More on George Berkeley and his Immaterialism

As a preliminary people might like to read my brief introduction to Berkeley's metaphysic:

A very brief introduction to Immaterialism

Incidentally, what I haven't mentioned before is that I did part of a Ph.D thesis on Berkeley's metaphysic; specifically on immaterialism's implications for the ontological status of the microscopic realm i.e in what sense do objects/processes exist that are too small to be seen with the naked eye. I never completed it, but I think I have an excellent grasp of his ideas. 

 

Alleged Difficulties for Immaterialism 

I have just read the following recent article:

Mind over matter: the contradictions of George Berkeley

The author says:

"Some asked how hallucinations fit into his picture, alleging that they sever the link between ideas and reality in some distinct way his system cannot account for. Another classic objection has it that the corollary of believing that things do not exist unless they are being perceived is that objects must be continually popping in and out of existence depending on whether they are being looked at or not, which is metaphysically untidy to say the least."

First of all, it's worth pointing out that the way of establishing whether something is a hallucination or not is precisely the same regardless of whether one subscribes to Berkeley's metaphysic or not. A hallucination would be a creation of one's own mind rather than part of God's conception of the world. So it would lack certain characteristics of real things. Typically, one might appear to see something, but on approaching it and reaching out one's hand, fail to experience the associated appropriate tactile sensation.

This notion that whenever we look away, or close our eyes, objects spontaneously disappear under his metaphysic, is question begging. They appear to be assuming there is a material reality independent of our perceptions, but that also, paradoxically, its reality is dependent on whether we are looking at it or not. But, Berkeley thought the external world is entirely cashed out by our perceptions.  So, it is incorrect to suppose that objects are constantly appearing and disappearing out of existence.  That erroneously ascribes a position to him that he did not hold.

Incidentally, unlike the author, I wouldn't appeal to the limerick by Ronald Knox to resolve this alleged problem.   Here's the limerick:

There was a young man who said “God

Must find it exceedingly odd

To think that the tree

Should continue to be

When there’s no one about in the quad” 

Reply:

“Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;

I am always about in the quad.

And that’s why the tree

Will continue to be

Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”

First of all, as I have just said, there isn't any problem in the first place.  Apart from that, I think it's simply not correct to say that Berkeley held that the external world exists by being observed by God.  That, again, seems to imply that the external world has some type of prior existence, and it is God's perceptions of it that keeps it in existence.  No, the external world is simply a conception within God's mind that he conveys to us.

To elucidate, our relationship to the external world might be compared to playing an online multiplayer computer game.  The numerous players seem to see and interact within the same environment.  The reality of objects in that environment -- such as a tree -- are represented by appropriately lit pixels. But, the pixels representing the tree, change depending on the perspective and distance the character controlled by the player is in relationship to that tree.  And, of course, there won't be any pixels representing the tree should the character be turned so that he is facing away from it.  As I said in my first blog post on Berkeley, this is explained by the fact that the computer game environment is governed by rules implemented by a computer programmer.  Likewise, our external world exhibits uniformity due to physical laws with such physical laws simply being directly caused by God.

Extending the computer game analogy further, although the character we control is within the computer game environment, we ourselves certainly are not.  We are sitting in our bedrooms or wherever we are when we play such games.  Indeed, we could not be part of that game environment as our existence is not captured by lit pixels!  In a similar manner, immaterialism holds we are not literally within the "material" world.  What we label the "material" world is nothing but our perceptions, and it is therefore nonsensical to suppose we are part of it.  Of course, our bodies are part of the "material" world  i.e the those perceptions we identify with our bodies, but our selves and their conscious states are not part of that reality.

Support from Quantum Mechanics  

I think Berkeley's metaphysic gets some support when we consider the implications of quantum mechanics. Or, at least it gets support in as much as it presents arguably insurmountable difficulties for those who suppose that reality is of a certain definite character considered entirely independent of one's perceptions or measurements.   

The main difficulty is that subatomic particles, such as electrons, can either be particles or waves, but cannot simultaneously be both (just like an object cannot simultaneously be both a sphere and a cube).  Yet, depending on the particular experiment, electrons behave either exactly like particles, or they behave exactly like waves.  So what are they?  Does their nature, their essence, change depending on how we measure/observe them? But that makes no sense since a thing's nature shouldn't change depending on how we observe it.

