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The dude named George Berkeley

edited October 2013 in Philosophy
George Berkeley is considered to be an empiricist. But why? Empiricism believes that knowledge comes only through sensory experience while this dude outrightly rejected the existence of matter which is sensed with all our 5 senses. Can someone please explain it? Thanks.

Comments

  • Berkeley believed that we can never experience material substances. What we experience are sensory qualities. There's a laptop in front of me, Berkeley would ask is it really? According to him I can only have experience of its sensory qualities such as it's shape, color, texture. I only have these qualities, where's the substance. These qualities are in my mind. They are not something out there, different from me. The only existence of a substances is mental, in their being perceived. Thus material world exists only in our perceptions.

    Berkeley is an inconsistent empiricist, because he further says that two kinds of mental substances exist, we in the form of finite minds and god in the form of infinite mind, without any empirical proof. Also his argument for the existence of physical substances as only being in our minds is an exercise in rational thought.
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