George Berkeley's Argument Analysis

In the mind of an ordinary, non-philosophical individual, the mind and body are looked as being one complete system. Nonetheless, in the case of George Berkeley he argues that the only things that prevail as being real are our minds, thoughts and feelings. His main arguments that he presents are focused around the idea of subjective realism, whereby he argumentatively states that in order for one to evoke sensations of an object then it must be existent in the mind, or at least some part of it. In other words, if a physical object is before us then we perceive it through sensations, and according to Berkeley sensations are ideas that must have existed in the mind. Berkeley validates his arguments through a dialogue to show that there is a nonexistent …show more content…
He tries to argue that the physical or materialistic objects that our naked eyes see are merely in our mind, thus making them ideas because they are nonexistent in the outside world. Berkeley believes that all of our knowledge are gained through our senses, and in order for anyone to become knowledgeable about anything, then he or she will know about something based upon sensory experience or can infer about something based upon an immediate sensory experience. For example, you know your child is sitting on the couch watching television because you actually see him or her sitting there, and you immediately come to know of this through your sensory experience. An example explaining an inference based upon immediate sensory experience is when you know your dog is in the house because you can hear their tags rattling with each other as he or she move around the house or you hear sounds of barking. In the dialogue Philonous argues, “This point then …show more content…
Philonous states, “Seeing therefore they are both immediately perceived at the same time…it follows that this same simple idea is both the intense heat immediately perceived and the pain…immediately the perceived is nothing distinct from a particular sort of pain” (Blocker, Petrik and Stewart 123). The quote supports Berkeley’s argument of pleasure and pain and he employs the use of intense heat to explain his point. An intense source of heat is automatically known to be painful, and can be looked at as being mind dependent because they both are present in us as we feel them. Berkeley basically tries to argue that since an entity that is not alive and well cannot experience any form of pain and pleasure then matter might as well be dead being that it cannot experience either pain or pleasure. Therefore, if intense heat is a form of pain then matter cannot feel intense heat, thus making intense heat mind dependent because it will remain where it is and it would not seep through the person’s pores and go into the external world. Berkeley presents his argument for relativism through perception by inferring, “Suppose now one of you hands hot, and other cold, and they are both at once put into the same vessel of water, in an intermediate state. Will not the water seem cold to one hand, and warm to the other?” (Blocker,

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