4:29 AM ocean.instructure.com .\'ll AT&T; reality? Or, will we have to settle fo

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4:29 AM ocean.instructure.com .'ll AT&T; reality? Or, will we have to settle for simply having "beliefs" and "opinions about it? OCEA In this Module, we see the emphasis to be much more on the question of what we can know, (epistemology), than on the question of what is the nature of reality (metaphysics). The two questions remain connected; but we start to see that the second question must be set aside, until the first one has been successfully answered. Within this framework, we see the rise of philosophical skepticism, with the philosophy of David Hume. We also see a very famous response to that skepticism, with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant Philosophical skeptics tell us that questions about reality are pointless, if we cannot prove that there is knowledge within our answers. Kant tried to show us that knowledge is possible. But he did this in such a way that, after Kant, our view of reality has been fundamentally altered. The next discussion questions are posted below. Questions George's Berkeley's Idealism Berkeley makes an ingenuous argument for eliminating the notion of a material" world that can exist "outside" of perception. If Berkeley is right, and To be is to be perceived," then it follows that we can all have our own individual realities depending on our own individual perceptions. Such a view would horrify the Greeks. Plato in particular believed that reality and truth, in order to serve as guides for us, must be seen as "objective, shared, and absolute." In order to avoid the problem of solipsism, Berkeley brings in the notion of God as an infinite and perfect mind, yielding an infinite and perfect perception of reality, But if each of us has our own perception of God, then it is questionable whether such a concept can serve as a basis for any claim to objective truth. If reality is tied to perception, do we have to give up the notion that there is any "objective" reality that we all share? Should we accept Berkeley's view that science is just another perception of the world, and not a source for objective truth about the world? Does he succeed in proving that not only is "beauty" in the eye of the perceiver, but everything else is as well, including all of the so called "objective facts" that science discusses? Before commenting on Berkeley's idealist philosophy, it will be useful for you recall any comments you made regarding Plato's arguments. Do you reject his notion that there can be an "objective" truth regarding courage, beauty, justice, happiness, and so on? Do you prefer the notion that we all have our own reality and truth?" As you reflect on Berkeley's philosophy, try to be consistent with what you have said about Plato's views

Explanation / Answer

Berkeley was one of the greatest philosophers and provided his ideas in addition to those of his ancestors including Locke and Descartes. He was a talented metaphysician famous for defending idealism, that is, the view that reality consists exclusively of minds and their ideas. He challenged the irrationality of the notion that matter exists autonomously outside the mind as Locke and other contemporaneous empiricists speculated. Material substances cannot be real according to him, since they do not possess the capacity to operate as casual agents in our lives. He therefore considered it highly irrational that importance is given to inanimate objects as a matter of study. Only life forces, such as spirits or souls, are able to function causally through perception and are the only substances that really exist. In his argument of whether or not God exists, he suggested that man is in fact His creation and that man’s ideas are emitted from Him.

Plato on the other hand believed that the physical world around us is not real. It is constantly subjected to change and evolution and therefore one cannot assert what is real. There is a world of ideas which is a world of unchanging and absolute truth. This is reality for Plato. There are a number of proofs of this ideal world. The concept of geometry, such as the concept of a circle, which is a line equidistant from a point, is something which does not exist in the physical world. All physical circles, such as wheels, drawings, etc. are not perfectly round. Yet our mind has the concept of a perfect circle. Since this concept could not come from the physical world, it must come from an ideal world. His ideas therefore differed from that of the former philosopher in terms of their thoughts regarding realism. The former believed that only the living beings were included in what is real whereas Plato discarded everything around us in the physical world as ‘unreal’ and labelled it as a mere illusion. The ideas that we possess about the physical world are based on the ideal world regarding which we do have an innate understanding or knowledge. This made their ideas contradictory to one another. In a deeper sense what Plato had said does make sense when evaluated at a deeper level, however what was said by Berkeley cannot be discounted as baseless. At the same time, an objective reality about such abstract concepts like happiness, beauty, justice and its likes are less likely to exist. This is mostly because these are highly abstract and subjective concepts. The reality in these domains differs for all beings and therefore Plato’s ideas about having an ideal world’s innate understanding and subjective as well as constantly changing realities seems convincing.

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