Heidegger

DO MATERIAL OBJECTS EXIST?
Diary Nntes on a Wet Day.

Bishop Berkeley subjectively thought
That objective existence is naught.
And he therefore conceived:
“That which is is perceived.”
Thus God’s forming power is wrought.

Before I review the ontological views of the 17th century philosophers
regarding the existential status of objects, in particular Berkeley and then
conclude with my own views on the question of the existential status of objects
let us look at how two modern philosophers define what an *object* is?

VAN INWAGEN provides his own definition for physical objects in his
Material Beings, he says:

“A thing is a material object if it occupies space and endures through time
and can move about in space and has a surface and has a mass and is made of
certain stuff or stuffs.”
[1.] Van Inwagen. 1993.

WILBUR. V. QUINE replaces the Kantian term Thing-in-itself – Ding an sich
with another term – PORTION OF SPACE-TIME which bearing in mind the sensorial
limitations of the human sensor could provide a solution to this perceptual
stalemate. But of what does this PORTION OF SPACE-TIME consist? Is it
composed of, or quarks, or superstrings, particles or waveforms – super-strings or
quarks – perhaps even Leibnizian Monads? The problem remains as yet unsolved.

LOCKE who was first a NAIVE REALIST who thought things exist as we see them
later became a REPRESENTATIVE REALIST. Locke’s REPRESENTATIONAL REALISM is
the view that the mind is a tabula rasa which receives ideas which refer to
real things. Locke believed that there are four kinds of existents: material
things, perceptions, minds, and God.
PROBLEM: If we only receive an idea – we don’t perceive the actual object.
Knowledge for Locke is the connection of successful ideas. He was also unsure
about the ontological status of *substance. External things for him can
only ever be probable.

He denied innate ideas– we are born with a tabla rasa.

LOCKE’S view was that our sensory ideas (sensations) represent material
objects in the world. We must distinguish between the mental representation of an
object, and the object itself. The mental representation is an idea (probably
a complex idea). The object in the world is not an idea but an object. The
slogan is “ideas in the mind, qualities in bodies.” Ideas can represent
qualities, as well as (entire) objects. Locke accepted the corpuscular hypothesis
– matter is composed of combinative particles solid – extended– moving or
stationary with primary and secondary qualities [colour smell.
Locke’s vagueness regarding the existence of an external world is summed up
in this response in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
“At least, he that can doubt so far, (whatever he may have with his own
thoughts,) will never have any controversy with me; since he can never be sure I
say anything contrary to his own opinion” (Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, Book IV, Chapter XI, Section 3).

SPINOZA – a SUBSTANTIAL MONIST. Used the concept *attributes* to mean
extensions and considered everything else colour, length, weight etc. as
*modes.* God is the only substance – the infinite substance. Everything that exists
is a necessary existent of God/nature. Spinoza was a pantheist [or Hentheist]
and a determinist. A chair is a *pattern* of God. Descartes problem was the
nature of the interaction between mind and body – Spinoza solved this problem
-everything is in God [parallelism]

LEIBNIZ – A monad is a simple indivisible substance which cannot be divided
into parts which are themselves substances. And there must be simple
substances, since there are composites which can be divided into parts. The
composites are nothing but collections or aggregates of simple substances. We can see
already that the dualism of simple and composite partly mirrors the dualism
of mind and body in Cartesian philosophy. For Descartes, mental substances
were indivisible, whereas material substances were always divisible. The
difference, of course, is that for Descartes material substances are not
collections of indivisible mental substances. When a material substance is subdivided,
we get smaller material substances and so on ad infinitum. The philosophy of
Leibniz is in part an attempt to deal with the incoherence of Cartesian
dualism.

BERKELEY developed the theory now known as subjective idealism. He
summarised this in his dictum, “ESSE EST PERCIPI” (”To be is to be perceived”). In
this he states that individuals can only directly know sensations and ideas of
objects, not abstractions such as “matter”. For the Bishop the sustaining
power of subjective existence was evidence for God. BERKELEY (1685-1753) was
not entirely confident that Locke’s answers to these two questions were
precisely accurate. He says we have absolutely no empirical evidence that matter
does exist since we never experience it directly (or even indirectly).
Berkeley proposed to think through these two questions as clearly as he possibly
could, following all the principles of good common sense and relying only on
what our actual experience clearly teaches us.

His TWO QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS had been:

1. Can we know that objects continue to exist even when they are not being
perceived by anyone? Locke’s answer: Well, perhaps we cannot be absolutely
certain of their continued existence during the times when they are not being
perceived, but common sense tells us that in all probability they do continue to
exist even when they are not being perceived.

2. And can we know that objects exist even when they are being perceived?
Locke’s answer: Surely no one would be so sceptical as to hold that we cannot
know objects exist when they are being directly perceived. Common sense tells
us that of course we can know that objects exist during the intervals that we
are directly perceiving them.

BERKELEY AND SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM Bishop George Berkeley believes the only
kinds of existents are perceptions and minds. He believes in God, of course (he
is an Anglican bishop, after all), but sees God as Infinite Mind. He
developed the theory now known as SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM. He summed this up in his
dictum, “ESSE EST PERCIPI” (”TO BE IS TO BE PERCEIVED”). In this he states that
individuals can only directly know SENSATIONS AND IDEAS OF OBJECTS, not
abstractions such as “matter”. For the Bishop the sustaining power of subjective
existence was evidence for God.

Berkeley had read LOCKE’S ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING and had found
it to be convincing and cogent. As regards those last two questions that
Locke had posed, however, Berkeley was unconvinced that Locke’s answers had been
adequately thought out.

