Atherton Coherence

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    International Phenomenological Society

    The Coherence of Berkeley's Theory of MindAuthor(s): Margaret AthertonSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Mar., 1983), pp. 389-399Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2107345Accessed: 14/07/2009 16:19

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    Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVol. XLIII, No. 3, March 1983

    T h e Coherence o f Berkeley'sT h e o r y o f M i n dMARGARET ATHERTONUniversity of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

    Berkeley's theory of mind has not, in the general run of things, com-manded much respect. In fact, it has, more often than not, been per-ceived as an embarrassment. For, even though he claimed to haveshown that our knowledge can extend no further than our ideas andthat there can be no justification for talking about material substance,Berkeley insisted on the existence of spiritual substance. Because herefused to draw the conclusion that we have no better evidence for theexistence and nature of spiritual substance than we do of material sub-stance, Berkeley has repeatedly been charged with holding a positionthat is sadly incoherent. Reid's reaction is typical. In Essays on the Intel-lectual Powers of Man (II, XII),' he writes:But the Bishop, as became his order, was unwilling to give up the world of spirits. He sawvery well, that ideas are as unfit to represent spirits as they are to represent bodies. Per-haps he saw that if we perceive only the ideas of spirits, we shall find, the same difficulty ininferring their real existence from the existence of their ideas, as we find in inferring thereal existence of matter from the idea of it; and therefore, while he gives up the materialworld in favor of the system of ideas, he gives up one half of that system in favor of theworld of spirits, and maintains that we can, without ideas, think and speak and reasonintelligibly about spirits, and what belongs to them.This impression of what Berkeley is up to has persisted. For example, inA History of Western Philosophy,z W. T. Jones says:Though the alternatives for Berkeley were really either to abandon spiritual substance orto abandon the historical plain method, he never (at least officially) gave up either. He didwhat most people do in similar circumstances - first he tried to patch the matter up,whenthatfailed,he justwent quietlyawayandlet it stand.

    I Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, edited by Baruch Brody (Cambridge:M.I.T. Press, i969), pp. i98-99.' W. T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Harcourt, Brace andWorld,Inc., 195z), p. 76z.

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    What Jones' reaction makes plain is that Berkeley's theory, on thisaccount, is not only inconsistent, but plainly and on the face of it incon-sistent. We must believe that Berkeley's concern is merely to assert hisbelief in the existence of spiritual substance and the nonexistence ofmaterial substance at the expense of cogency and coherence. As aninterpretation of what any moderately intelligent person is doing, this isnot only unattractive but unlikely. The case for Berkeley's inconsistencycan only be made, however, by attributing to him an argument for spir-itual substance that mirrors arguments he rejects for material substance.So long as it is assumed that he is, in fact making such an argument, anyattempt to save him from inconsistency will fail. But I think it can beshown that he does not make such a problematic argument, and that, infact, arguments for the existence of spiritual substance are available tohim that are perfectly consistent with the theory of ideas as Berkeleyunderstands it.3IBerkeley's position will be taken to be inconsistent if it is assumed thatthe reasons he gives in support of the existence of spiritual substanceparallel the arguments for material substance which he has refuted.Those who accuse him of inconsistency take his argument for spiritualsubstance to be something like this:I am immediately acquainted with various states of mind or ideas. To exist, these ideasmust depend upon something else which is not an idea. Therefore, our ideas must be sup-

    There have been a number of attempts to rescue Berkeley from inconsistency. Manyhave failed through falling into a trap of attributing to him some version of the argu-ment that leads to inconsistency. This is true of S. C. Brown, "Berkeley on the Unity ofthe Self," Reason and Reality, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures, vol. 5, 1970-71(London: Macmillan and St. Martins Press, 197z); George Pitcher, Berkeley (Londonand Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977); James Cornman, "Theoretical Terms,Berkleian Notions and Minds," in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of HumanUnderstanding! George Berkeley with Critical Essays, edited by C. M. Turbayne(Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, Inc., 1970); "A Reconstruction of Berke-ley: Minds and Physical Objects as Theoretical Entities," Ratio, 13 (1971). Exceptionshave been, I. C. Tipton, "Berkeley's View of Spirit," in New Studies in Berkeley's Phi-losophy, edited by Warren E. Steinkraus (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,i966); Berkeley, the Philosophy of Immaterialism (London: Methuen, 1974); andGeorge Pappas, "Ideas, Minds and Berkeley," American Philosophical Quarterly, 17/3(i980). A more heroic move has been to deny that Berkeley actually believed in spirit-ual substance at all. For a defense of this claim, see Robert Muehlmann, "Berkeley'sOntology and the Epistemology of Idealism," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 8(1978). In the light of Berkeley's repeated assertions to the contrary, however, thisview seems unlikely.

