete1. Skepticism requires that illusion is possible
2. Illusion requires a distinction between appearance and reality
3. The distinction between appearance and reality requires material substance
4. But there is no material substance (idealism, which he proved in Dialogue 1) = everything is appearance, there is no other reality)
Conclusion: Skepticism is FALSE
=All you perceive are ideas
The argument begins with the statement that skepticism is the possibility that everything you are perceiving right now is not true, or that you are being deceived. One argument for skepticism we have not gotten around yet (at least until this point) is the evil genius argument, which says that it is possible we are being deceived at this very moment. Berkeley then goes on to say that illusion is the distinction between appearance and reality, or what you are seeing and what actually is there. Then, Berkeley explains that if there is a reality, then there must be material substance. He has already proved that there is no material substance with idealism. Therefore, the initial premise (skepticism), which requires a distinction between appearance and reality, is false.
So I am going to leave out the objection that idealism is not true because that is another blog post question. Assume that idealism is true. The major objection I still have to this argument is that allusion does not necessarily require a distinction between appearance and reality. Allusion means you are being deceived, but you don't have to be deceived from truth. In other words, an infinite mind may be perceiving the world one way and your mind may be perceiving the world in another. This does not mean that the infinite mind's perception is true or that your perception is true--only that both of your perceptions exist and may be equally untrue. We still have allusion- the distinction between two perceptions exists. So we still have skepticism, and we still do not have any knowledge. We just understand that nothing is true about the world. It's not just that humans don't know anything, but that no one knows anything! Skepticism remains true, and allusion remains, but we don't have to introduce this notion of true reality at all. Without reality, there does not have to be material substance, and so we do not have to refute any statements, which leaves skepticism totally intact.
I also have another to the conclusion of the argument, even if the argument itself were true. So we concluded that all you perceive are ideas, but we have not disproved the existence of the evil genius. Therefore, that evil genius may be deceiving your ideas so that they are wrong. There is then a difference between your ideas and the "real" ideas that God presents. In this objection, the line between appearance of ideas and reality of ideas can still exist!
I think that Berkeley is correct in saying that if idealism is true, the distinction between appearance and reality collapses. Through the framework of idealism, Berkeley proves that there is no such thing as reality. Due to the fact that everything that is "reality" to us is actually perceived in our minds, everything is in fact appearance. Because there is no material substance in an idealistic world, and in essence reality, there can be no distinction of appearance and reality because everything is appearance and nothing is reality.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I don't think that Berkeley is correct in saying that this proves that skepticism is false. Even in the idealistic world, where there is no material substance, everything has to be perceived by God in order to be also perceived by us. This is due the fact that things don't pop in and out of existence. Therefore, even when we aren't perceiving an object, it is still existing, meaning there must be an omnipresent being who is perceiving that object at all times. How are we to know that God is not perceiving that certain object differently than we are? For instance, if we perceive a chair, God could potentially be perceiving what we see as a table. We can only know what we perceive, not what it is meant to be perceived as per God. This in itself redraws the line between appearance and reality, as it is possible that we are perceiving an object differently than it is meant to be perceived. Our perception of this object could be skewed by many different things, but in this sense our perception is appearance and God's perception is reality. Berkeley has clearly not proven the collapse of the distinction between appearance vs. reality, meaning that he has not fully proves skepticism false.