There is no problem under Berkeley's immaterialism though. Berkeley would have thought that a subatomic particle's reality (be it a photon, an electron or whatever) is purely a question of whether it plays a fruitful role in our scientific theories or not. It doesn't matter if, say, electrons exhibit particle like behaviour within one experimental context and wavelike behaviour under another since the reality of an electron cannot be abstracted from our perceptions/measurements of them.  All that matters is that nature exhibits regularities that we can mathematically describe. In this regard, quantum mechanics is a runaway success.

It's important to note that this doesn't amount to the denial of the existence of electrons and other subatomic particles any more than it is a denial of everyday macroscopic objects (see near the end of my first blog post on Berkeley).

Far Cry with Dinosaurs

I think it would be a splendid idea if someone made a computer game -- perhaps a "far cry" game -- where the hero travels back in time to the age of the dinosaurs. Of course he (or she) would have plenty of weapons. As well as dinosaurs like the T rex etc, perhaps there might be a super intelligent dinosaurs of around our size with ray guns.

Anyway, that would be an absolute blast. Don't know why no one thinks of making a game like that. It would be incredibly popular and make huge amounts of money.

The difference between science and metaphysics

Think of a computer game. In order to play a 3D game proficiently, we need to know how the game environment changes when the character moves and behaves in particular ways. The character you control who presses buttons in the game environment will cause certain things to happen in that environment. Shooting at certain spots will cause other things, such as "killing" a bot. And so on and so forth.

One can become extremely proficient at a game. Yet, at the same time, one might know absolutely nothing about what makes the game possible to exist in the first place, and why the game environment changes in the characteristic way it does. In other words, one might know nothing about CPU's, RAM, or anything else about the underlying machinery of the computer, even though one might be better at the game than anyone else.

I submit that our science, together with the technology it has spawned, is analogical to playing a computer game proficiently.  I submit, that is, that science deals exclusively with the patterns discerned in reality and how the world changes with particular actions on our parts. Similar to the game, science tells us absolutely nothing about the underlying machinery of reality. Science tells us nothing about how or why the world exists at all and why it has the particular physical laws it does. That is what metaphysics deals with.

It might be thought that the existence of forces like gravity refutes this.  Objects fall to the ground because the force of gravity compels objects to fall down.  On this view, gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, are intrinsic to reality and make reality behave as it does. 

But how do we know this?  We can observe an object falling, but we never observe the gravitational force that allegedly causes it to fall.  Or we never observe the warping of space-time that allegedly causes it to fall (indeed, what could a warping of space-time possibly mean?)

Consider the Earth as it orbits the Sun.  It is considered that the Earth is compelled to follow a circular path around the sun due to gravitational force.  If the force were to suddenly disappear, then the Earth would travel in a straight line at uniform velocity.   Now, why is it the case that motion in a straight line is considered to be natural motion with no forces requiring an object to move in such a manner, but circular motion is considered unnatural with a force required to constrain an object to follow such a path?  I suggest because it's simpler to think of reality in that way. 

At the end of the day, all we know about the world comes from our senses; mainly from our visual qualia.  Science is in the business of describing the patterns in our visual qualia.  In physics we find that mathematical equations, such as Newton's equation (F = G(m₁m₂)/R²), describe the falling process.  But these equations are all we need from a scientific perspective.  Postulating such forces like gravity might make it easier to derive such equations, but they are not strictly necessary.

Note I am not saying that forces like gravity do not exist.  They might exist (although I don't think they do), but if they do that is part of the underlying machinery of reality, and hence comes under the purview of metaphysics.


Think
back to our computer game. One's character can jump up and down. Why
does the character fall back down to the ground? Because of gravity?
Obviously not! The game operates according to its software instructions.



Now, let's consider our physical reality and why objects fall.  It might, as mainstream opinion holds, be due to some force intrinsic to reality. Or it might be because we're living in a kind of virtual reality created by beings existing "outside" of our reality, and the falling down process is just the way our reality is programmed.  Or it might be (to give my own personal opinion) that the explanation resides in the fact that reality is infused with teleology or entelechy, and that our scientific laws simply describes such innate propensities. But the point is that this is a metaphysical issue, not an empirical or scientific one.



