Berkeley's Idealism | Philosophy Tube

four years ago way back at the start of

philosophy tube I made a video about

Bishop George Barkley or I guess you

could call him Berkeley if you're from

California Barkley was an Irish

philosopher with some pretty interesting

ideas that are worth revisiting now

especially if you are studying him on

the British philosophy a level syllabus

Barkley thought that the world and

everything in it exists only when

somebody is observing it when we stop

looking at something it no longer exists

this theory is called idealism not to be

confused with being an idealist which

usually means something else and it's

neatly captured by the phrase sest perii

to be is to be perceived that's how my

old textbooks used to explain it and I

think that's a little bit blunt

Barkley's point is actually a little

subtler than that and I think the best

way to get at what he's saying is with a

challenge so I want you to try and

imagine an

Apple okay I'm imagining an apple now I

want you to try imagining an apple

without imagining how it

looks okay little bit more challenging

but I can imagine an apple that has

weight and I can feel it in my hand and

I can smell it even if I can't see it an

invisible Apple basically okay now try

imagining an apple without

imagining how it smells how it tastes

how it looks how it feels an apple with

no weight no volume nothing that could

be detected by your

senses well what have you got

left nothing right that's what to be is

to be perceived means for something to

exist at all it must be at least in

principle perceptible to us that's just

what it means for something to exist and

the upshot of this for Barkley is that

something mental namely our minds or

God's mind is at the bottom layer of

reality reality isn't some objective

independently existing thing it's in

here Barkley isn't the only person to

have ever thought of this but he is the

philosopher that schools and

universities like to talk about before

we talk about how we can use this idea

let's anticipate some common questions

that you might have the first one is

that it really really seems like things

exist when we aren't looking at them if

you see a tree in Spring and then you go

away and you come back to it in Autumn

it's changed and that would be really

weird if it didn't exist in the meantime

to go through any changes at all the

English priest Robert KNX captured this

question in the form of a limeric saying

there was a young man who said God must

find it exceedingly odd to think that

the tree should continue to be when

there's no one about in the quad

Berkeley's Berkley there I go again

calling it Berkeley his name is Barkley

Barkley's reply to this was that there

is someone who who is always perceiving

everything keeping it there even when we

aren't looking at it dear sir your

astonishments odd I am always about in

the quad and that's why the tree will

continue to be since observed by Yours

Faithfully God one of the other

questions you might have might be about

things like subatomic particles which

are so small that we can't really

observe them does that mean that they

don't exist then according to Barkley

well it's true that we can't observe

them directly but by doing experiments

with things like particle colliders we

can observe the effects that they have

in the world and from that deduce that

they are there so they are still

perceptible just not directly okay we've

learned what Barkley thought about

existence and perception and that's kind

of cool I guess but who really cares

about any of this well here's the really

cool bit because he's actually making

two points here his first point is that

nothing exists unless it is being

perceived that's a point about

metaphysics about what exists but his

second point is that mental stuff Minds

is at the bottom layer of reality that

reality and everything we might say or

know about it is

inherently

subjective and that is a very

interesting idea subjective here doesn't

mean that it's all made up or that

anything goes or that none of it really

matters the word subjective gets kind of

a bad rap like that it just means what

it says that reality is grounded in the

experience of a subject this idea has

pretty profound implications for the way

that we understand science a lot of

people have this idea that science is

about trying to find objective universal

truth but an idealist approach to it

would be to say not so much science is

about predicting experience so much of

the history of mysticism and religion

was about prophecy about foretelling the

future and science if you do it right is

the tool that actually allows you to do

that to say that Hal's Comet will return

at this time on this date that these

drugs will have this effect on the body

that the weather on Tuesday will be like

this what the ultimate objective nature

of reality is I mean who knows if there

even is such a thing science might not

be able to tell you but it can tell you

what the weather will be like on Tuesday

it can predict Human Experience there

are also some found political

implications for this centering of

subjectivity political here means to do

with the distribution of power rather

than meaning any specific political

party for the last several hundred years

it was assumed that some people mainly

white men were more objective and

rational and saw things as they really

are in contrast to women who were

emotional and hysterical and blew things

out of proportion it wasn't just a

gendered thing either it was a race

thing Western European ideas of

government and property were taken by

Western Europeans to be Universal and

rationally grounded whereas First Nation

American and Canadian ideas about

property and government were taken to be

primitive and local or just assumed to

be absent we talked about that kind of

thing when we talked about the

philosophy of John lock a while ago a

lot of these ideas are still around

today and are still being recreated in

new forms a lot of the time people might

say that their political opponents don't

really care about the facts and don't

see things as they really are we use

words like Freedom Fighter terrorist

moderate extremist even democracy and

tyranny as if there really is some

objective truth of the matter and maybe

more interestingly as if we ourselves

are in the best position to judge and

know that truth people still get called

out by women on their sex ISM or by

people of color on their racism and

reply with things like I'm not sexist or

I'm not racist as if they are in the

best position to know that rather than

those affected by their actions being in

a better position to know the centering

of subjectivity in the form of lived

experience might prompt us to

re-evaluate who we listen to about what

to maybe sometimes take a step back and

say maybe I don't have a Mainline

straight to Universal TR truth maybe

this is just the way I see it so how do

you see it then in particular when we

realize that historically certain types

of people have been given license to

push their way of seeing things on

everyone else and to back it up with

violence

well idealism might seem like a neat

little idea or curiosity that's never

really going to leave the classroom but

if to be is to be perceived and you

change the way you

perceive you can literally change the

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