tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post6624662094298071633..comments2024-03-22T06:22:08.010+00:00Comments on Stephen Law: Berkeley's IdealismStephen Lawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02167317543994731177noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-20005680253457002342018-07-03T16:06:46.878+00:002018-07-03T16:06:46.878+00:00Berkeley was never married or he would have known ...Berkeley was never married or he would have known his logic was faulty. Let us postulate for a moment, that I have recently returned from a business trip. Upon returning home, I proceed to my bedroom to unpack, put away my things and, turning to the bathroom and the shower within, promptly lose sight of my suitcase which I have left sitting in the path of the bedroom doorway, at which moment, it ceases to exist. This stateless non-existence does not prevent my wife from cracking me, at her first opportunity, on the noggin however, when she, arms full of laundry and incapable of percieving the suitcase, trips over it and takes a tumble. Now, my fomerly non-existent wife walks soundlessly up from behind me and indeed does deliver a very real and painful reminder that my suitcase in fact does exist outside my perception.<br />The likely argument will follow that Berkeley's assertion that 'God's' continuous perception of all things has caused the suitcase to persist... does this then make God responsible for the suitcase tripping up my wife and not I? Am I to blame for wrongly and safely assuming that because I do not percieve the suitcase it does not pose a threat of tripping to my non-existent wife? If I were a dutiful husband, thoughtful and caring of my non-existent wife's unnecessary safety, would not I have gone to the extra effort to put the suitcase away and remove it as a clear and present danger to the unwary non-existent passerby?<br />The real discussion should be about Berkeley's translation of faith-based perception couched in the prose of the linguistic logic of emerging fact based perception, as a repudiation of Scientific Logic. A dialectic, in essence; fighting fire with fire. A fruitless enterprise on his part, but a superb precursor to Shroedinger's Cat. For Berkeley to retreat from his self-evidently empty logic by the sorry expedient of asserting that because God sees all, all that is unreal is actually real because God percieves it. It is nothing less than a surrender to the God of Scientific Logic: I am, therefore I exist. I am that I am. 1 = 1.<br />It is none-the-less a very dangerous path down which to lead humanity. To suggest that all that I do not perceive is not real will inevitably devolve into all that I may do/have done/no longer percieve does not and never has existed and no longer is because it is not real now. Inviting every kind of evil, perfidy, wickedness, and licentiousness absent any an all responsibility. Berkeley should have been more worried about the church pronouncing him anathema; deducing from his postulate that God, because he cannot be perceived is therefore not real.Matt Blalockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03812629371917793440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-37081597793328805422018-07-03T12:53:23.842+00:002018-07-03T12:53:23.842+00:00Berkeley had obviously never been married. Let us...Berkeley had obviously never been married. Let us postulate for a moment that I have recently returned from a business trip; unpacked my suitcase, put away my things, and having left the suitcase in the path of the doorway, turning aside to prepare my shower. Doing so, I promptly forget the suitcase, at which point it ceases to exist. If all reality is perception, my reality will soon be subject to a shocking crack on the noggin. A blow delivered by my wife who, her arms full of folded laundry, has tripped ovver my non-existent suitcase which yet persists despite the fact it does not; because I have ceased percieving it and my wife could not percieve it because her arms were full of laundry, yet it has insisted on existing in a way that has independantly affected the reality of two human beings apparently unaware of its existence.Matt Blalockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03812629371917793440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905686568472747305.post-67768805630548478442012-11-25T00:52:30.722+00:002012-11-25T00:52:30.722+00:00I must buy that particular book one day, seriously...I must buy that particular book one day, seriously. I keep putting it off for books on science and mathematics, my other passions.<br /><br />I jumped to your last paragraph in my head before I got there. When you were talking about imagining non-existent entities, I immediately thought of dreams and also images we conjure up whilst reading novels.<br /><br />An extreme version of the Copenhagen version of quantum mechanics effectively gives the same version of ‘reality’ as Berkeley’s. John Wheeler speculated that the entire universe could be a giant cosmic quantum loop based on Bohr’s interpretation, which Paul Davies explores in <i>The Goldilocks Enigma</i> (which I know you’ve read).<br /><br />What I find interesting is that it’s obvious that the universe has existed without consciousness and will continue to do so after consciousness is extinct. But, without consciousness, it’s a non-event. And without consciousness there is no reason for God to exist. If God exists then it only exists because we exist.<br /><br />Regards, Paul.Paul P. Mealinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14573615711151742992noreply@blogger.com