Lee Corbin wrote:
>
>Chris writes
>
> > >>Samuel Johnson did refute Berkeley.
> >
> > The main thrust of Berkley's argument is to show that sensory perception
>is
> > indirect, and therefore the existence of a material cause for those
> > perceptions is an unjustified inference in contravention of Occam's
>razor.
> > The argument that the look, texture, smell, taste and sound of an object
>are
> > apprehended indirectly is successful in my opinion, and I don't feel any
>need
> > to defend it unless someone really thinks a defence is required.
>
>Do *you* contend that the existence of material causes for your
>perceptions is unjustified? Good grief.
How do you define "material causes"? It seems to me you are conflating
idealism with solipsism, or the idea that the outside universe doesn't have
any existence outside of my perception of it, and that there are no
objective truths about external reality outside of my subjective ideas about
it. But even though I lean towards idealism, I certainly believe that other
minds (or 'observer-moments') have an independent existence outside of my
perceptions of them when I interact with them (with 'interactions' explained
in terms of different oberver-moments affecting one another's measure,
perhaps); I see other minds "from the outside", but they have an independent
experience of themselves "from the inside". And I also lean towards
panpsychism, which would imply that everything we label as a physical
process can really be understood as just another observer-moment (perhaps a
very simple one) viewed "from the outside". So rocks, stars, quarks, etc.
would have just as much of an independent existence as other people, in
terms of this hypothesis. I suggest checking out the article on
"Naturalistic Panpsychism" at
http://www.hedweb.com/lockwood.htm which gives
a pretty good summary of the idea, although I don't agree with every aspect
of his version of it.
Jesse
Received on Fri Jul 29 2005 - 22:55:41 PDT