Science is not in the business of providing literal explanations, rather it is merely in the business of describing reality. To suppose one can use physics to explain why reality exists at all, or why reality is described by the laws we find, is to misunderstand the legitimate scope of science.  For genuine explanations we have to look to metaphysics.

Similar posts by me:



Do scientific explanations actually explain?

What philosophical questions does science answer?

Is Reality real?

A very brief introduction to subjective idealism.

A ridiculous conception of God.

As a preliminary readers might be interested in another blog entry by myself where I make an analogy between our minds and God's mind. 



I want to employ and extend an analogy I first used here to try and dispel some of the apparent misunderstanding between atheists and, at least some, theists.



Let's suppose that in the future the bots in a computer game become conscious. Some bots think their
world (computer game environment) is designed and a creation of some
intelligence, others do not (let's call them atheists).

The
atheist bots assume that should there be a creator/designer of their world, then it must be some entity
within their computer game environment. That is to say any designer must either equate
effectively to some particularly coloured pixels, or failing this to at least influence the environment in some way. However since no such coloured pixels have ever been detected, and their world operates according to discernible rules (physical laws), they regard it as being highly unreasonable to believe in the existence of a designer.  Certainly if there is such a designer then the onus is upon those who suppose he exists to supply some evidence for his existence.

However many of the theist bots think that this concept of a designer is utterly ridiculous and think of a designer in the correct sense -- namely a computer programmer who exists outside of their reality (game world) altogether.  However they do disagree and quarrel about the name and personality of the designer (programmer).

The take home message from this analogy is that we should really try to get away from the ideas that should a "God" exist then he/it is some entity which exists within reality, and that he/it intervenes with physical laws (a so-called "God of the gaps").  It is just as ludicrous for us to entertain such a conception of "God" as it is for the bots to entertain such a conception of a designer for their game world.  Moreover, for the bots, the question of whether a designer exists, is not a question which could be answered by their science.  Their science deals with the regularities of their world and therefore could only address the concept of a designer should that designer exist within their reality.  The exact same applies to us.  The question of whether there is a creator, where that creator exists outside our physical reality, is not in principle something which could be addressed by our science. It is a purely metaphysical issue.

In addition, although the disagreements between the various religions might at some level be interesting, this really doesn't have any implications for the existence of some type of "God", at least not if we construe such a "God" in the minimal sense as a creator or designer of our world.  Compare this to the scenario where the bots disagree about the name and personality of the computer programmer.  It would be absurd to maintain that this suggests that no one created their world at all!

This conception of "God" as being wholly outside of our physical reality, or that our physical reality exists "within" God, also dispenses with the  requirement that it is incumbent upon the theist to demonstrate that a creator exists. Why?  First of all we need to understand why the burden of proof is normally on those who claim that something exists.


In our observations of the world we note that the Universe appears to be described by physical laws.  It seems that these laws have universal applicability -- that is the very same laws apply throughout the Universe.  
Hence we know what entities to
expect and what not to expect -- thus our expectation is that stars will have planets orbiting them, and not flying teapots.  In short, if someone asserts that x exists, but x would be unexpected given our understanding of physical laws, then the burden of proof ought to be on the one making the assertion.  Note though that strictly speaking there is no distinction between
positive and negative assertions. Hence we surmise there are galaxies
beyond the cosmic horizon even though in principle we can never detect
them. So, contrary to what people maintain, the burden of proof is not on the one asserting something exists, but rather it's on the one asserting something exists which we would not expect given our understanding of physical laws.

But clearly this does not apply to any existent which resides outside physical reality.  Either our physical reality came into existence through a conscious external agent --  some type of creator, although such a creator need not necessarily correspond to what we typically think of as "God" -- or the Universe, Multiverse or whole physical shebang came about as a brute fact with no cause.  Whichever hypothesis pertains arguments need to be advanced to justify ones position on this issue.

Related to this is the fact that many self-proclaimed atheists assert that they merely lack a belief in any type of "God" rather than disbelieve in a "God".   However, if one lacks a belief in whether there is a creator, then necessarily one also lacks a belief in the converse.  That is they also lack a belief in the supposition the Universe came into being as a brute fact.  This is contrary to how atheism was originally understood as being the position of supposing that most likely there is no entity or reality corresponding to what one might label "God".

2nd part here.