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    ported in their existence by a spiritual substance with which I am not acquainted butwhich must exist so that my ideas may depend upon it.That is, if this were Berkeley's view of the matter, then he would beassertingthat I am entitled to infer the existence of a spiritual substanceof which I am not aware, in order to account for its effects in me, myideas, of which I am aware. But Berkeley's arguments against materialsubstance have specifically blocked inferences of the sort that go beyondthe bounds of our ideas. Since all that we are acquainted with are ideasand an idea can be like nothing but an idea, we can give no content tothe concept of a substance underlying ideas, but which is not an idea.Berkeley's counterarguments will apply equally well to a spiritual sub-stance as to a material substance, since, in either case, the doings of thealleged substance that gives rise to ideas are ones of which we must lackideas. So Berkeley's defense of spiritual substance can be refuted by hisown attack on material substance.

    Berkeley's inconsistency, on this account, stems from his alleged will-ingness to use the presence of our ideas in us as evidence for the exis-tence of a substance on which these ideas depend. This is the move that,Berkeley has argued, a proper understanding of the nature of ideas willblock with respect to material substance. But there is a passage in whichBerkeley clearly denies that he is using an argument of this sort withrespect to spiritual substance, and points out that he is using a differentone instead. Unfortunately, Berkeley's attempt to deflect criticism withthis passage has been unsuccessful. I believe this is in large part becausethe argument he claims to be using in support of spiritual substance is adifficult one to understand. Its difficulties notwithstanding, a fair-minded interpretation of what Berkeley is doing must be one that takesthis passage into account. I think in fact, once this passage is taken seri-ously, it is possible to make out quite a different argument for spiritualsubstance than the one that is alleged to lead him into inconsistency.IIIn a passage added to later editions of Three Dialogues between Hylasand Philonous, Berkeley has Hylas suggest that, since the concept ofspiritual substance must be meaningless if the concept of material sub-stance is meaningless, a mind must actually be a system of floatingideas. Hylas' worries here are similar to the ones that have led to thechargeof inconsistency that has so often been leveled at Berkeley:that ifhe had been willing to apply to minds the conclusions he had drawnwith respect to bodies, then he would have been left, like Hume, with an

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    because we lack ideas of it. Instead, he claims that the concept of mate-rial substance is of something that cannot exist, for nothing inconsistentcan exist.5 To make the argument that spiritual substance does not suf-fer from the defects of material substance, Berkeley has to suppose thatwe are in a position to know some things about minds that reveal theirspecial suitability to be agents. We must have access to, or ways ofknowing, not just that there is mental substance, but we must alsoknow something about it as well.6 Thus, Berkeley's argument in favorof spiritual substance cannot merely be that there must be a"something" on which our ideas depend, since he is saying that ourexperience of minds allows us to make sense of the claim that mindssupport ideas, while no sense can be given to the claim that matter sup-ports anything.

    Berkeley's case for a lack of parity between material and spiritualsubstance depends upon the claim that the doings of spiritual substanceare available to conscious introspection. There are several difficulties,however, that can be raised about this claim. The first is that people arenot clear about exactly what it is that Berkeley claims to be conscious ofand that he identifies as spiritual substance. They find themselves agree-ing with Hume, that when they look within themselves, they find vari-ous ideas, but not anything else on which ideas depend. What is it, then,that Berkeley found that Hume missed? Berkeley's claim that what weare acquainted with are our ideas suggests, moreover, that we shouldnot expect to be aware of anything except a train of individual ideas. Sowhen Berkeley insists that we have notions and not ideas of spiritualsubstance, it seems to compound his inconsistencies. It seems as thoughBerkeley is using the word 'notion' to stand for what represents ourminds to ourselves, simply to duck the limitations he has announcedwith respect to ideas. If Berkeley is taken at face value when he says weknow there is a spiritual substance because we are conscious of it, thenhis theory escapes the charge of inconsistency. But then it becomes nec-

