Berkeley's Metaphysics by Robert G. Muehlmann

Author:Robert G. Muehlmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press

The sensation interpretation of sensible qualities has it that the nature of sensible qualities determines the principles that can be truly asserted of them. According to it, because sensible qualities are sensations on a par with feelings of pleasure and pain, neither they nor any combination of them can exist unperceived, exist in an unperceiving thing, be other than they appear to be, or combine with unsensed qualities to form objects that are not wholly perceived. According to it, the inactivity and senselessness of sensibles can be established because they are not perceived to perceive, think, or be active and because (MQT) they have only those qualities that they are perceived to have. The manifest qualities thesis is warranted for Berkeley not because sensibles are immediately perceived, are collections of sensible qualities, or cannot exist unperceived, but because sensibles are sensations, that is, because they are the kind of things they are.

There is consensus that essential to Berkeley's metaphysics is his immaterialism, his rejection of material substance. Whether his immaterialism rests upon idealistic principles is a central interpretive issue, perhaps the most important interpretive issue. In this essay I have argued that Berkeley insisted that sensibles do not perceive, think, or act, and relied on the manifest qualities thesis to secure that conclusion. I have also argued that principles compatible with a nonidealistic interpretation of Berkeleian sensibles are insufficient to secure MQT, whereas at least one idealistic interpretation of sensibles, the sensation theory, does provide a foundation for it. This essay, therefore, is an argument that Berkeley's immaterialism is inherently idealistic.

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