Berkeley's (pronounced BARK-eley) most important philosophy was "Esse est percipi" or "to be is to be perceived." Just because we can see something, feel it, etc. does not mean it's anything more than an illusion. A tree can have the texture of bark, but according to Berkeley, because everything is composed of ideas and therefore existent only in our minds, it doesn't exist beyond that which we perceive. And even then, any or all of our senses can deceive us at any time, so who's to say it's real? Or anything, for that matter?
Needless to say, his views confused us. Going against common sense just doesn't... make sense, and it made us pass him off as insane. We did agree on one point, though: whether or not an object is a mere idea or a tangible experience, we all perceive that thing as being the same thing everyone else thinks it is. (i.e. the rainy day today. We certainly felt the rain, or did our bodies just decide to sweat cold water profusely? Oh, Berkeley.)
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Although Locke was quite the contrast to Berkeley, he didn't make much sense, either. His views of what is a primary quality (size/shape) and what is a secondary quality (combination of the object and our own intrinsically slanted senses) were next to impossible to describe in words. A primary quality can't change when we look at it? versus a secondary quality, like color, can? And what about optical illusions? Are we just perceiving those wrong?
So neither of them made sense. But since that was their goal all along, good job, fellows. You've thoroughly baffled us.
Berkeley was a very idealist man. He liked to believe the opposite of common sense. In reality, this philosophy is not applicable as one will find very quickly it is hard to live comfortably when apparently nothing is as it seems. It is an interesting discourse of thought to trek upon, yet not a very applicable school of thought by which to live your life.
ReplyDeleteFQ: Rousseau believed for society to be truly free, each individual had to submit to the ____________?
DQ: How can forcing someone to coincide with the community be encouraging their freedom in Rousseau's eyes?
Is it possible that these men and others like them are simply exaggerating the ability of our sensory systems to become askew? If I were to apply my own personal philosophy to such a subject, I believe we rely far too much on our ability to sense the environment around us whether it be as we perceive it or a completely different world that's in someway clouded by the interpretations of our mind to attempt to organize things in such a way as Berkley has.
ReplyDeleteBerkley
FQ: To what schools of thought did Berkley generally belong to?
DQ: Which set of ideas are you more inclined towards; Locke's or Berkley's? Why?
Rousseau
FQ: What is the general concept of the "General Will"?
DQ: How do you feel of Rousseau's criticized "contradiction" of freedom? Is it really a contradiction? Does it still in some way fall in line with the idea of freedom?
FQ: Rousseau declared at the beginning of his book, The Social Contract, 'Man was born free, and everywhere he is in ______.'
ReplyDeleteI'm taking a risk here because I don't want to spark a political debate. I am merely stating SIMPLY on the most general level...
DQ: Could Rousseau have been one of the first Democrats? (pg 107)
“Our reality is nothing more than electrical impulses being interpreted by our brain”, said Morpheus in The Matrix. That sentence is genius. For most of my life I thought there our reality was the common denominator. That those who had multiple personality disorders or those who just didn’t have a good grasp on reality had a slanted or blurred perception of what was really going on. Now I know that we might all be insane in the membrane because we only know of our own reality. Unless we are telekinesis we have no idea what someone else is seeing. An apple might look like an apple us but someone else might see and orange. When we ask what it might be in their mind they say it’s an orange but our interoperation of their orange could be apple. Mind = blown. As there is a chance this may be the case this theory is extremely unlikely. I believe we are actually seeing our real universe for what it is. Our minds just have tendencies to group things together and to simplify things to understand them easier such as seeing vertical lines easier than horizontal ones. Also our understanding of our reality is full of labels. An apple is an apple because someone before us applied that tag to that object and everyone accepted it. It not bad or wrong, it’s just how we as a species adapted to better communicate. It’s that level of understanding that separates us from primitive species.
ReplyDeleteThere is always that small chance everyone’s reality is completely different from one another but so far what I accept as mine has been working for me and I plan to accept it as “concrete” to better my existence.
FQ: Rousseau believed forcing someone to do the right thing is still giving freedom to that person - T/F
DQ: Should we as the American community follow Rousseau’s theory of General Will or our capitalistic views of selfish pursuits?
FQ: How did rousseau Believe life should be lived?
ReplyDeleteDQ: How should we look at his views today in a positive way or negative?