RADICAL IMMATERIALISM

March 15th 2005

This is derived from a philosophical scheme associated with Bishop George Berkeley - an Anglican of the eighteenth century. What follows is not, I admit, derived from a close reading of GB's originals but merely upon a number of informed commentaries upon them. I may have got him all wrong - look him up for yourself and you may, or may not, find that what I have to say is of some value to you.

The particular attraction of immaterialism, from an atheist standpoint, is that it is one of the few major philosophies that logically require belief in God. Even Christianity does not require that belief; there is a variant of Christianity called non-realist theism. Among the tenets of this view are that "God is not a being but a moral focus" ....... "God is the sum of our values" (my emphasis, ES) ...... "Religion is a human construction ". (There is no reason why there should not be non-realist theism among Jews, Muslims etc ..... but that is by the way).

The non-realist theists are, objectively, atheists; it is simply that they regard 'god' as a necessary invention (unlike 'ordinary' atheists who regard 'god' as a needless invention that can indeed be a harmful one).

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Before considering immaterialism let us examine the ordinary "Plain View" taken - consciously or otherwise - by most people all of the time and all people some of the time. This PV comprises four main elements.

1) it is empiricist - it assumes that all, or at least most, of what we claim to know is based upon the evidence of our senses (enhanced, of course, by such instruments as microscopes, telescopes etc.).

2) it is realist - it assumes that there is something real 'out there' which our senses detect and the 'something' is not simply a mere dream (although we can and do dream in more ways than one).

3) it is materialist - it assumes that this real observable world comprises material objects and their interactive relationships. There is, we assume, no necessary limit to the complexity of matter and material processes. 'Materialism' is not used, in philosophy, as it is in debased colloquial parlance, as synonymous with greed, consumerism, hedonism and other supposed evils that the comfortable go on about.

It is also understood that matter and energy are integral to one another (Einstein's famous equation) so perhaps we should speak of 'menergy' - but then we would be pilloried by militant feminists. You can't win!

4) it is optionally theist - it allows for, but does not insist upon, the belief that there is a creator-god supremely sustaining the whole cosmic show. Some people find this god idea irresistible while some find it a tiresome distraction from the pursuit of real truth about the real world.

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Briefly, GB accepts 1) and 2) but regards 3) as categorically wrong - matter is an illusion according to GB - and 4) theism is absolutely mandatory. Without God, GB's immaterialism simply collapses.

GB's guiding principle is, in Latin, esse est percipi - which means that 'to be is to be perceived'. The existence of things and processes consists solely in their being perceived.

On the face of it, this notion is just plain daft. Given immaterialism as sketched so far, if I put a joint of beef in a hot oven to roast it, then go away leaving the house uninhabited for a an hour or two, then during that time, the joint and the oven and much else will cease to exist because nobody is perceiving them by sight or smell or any other sensory means. In fact, when I return home, lo, the joint is cooked and so it must have existed and undergone the process of roasting while unperceived.

GB gets over this by saying that the whole business of the joint and its being cooked is perceived by God - who eternally perceives all that is perceptible. Hence non-optional theism is integral to immaterialism. Reality is none other than the complex of ideas in the Mind of God and it is God's self-conscious omnipresence that confers continuity in a way that our limited presence would render impossible. All things and processes are sufficiently explained as thoughts in God's mind - items of God's chosen mental furniture.

The total dependence of immaterialism upon the god idea has been summed up by Ronald Knox as follows:

There was a young man who said,"God,
I find it exceedingly odd
That the tree that I see
Continues 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.
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Immaterialism is thus both totally implausible (counter intuitive) and totally unfalsifiable. It is no surprise that GB formulated immaterialism while a young man and, subsequently, left little or no philosophical work to his name. He became an educationalist, an Anglican Bishop and a renowned nutter who believed 'tar water' to be a panacea.

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It is interesting to observe that this immaterialism is quite alien to Christianity as ordinarily understood. (Anglican Bishops are no strangers to non-Christianity but that is by the way).

Consider three pillars of Christian doctrine - Creation, Miracles and Individual Moral Responsibility and see how immaterialism (at least as set out above) responds to them:

Creation

The standard Biblical account of creation is 'God said let there be xyz and there was xyz'. The clear implication of this is that creation was an act as well as an idea. Immaterialism says that it was only an idea, a thought in God's mind; creation would then be not a Big Act but merely a Big Idea.

Miracles

The standard account, in the monotheistic religions anyway, says that God made the Creation according to certain rules - discoverable, at least to some extent, as the Laws of Nature. Mundane events are simply instances of these Laws in action. But God has the ability to countermand any of these Laws and when He does so then an event at variance with the lows of nature takes place; such events are termed 'miracles'.

For example, Jesus walking on land is a mundane event - almost all of us can all do it - while Jesus walking on the water is not like that. It was an event, if event it were, that could only happen by divine suspension of the relevant laws of nature. The mundane and the miraculous are, in normal religion, categorically different.

In immaterialism, there is only God's corpus of thoughts and He can think of Jesus walking on water as easily as thinking that Jesus can walk on land. The categorical difference between the mundane and the miraculous simply collapses in the immaterialist scenario.

Individual Moral Responsibility

At this point I have to suggest 'not in front of the children' - what ta forlorn hope!

I have a friend, a lady friend, with whom I enjoy philosophical discussion. We have come to like and to respect each other and, one day, we were discussing, and agreeing about, what we perceive to be the sick screwed up view of sex that is prevalent in society.

Oddly, you may be amazed to learn, we did not, and pretty certainly, will not, strip off and leap to each other on the nearest convenient surface.

Our conventional (or do I mean unconventional ?) reticence was, and remains, a matter of choice on our part - perhaps preference, perhaps prudence, perhaps principle. Anyhow, it was/is up to us - and we didn't and most probably we won't.

In the immaterialist scenario the question was not one of our choice but of God's Thought. Had He thought of us as being 'at it like ferrets' then that's what we would have been doing and bang (forgive the pun) would go Individual Moral Responsibility.

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It is worth noting that Dean Swift's above reported comment, quoted in a well known textbook, is fallacious. Immaterialism has nothing to do with walking through closed doors; it says that the person and the closed door are both neither more nor less than thoughts in the mind of God and if God thinks that a man walks through a closed door then, ipso facto, he does do so. Reality is, according to GB it appears, neither more nor less than the total mental processes of God.

Dr Johnson made a somewhat similar claim against immaterialism. When kicking a big stone, the good doctor said "I refute it thus". Obviously this is no refutation whatever - if Dr Johnson, the stone and the kick are all immaterialist thoughts in the mind of God then the kick is not a refutation of GB's thesis. There is circularity in Dr Johnson's claim.

Berkeley's theory is unfalsifiable by such ploys; it is however deeply counter intuitive.

It is important to atheists, and to all others, that 'counter intuitive' is not synonymous with 'false'.

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The Ronald Knox quotation and the scanned comment
on immaterialism are both taken from
PHILOSOPHY
by R H Popkin and A Stroll, ISBN 0-7506-0480-8
(a very useful textbook)

ES
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