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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
In a well known paper, “Mind and Ideas in Berkeley” George Pitcher has argued that Berkeley's account of how minds are related to sensible ideas must be incoherent. Douglas Odegard has already criticized Pitcher's treatment of Berkeley, but the criticisms pertain to other questions. No one appears to have challenged Pitcher's most important argument. I hope to show that, while it is well worth analyzing, the argument fails to provide any effective reductio ad absurdum of Berkeley's real position.
Pitcher's argument trades on two logically independent versions of the adverbial analysis of ideas. The first is what I shall call “the identity version”. Its proponent asserts that the ideas are identical with sensings, with mental acts or states of sensing which are adverbially describable. The philosopher who follows the second or “constitutive” version asserts that ideas are sensa and exist as constituents of sensing states. For him ideas are not mental states but are constituents of such states. A sponsor of either version will hold that sensings are qualities of the mind.
1 American Philosophical Quarterly. 6 (1969), 198-207. All references to Pitcher's work will be made within my text and will be indicated by and” MIB” followed by a page number.
2 Odegard, Douglas, “Berkeley and the Perception of Ideas”, Canadian journal of Philosophy, 1 (1971), 155-171CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 For example, Pitcher does not make it clear whether ideas are non-relational objectless states of the mind, as suggested by his claim that ideas stand to the mind as a person's consciously or unconsciously turning a somersault stands to that person, (d., MIB 203 and 206-7), or whether ideas are properties of such states, as suggested by his claim that perceiving ideas is analogous to dancing a jig, (cf., MIB 203).
4 Both versions of the adverbial analysis are compatible with Berkeley's ontological phenomenalism. For example, to say of a die that it is red is tantamount to saying, on both versions, that a case of sensing redly is a member of a collection of sensings denoted by “die”.
5 Compare Pitcher's remarks that physical acts and states “qualify” physical objects, (MIB, 199). If we take seriously Pitcher's analogy that is presented below, then we must infer that mental states or acts qualify mental substances. This inference is compatible with either one of the two versions of the adverbial analysis.
6 George Berkeley, The Works of George Berkeley, edited by A.A. Luce and T.E. Jessop, 9 vols., (Thomas Nelson: 1948-57). References in the present text are, by section numbers, to The Principles of Human Knowledge (henceforth, “Principles“), by page number to Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (henceforth,” Dialogues“) in volume II of the Works, and by page number to the Philosophical Commentaries (henceforth, “Commentaries“) in volume I of the Works.
7 Throughout the body of the present paper, I shall use “sensing”, “sensed”, and “senses” instead of “perceiving”, “perceived”, and “perceives”, respectively. I shall also use “sensing” and “immediate awareness” or “awareness” interchangeably. It is well known that Berkeley systematically conflates, in the case of finite minds, the notion of immediate or direct perception with that of sensation in his epistemological writings. To avoid Berkeley's confused usage, I propose to use the “sensing” terminology in reformulating Pitcher's reductio.
8 If Pitcher's analogy is to be accurate then, given Berkeley's ontological phenomenalism, it must be that the counterpart of the tree in Pitcher's example is a collection of tree-ideas. Thus, proposition (2) must be understood to mean that the mind is wholly distinct from any collection of ideas that it senses. Pitcher also says that on the act-object view, but not on the adverbial view, the mind is wholly distinct from, e.g., its idea of blueness, (MIB, 202, 204-5). In his case, the analogy would have to be that the mind stands to its sensed simple ideas, (to the sensible qualities which are directly perceived through a single appropriate sense), as Bill stands to the sensuous qualities of the tree. To do justice to Pitcher's two uses of “an idea”, I suggest that (2) be taken to mean that the mind is wholly distinct from any simple idea or collection of ideas (simple or compound) that it senses.
9 James W. Cornman has argued that Berkeley does hold the weak interpretation of (3) rather than the strict interpretation. See, Cornman's “Berkeley on Sensations: Sensory Ideas Versus Sensings”, (unpublished).
10 Douglas Odegard argues the same point. See, his “Berkeley and the Perception of Ideas”, Op. cit., 161-3.
11 It is clear that Berkeley rejects Platonic Realism. That is, he holds that all sensuous properties and, thereby, all simple ideas must be properties of some substance and, therefore, must be in a substance, (Principles, 91). His account of this ontological dependence relation differs from that presented by the Aristotelian, (Principles, 490).
12 The argument appears to suffer from an equivocation on “sensible”. After all, sensible qualities are sensible in that they can be immediately perceived. But no mind is sensible in this sense simply because we have no idea of minds. Thus, minds are not the proper objects of immediate perception. Nonetheless, all finite minds are sensible in that they can sense ideas. It should be noted, however, that Berkeley systematically exploits this ambiguity of “sensible“ throughout the first dialogue in his Dialogues. Suppose that his opponent is the philosopher who claims that all qualities can exist in a substance that is neither perceivable nor which can sense anything. In this case, Berkeley's strategy in the first dialogue is, first, to establish esse est percipi and then, by exploiting the ambiguity of “sensible”, to infer the incoherence of his opponent's position.
13 It might be objected that what follows is that the mind is “qualified” by its idea of whiteness whenever it senses a white object. It does not follow, however, that the mind is white whenever it has an idea of whiteness. Thus, Berkeley could avoid the counterintuitive view that the mind has, as its accidents, the very same qualities of which it has an idea.
The above objection is correct but irrelevant in an interesting way. The reason is that the conclusion of the argument in question is exactly the same objection that Berkeley considers in Principles 49. In That context, his reply is not the one which is presented above. Rather, his reply is that qualities are in the mind only in the sense that the mind directly perceives them, (compare, Principles 91). But why did Berkeley not offer, in Principles 49, the above objection when it is clear that he could have consistently done so? Here is one possible explanation. Berkeley may have mistakenly believed that “the Schoolmen” are committed to the view that the mind is F whenever it is qualified by its idea of F-ness. The alleged commitment is said to result from the belief that all finite minds are substances, and that the Aristotelian view of predication applies univocally with respect to all finite substances, corporeal or incorporeal. Thus, to say that the mind is qualified by its idea of F-ness is just to say that F-ness is in the mind in exactly the same way that F-ness is in a corporeal sustance, namely, by way of inherence. But the Scholastic doctrines of abstractionism, which Berkeley rejects, and the formal/objective reality distinction avoid such a consequence. It is possible, then, that either Berkeley misinterpreted the Scholastic-Cartesian view of perception, or he read a misinterpreted account of the Cartesian view of ideas.
14 For a more detailed discussion on this point, see George S. Pappas's “Ideas, Minds and Berkeley”, (unpublished).
15 Pitcher seems to hold this interpretation, (MIB, 201).
16 I am indebted to Professors James W. Cornman, Thomas M. Lennon, Douglas Odegard, and Richard j. Van lten for their valuable comments.