Berkeley's Mentalism

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I had a question about George Berkeley's mentalism. He says that all knowledge is a function of mental phenomena and dependent on the perceiving or experiencing person. In regards to shape, Berkeley says that without perception we can never know exactly the physical nature of objects. But isn't it agreed among all, that a square, for example, is a plane figure that has four equal sides and four 90 degree angles. No one disagrees this definition of a square. Therefore, wouldn't we know the "exact nature" of the square? How would Berkeley dispute this?

-- Laura Alfieri (laura_alfieri@hotmail.com), October 17, 2001

Answers

I don't think you have Berkeley's position quite right. The question isn't one of *knowledge* being mental -- everyone believes that don't they? Berkeley was an idealist -- things themselves are essentially mental states. As he puts it in the first edition of his _Principles_: "the object and sensation are the same thing" (sec. 5). Berkeley would probably have answered the problem you put to him by saying that that we would not even have the concept of a square unless we had had prior experience of (approximate) squares. We then "perfect" this experience mentally in coming up with the definition.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), October 18, 2001.

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