Kingston Philosophy Café

Roger Jennings gives a talk on "Stuff and Nonsense: Berkeley and Immaterialism".  The Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753) is best known for denying the existence of ‘material substance’ and asserting that nothing exists but ‘perceiving minds’ and ‘perceived ideas’. Although his immaterialist doctrine may appear bizarre, even nonsensical, its influence has persisted to this day. The philosophical approach known as ‘phenomenalism’ that emerged during the 19th century has been characterised as ‘Berkeley without God’ and the argument of 20th century ‘logical positivists’ that we can meaningfully describe the objects of our experience in terms of ‘sense-data’ can be related to Berkeley’s reduction of objects to ‘collections of ideas’. Berkeley is also credited with anticipating the acceptance in modern science that ‘models’ of physical reality may serve as no more than ‘useful fictions’ that enable us to make correct predictions about observable phenomena. There are good reasons, therefore, for studying Berkeley.