Question "Scepticism arises because 'for so long as men thought that real things subsisted without the mind, and that their knowledge was only so far forth real as it was conformable to real things, it follows, they could not be certain they had any real knowledge at all. For how can it be known, that the things which are perceived, are conformable to those which are not perceived, or exist without the mind?' The nub of the problem is that if we are acquainted only with our own perceptions, and never with the things which are supposed to lie beyond them, how can we hope for knowledge of those things, or even be justified in asserting their existence?"--A.C. Grayling quoting Berkeley My question is: Isn't one answer to this problem re representationalism that concerns Berkeley that if we were seriously out of sync with the real (mind-independent) world, then how could we have survived as well as we have? If I reach for an object,it's always there (unless I hallucinate).---If it's ALL a "Matrix" world then I can see the point. But if we are realist, believing the world to be there even if we were not, then it seems assured we are in a pretty good fit with it since we get along so well. Hope I'm putting this clearly. Also (if I may add a second question)...In Berkeley we still have a form of realism as Grayling points out elsewhere in his essay. The world exists mind-independently (re-ally) relative to us,just not to God's mind. So what would be the true opposite of realism? That is, what would we call the view that would say there is NO mind-independent world at all? E.g. In Schopenhauer's atheistic idealism, he doesn't have God to shore it all up,so how does he expect us to be idealists? Is Solipsism the true opposite of realism? Very perplexing. Thank You.......Bill H., Moraga,CA

Accepted:
August 17, 2011

Comments

According to the view that Berkeley is here criticising, there are, in effect, two worlds. Indeed, there are two corporeal worlds. There is an ideal world, constituted by perceptions that have been placed directly into our minds by God, and including perceivable tables, chairs, and even human bodies (including our own), complete with all of their familiar colours, textures, shapes, sizes and other sensible qualities. Then, distinct from and causally unrelated to this, and yet in some mysterious way corresponding to it, there is a world of material substances, including one that corresponds to our sensible body, but which cannot themselves be perceived, and which have no colours, no shapes, etc. Now, on this two-worlds view, how can we be so sure that our material bodies do survive? We can't perceive them, after all: how would we ever know? Maybe our material bodies got destroyed long ago: we'd be none the wiser, and it's not clear why we should even care, because God could perfectly well carry on giving our minds all of the same ideas, including those ideas that constitute our perceivable bodies.

Let's be clear: Berkeley is here criticising a particular form of realism, not simply criticising realism as such. Perhaps a realist might be on safer ground by maintaining that there really is just one corporeal world, but it's not the world of ideas (as Berkeley thinks), but rather the world of material substances. But then Berkeley reckons that he has plenty of arguments, elsewhere in his work, against that view: I have in mind all that stuff about primary and secondary qualities, coupled with the arguments concerning the abstractness -- and hence unintelligibility -- of the notion of some bare substratum behind all of these.

But Berkeley's system can indeed be regarded as a form of realism, to the extent that he does recognise a distinction between 'real things' and 'illusions' (and believes that the former really do exist). But real things and illusions, in his sense, are all still just ideas in my mind. Intrinsically, they are all on a par: the difference lies in their relations to one another. And his distinction is much as you have suggested: if I reach for an object, it's always there, unless I hallucinate. That is to say, when one idea coheres with other ideas in consistent ways that can be subsumed under universal laws of nature, then it constitutes a real body. If it fails so to cohere, then it's just an illusion, or an hallucination, or a figment of the imagination. See especially the Principles of Human Knowledge, sects. 30 and 33. As we come, through experience, to learn these laws of nature (laws that really just boil down to regularities in God's volitions), we can learn how to regulate our own behaviour for the sake of the preservation of our own bodies. But still, the bodies that we are seeking to preserve are the familiar ones that we know and love through our sensual experience of them, not any alleged colourless, shapeless, unperceivable and inefficacious material substances beyond these. Or, if you prefer, there is another way of preserving a notion of realism, one which does make it independent of my mind: we can say that the real world is the one that God himself perceives. But, even if that world is independent of my mind or yours, it will still not be independent of all minds; because, of course, Berkeley believes that God is a mind.

But I'm afraid I can't help you with Schopenhauer: I've never read him.