Berkeley’s two books in which he articulates his examination of these
questions are THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, written in 1710 when Berkeley was
25 years old; and THREE DIALOGUES BETWEEN HYLAS AND PHILONOUS, written three
years later when he was 28. The Three Dialogues is a shorter work and many
people (though not all) find the argument as expressed in The Dialogues to be
simpler and easier to follow.

For Berkeley the question came down to what we mean when we say that
something “exists.” He analyses this question from several different angles and
concludes that all we can possibly mean when we say that a thing exists is that
the thing is being perceived. To exist, and to be perceived, for Berkeley come
down to the same thing.
To be means to be perceived, or ESSE EST PERCIPI, is Berkeley’s famous
principle.

If this is what we mean by “to be,” then clearly things exist only when they
are being perceived. (If this is true, then it would seem to raise some
difficulties; but Berkeley will have an answer for these obvious difficulties.)

Then Berkeley asks whether “physical matter” exists. His answer will clearly
be that it can be said to exist if we can perceive it immediately but that
it cannot be said to exist if we cannot perceive it. So the question comes
down to whether we can perceive physical matter or not.

When we say that we perceive physical matter, what exactly is it that we
claim to be perceiving? What exactly am I sensing? I am actually having a
complex sense perception that includes the sensations of hard, reddish, a certain
shape and size, a certain smoothness, etc. Thus, what I am actually perceiving
are sensations (which Locke, but not Berkeley, thought were caused by
qualities), but not physical matter as such.

1. God’s infinite mind, man’s finite human minds and the perceptions that
exist in those minds

Thus, for Berkeley no physical objects or physical matter exist at all. For
him what we consider to be things do continue to exist (though they are not
made of physical matter) even when no humans are directly perceiving them,
according to Berkeley. And the reason for their continued existence is that
God’s infinite mind continues to perceive these “things,” i. e., continues to
generate these perceptions, even when we do not perceive them.

OBJECTIONS OF ATHEISTS OVERTURNED. In a section of his book he boasts that
now he has shown and dismissed the doctrine of Matter or corporeal substance
to have been the main pillar and support of Scepticism, all their monstrous
systems have so visible and necessary a dependence on the existence of objects
then now this corner-stone is removed, the whole fabric cannot choose but
fall to the ground, insomuch that it is no longer worth while to bestow a
particular consideration on the absurdities of every wretched sect of Atheists.

HUME believed in only one kind of existent, namely perceptions. We usually
think of perceptions as existing somehow “inside” minds, much like furniture
exists inside a living room or beans exist inside a jar. But Hume says that
what we have done here is just made up the concept of a mind, or self, so that
we would have something for our sensations and perceptions to exist in.

KANT – The mind, aided by apriori contributions orders sense experience
into spatio-temporal sequence on which it imposes categories such as substance
and cause upon experience. Both Kant and Schopenhauer rejected “subjective
idealism” in which objects exist in no way apart from consciousness.
Schopenhauer’s point was that phenomena are all there are when it comes to objects as
objects. What stands over and above objects is something else. For Berkeley
that was only God. For Schopenhauer it was the Will as thing-in-itself. As
bodily motions are identical to acts of will, the body itself is an
objectification of the will.

MY OWN VIEW
NO! There is no Cartesian *I* separate from the bodily sensor or the
sensorium. The sensor the sensorium and the sensing are one. There is no duality
and no *mind.*

Berkeley injects an artificial duality where none exists – we do not
perceive *sensations* – *sensations* ARE *perceptions* by another name. There
exists only the perceiver and that which is perceived. There is no intermediate
retailer or neuro-physical *middle man.* Perceiving of that which is
material is NOT via the *senses* – but to become aware of something via the
*SENSORS* – our physical eyes, ears, nose, taste-buds, and the sensors with are
to found everywhere on the envelope of skin which encloses our flesh.

I am NOT claiming that the human perceiver perceives any object EXACTLY as
it exists in the world. Thus far human detectors have only developed to a
stage whereby they are adequate for our survival and lack inherent features
such as infra red and ultra violet abilities and x-ray features. We humans
have made up for this biological inability however by constructing the
technology which allows us to better detect the objects with which we share the cosmos.

Whilst the material embrained human sensor equipped with his audio-visual,
tactile, gustatory fleshy detectional sensing elements exist. Berkeley’s
so-called *sensations* and *perceptions* do not exist and merely form part of
the misapprehensions of folk pyschology.

Colour for example exists as various wavelengths of MATERIAL photonic
particles which are reflected off the surface of the object and bombard that
external element of the brain we call *our eyes.* Taste is the material
relationship between the chemicals in the food we ingest and the chemical detectors to
be found in the human mouth. Berkeley’s hypothesized “external world” is a
fiction – we humans are as much *out there* in the world as any other entity
in the cosmos.

The fact that humans have a 6 mm carapace of bone to contain the brain does
not mean that there exists a notional externality and internalisation twixt
the world and the humans which inhabit it.
The commonsensical evidence for the environment of which we ourselves form a
part is all around us. The onus of proof for the concreticity of the world
lies not with us, rather the burden of proof for the existence of a spiritual
mental realm of *mind* alone lies with the Bishop himself. We who reject his
theories can provide a million material examples – can he produce just one
evidence that a non-material realm exists? The answer is no.

But what is meant by the term *experience* matter? We gain knowledge of
material objects by direct observation or participation using our material
sensors which have served us well for thousands of years and have enabled us to
progress from the caves to cape Kennedy. Like Berkeley’s *mind* Berkeley’s
*senses* are no more than an abstractions for which not one shred of evidence
is available or has ever been produced in the whole history of mankind.

REFERENCES

Van Inwagen. Material beings. 1993. Reviewed by Eli Hirsche. Brandeis
University. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Vol. LIII. No.3.

regards,

Jud Evans.
Personal Website: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…

Posted on Saturday, January 6th, 2007 at 2:00 am
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