    In 3DIII, (p. z3z) Berkeley says: ". . .1 do not deny the existence of material sub-stance, merely because I have no notion of it, but because the notion of it is inconsis-tent, or in other words, because it is repugnant that there should be a notion of it.Many things, for ought I know, may exist, whereof neither I nor any other man hath orcan have any idea or notion whatsoever. But then those things must be possible, that is,nothing inconsistent must be included in their definition."6 For these reasons, I think Brown and Pitcher are wrong in proposing that Berkeleymeant to suggest that we intuit the necessary existence of a spiritual substance to serveas a cause of our ideas. In fact Pitcher himself points out that it is hard to reconcile hisinterpretation of Berkeley, which ought to leave the essence of mind 'unknown andunknowable' with Berkeley's claim that we know the essence of mind. Pitcher, op. cit.,p. zzz.

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    essary to show what it is, in addition to having ideas, that he thinks weare aware of. He cannot be using the word 'notion' to stand for somekind of inferential knowledge we have of spiritual substance. No ver-sion of Berkeley's theory of spiritual substance that takes it to be an"unknown somewhat" can be squared with the argument from ThreeDialogues. But Berkeley's position could be made a good deal morepalatable if we could understand why he thinks that spiritual substance,that on which ideas depend, is a part of our conscious experience.IIIThe charge of inconsistency arises because it is clear that a commitmentto the theory of ideas along the lines Berkeley envisages ought to ruleout the possibility of a substance, mental or nonmental, on which ideascould be said to depend, but which lies outside the bounds of experi-ence. But it is equally clear that Berkeley is not prepared to countenanceany appeals to an extra-experiential support for our ideas. In PHK I. 7(p. 44), Berkeley writes:Now for an idea to exist in an unperceiving thing, is a manifest contradiction; for to havean idea is all one as to perceive: that therefore wherein color, figure, and the like qualitiesexist, must perceive them; hence it is clear there can be no unthinking substance or sub-stratum of those ideas.We could talk as much as we like about the pushings, pullings, or firingsthat we might suppose to be going on in a material substance withoutsupplying anything that would amount to an account of the perceivingof red. An idea cannot depend upon something nonmental. Nor wouldBerkeley be prepared to say that my ideas depend upon something in methat is mental, but of which I am unaware. This is because Berkeley iscommitted to the view that there can be nothing mental, as an idea issomething mental, of which the possessor is unaware. The ideas we areaware of cannot depend upon ideas we are not aware of, for we cannothave ideas without being aware of them.

    That we cannot think of spiritual substance as something that is bothmental and nonexperiential follows from Berkeley's commitment to thetheory of ideas. It is a central tenet of the theory of ideas which he hadadopted from earlier thinkers such as Descartes and Locke that thereare no ideas of which we are not conscious. The theory holds that forany mental event to take place is for an idea to be in the mind, and thatan idea is not in the mind unless the possessor is aware of it. Both Des-cartes and Locke support this view. Descartes, for example, defines'thought' as "a word that covers everything that exists in us in such away that we are immediately conscious of it," while an idea is "the form

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    of any thought, that form by the immediate awareness of which I amconscious of that said thought."7 Thus, notoriously, when Descartesdenies that animals can think, he is denying that they can be conscious.And Locke agrees with this connection drawn between having an ideaand being aware of it: "thinking," he says, "consists in being consciousthat one thinks." (ECHU, z.i.ig)8 Thus, in adopting the theory ofideas, Berkeley would be taking over a view about the connectionbetween mentality and consciousness.

