Topics Philosophers

Question I find George Berkley an insightful philosopher in many ways. One puzzle I have is over his view of time as 'the succession of ideas'. Would he contend that our calendar and daily clock times are due to both God's direct imprinting of sensory ideas according to regular natural laws on our minds, and making the structure of human minds similar in their receiving of those perceptions/ideas? (We all receive ideas at the same basic rate). Also, when we dream or people are in a coma, do perceptions somehow continue unabated in our minds?

Accepted:
December 24, 2009

Comments

Berkeley's view of time as the succession of one's ideas is indeed very puzzling. Berkeley seems committed to the claim that there is no common time; there is just time for you and time for me, etc. God does give each of us successions of ideas that can be roughly coordinated, just as you say. For instance, we are able to agree on when the second hand of a clock is successively pointing at different numbers. However, this does not mean that our ideas succeed each other at the same basic rate. My ideas may be flowing much slower than yours, so that watching the second hand is boring for you but not for me. It happens slowly for you, but not for me. A consequence of this subjective account of time is that there is no time for me that I am not having an idea. That does not mean that I am unconscious of some ideas when I am in a deep sleep. It means that there is no time for me when I am in a deep sleep, so no time at which I am lacking a conscious idea. This seems odd, given that my wife might watch me sleep. In time for her, there are times I lack ideas, but in time for me, there is no time that I lack an idea. However, since there is no common time that we share, there is no contradiction in this. For more on Berkeley and time, see the good discussion in Ian Tipton's book, BERKELEY: THE PHILOSOPHY OF IMMATERIALISM.