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Esse est percipi once again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1967

Joseph Margolis
Joseph Margolis
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
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Extract

The proposition Esseest percipi plays an instructively ambiguous role in Berkeley's philosophy—as well as in the history of the theory of knowledge in general. It has, for instance, been construed as a false synthetic proposition by G. E. Moore and as a convention regarding sense-data by A. J. Ayer. And it is of course incompatible with the admission of material objects existing unperceived. I cannot myself see that Berkeley's account of the formula allows us to say that he regards it exc lusively as a proposition or as a convention, and I think that to grasp the mixed way in which Berkeley employs the formula is to under-stand much about the strategy of disputes regarding perception. I base my remarks entirely on the Dialogues.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , March 1967 , pp. 516 - 524
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1967

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References

1 Philosophical Studies (London, 1922), pp. 1–30.Google Scholar

2 Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (London, 1940), p. 76Google Scholar.

3 Cf. Margolis, Joseph, ”How do we know that anything continues to exist when it is unperceived?” Analysis, XXI (1961), 105–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 I have used Colin Turbayne's edition, in The Little Library of Liberal Arts series (New York, 1954).

5 Cf. Warnock, G. J., Berkeley (Harmondsworth, 1953)Google Scholar, Ch. 8.

6 Cf. Armstrong, D. M., Bodily Sensations (London, 1962)Google Scholar. This is not to subscribe to Armstrong's theories, only to his nomenclature.

7 Op. tit. p. 76.

8 Ibid., p. 76.

9 The subscripts, of course, do not appear in the original argument and are intended only to specify the equivocation.

10 Cf. Margolis, Joseph, ”Fourteen Points on the Senses and Their Objects”, Theoria, XXVIII (1962), 303–308Google Scholar; also “'Nothing can be heard but sound'”, Analysis, XX (i960), 82-87.

11 Op. tit., p. 70.

12 Ibid., pp. 70-71.