1. Irish bishop and philosopher 1685-1753
George Berkeley
Irish bishop and philosopher

2. Basic Berkeley Catholic Bishop
Empiricist: knowledge through sense experiences
Has been called the founder of idealism
the theory that ultimate reality lies in a realm that transcends the sensual/physical world (Heaven-where God is and in God’s mind) and only the things we can sense, or perceive, exist but are not fully known to us because our perception is subjective

3. Fundamentals of Berkeley’s Beliefs
The only things that exist are:
The beings that can perceive, or sense, things
The things that can be perceived

4. Fundamentals of Berkeley’s Beliefs cont’d
The world is subjective perception:
The material world does not actually exist in of itself, only perceptions of it do
There is direct perception: knowledge that perceiving beings, such as animals and people, gather using their senses (sense data)
And there is indirect perception: transfer of our personal interpretation of sensory knowledge through language

6. Berkeley’s Beliefs on God
God is “intimately present in our consciousness, causing to exist for us the profusion of ideas and perceptions that we are constantly subject to”
Nothing can exist outside of the mind of God
God’s perception of the world gives order and meaning to it (as in, his perception of it is the only true perception because he created it and ordered it himself - He created the laws of nature)
Explain first point
God is the cause of everything

7. What Berkeley Argued Against
Uncontrolled rationalism
Science and Materialism
Scientists and materialists strove to describe the processes of how things came to be by studying them while Berkeley believed that the causes of physical phenomena cannot be discovered in the phenomena themselves, but in the actions of God
He also said that we must eliminate material substances that cannot be perceived, basically saying: nothing can exist unless we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or experience it; the purpose of the existence of material substances is to be perceived
Believed that science was a threat to the Christian life because it sought to come up with processes for things that could only be explained as God’s doing.

8. The classroom doesn’t just disappear even though you cant perceive it anymore because it still exists in God’s mind