The Idealism of George Berkeley

In this video, Professor Thorsby discusses the major arguments of George Berkeley. We see that Berkeley begins by denying the possibility of abstract ideas, at least in terms of their significance defined by John Locke. He contends that Locke makes a mistake by confusing the notion of abstract ideas with the limits of language. Our perception of an object is not generated through an accumulation of simple ideas, amalgamated in a abstract whole (all with valid representational content), but through the direct complete ideas themselves. Berkeley goes on to show that existence requires perception such that all things that exist must be perceived. The lecture traces some of the consequences that follow.

[@quad9363]

Thay was a great video, I especially liked the distinction made at the end there between Berkeley's empiricist Idealism and Leibniz's rationalist Idealism.

[@platovsky]

Astonishing ❤❤❤❤increíble 🌎 👏

[@Zoharargov]

Thanks for your great content!

[@pranotibhosale376]

Impressed by the presentation

[@platovsky]

Amazing ❤❤❤

[@EsatBargan]

Wilson Kenneth Clark Helen Martin Richard

[@Jaryism]

I’m like 30 min in and I have no fucking clue what he’s talking about.. blah blah language, particulars, particulars, ideas, particular.. he just likes to say the word particular in every sentence I think.

[@doobymclean]

Once you understand it it's not so bad (obviously). These guys have been talkin about particulars vs. universals since Ancient Greece. Basically, every time you've seen any animal with your eyes is the particular, and then your idea of what an animal is, secondary to seeing all those particulars, is the universal. Basically. I haven't finished the lecture, I'm myself at 37 minutes, but I think that's exactly Berkeley's point, that language tends to be unreliable to describe the world around us.

[@saintsword23]

"Philosophy is hard."

[@saintsword23]

What Berkeley is contending in this section is that when we think of an abstraction, say "trees," we cannot imagine "trees in general." When we think of a tree, it's always of a particular example of a tree - an oak tree, a willow, a fig, or whatever. We cannot conceive of the abstract "tree" directly.
Basically Berkeley is contending for a form of nominalism - that abstract ideas are not real things (in distinction to someone like Plato who argues that an abstract idea like "tree" is a real thing on another plane of existence), but instead are a convention of language and thought. In the modern day we might say abstractions are sets of particular objects.