    It is undeniable that Berkeley took this view seriously. He is, as is wellknown, prepared to argue that the existence of ideas depends upon theperceiving of them. In 3DI, he develops a much more complete accountthan any put forward by Descartes or Locke to explain why the occur-rence of a mental event just is the awareness of it. This point, he thinks,is easiest to grasp with respect to sensations like pain or heat. I say that Iam warm or in pain only insofar as I am aware of the warmth or thepain. I will also imagine that the only other things of whom I can saythat they are warm or in pain are those who, like me, are also feelingwarm or feeling pain. The particular warm feeling or the throbbing painare simply ways of perceiving and cannot exist in anything lacking thecapacity to be aware. The same sort of argument, Berkeley thinks, canbe made about any sort of qualitative presentation; thus, looking red,tasting lemony, or feeling hard are also just ways of perceiving. We cangive no further account of ideas, as qualitative experiences, except tosay this is how things are perceived by us, as red, lemony, or hard. So itis in perceiving alone that we have ideas, items with a particularqualita-tive content; for unless someone is perceiving red or warm or pain,there can be nothing with these characteristic qualities. It will make nosense at all to suppose that first there could be an idea of warmth andthen we could have it. The theory of ideas commits one to the view thatthe qualities of which we are aware when having ideas are intrinsicallysubjective; they are the way things are perceived by us.

    Berkeley's defense of the claim that the existence of ideas dependsupon the perceiving of them shows that he wants to identify ideas asways of perceiving, not as discriminable mental objects.9 On thisaccount, it becomes less puzzling to see how he could have thoughtintrospection to reveal more than a bundle of Humean ideas. Berkeley's

    7 Replies to Objections, II, edited by Haldane and Ross, vol. II (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity ress,1973), p. 5z.8 All referencesto An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (henceforth abbreviated

    ECHU), edited by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).9 For a good discussion of reasons for preferring an adverbial analysis of Berkeley'saccount of ideas, see Pitcher, op. cit.

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    arguments have been directed at showing that we do in fact know some-thing about the support for ideas. The existence of my idea dependsupon my awareness of them. It is not, after all, ideas that have theproperty of being conscious, but minds or people who are conscious ofthem. Berkeley's picture of ideas is not that which underlies a Humeanbundle theory. Ideas, on his account, are not independent andfree-floating objects of thought. So introspection does not reveal theseownerless objects,'" but instead, a self, having or being aware of all itsdifferent thoughts. In the passage quoted above, from 3DIII, Berkeleysays that what I am conscious of is that "I, one and the same self, per-ceive both colors and sounds." On Berkeley's account, the support forideas is something present in immediate experience. For, if it is impossi-ble to have an idea except as a way of perceiving, it will also be impos-sible to have an idea without being aware of this perceiving. I cannottaste an apple except insofar as I am aware of tasting that apple, and soit is impossible to suppose that the tasting could occur and not my beingaware of my tasting. Part of what I am aware of is the contribution thatI, as a perceiving thing, am making to each mental event, namely myawareness. The support for each idea is an integral part of each mentalevent.

    Berkeley does not think that the best way of capturing the fact that Iam aware of the support for my ideas is to say I have an idea of self, orspiritual substance, for this is what enables me to have ideas at all. Hethinks it is clearer to say I have a notion of spiritual substance. It isworth pointing out that Berkeley thinks it is appropriate to express theunderstanding we have of other terms such as "force" or "grace" thatare also terms for agents, by saying we have notions of them."'Notion' is not a word invented to get him out of difficulties in talkingabout minds. He suggests the use of the term, 'notion,' because hethinks people have been misled by the word 'idea' into drawing someunacceptable conclusions. Berkeley thinks people have made mysteriesabout minds first by supposing it is possible to get an idea of mind andthen failing to find any. But the absence of such ideas does not comeabout because we lack access to the mind. It is not, for example, as if welack appropriate sense organs. In PHK I, I36, Berkeley says it is a mis-take to try to imagine a new kind of sensing, directed to mental events,? Barry Stroud suggests that it is the account of ideas as ownerless objects of thought

    that gave rise to Hume's second thoughts about his theory of personal identity. Hume(London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 140.

    I See Alciphron, 7. For a good account of Berkeley's introduction of the term 'notion'into his thought, see A. D. Woozley, "Berkeley's Doctrine of Notions and Theory ofMeaning," Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. XIV, No. 4 (October, 1976).

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    for this would not appreciably alter the situation. A new sense organcould provide a new range of ideas, but we will still have them in thesame old way, through awareness. And it is this awareness, and not thenew ideas, that would deserve to be called access to the mind. There-fore, Berkeley refuses to apply the word 'idea' to the access we have tomental activity in each act of thought. But in saying that what we havewhen we reflect on our acts of mind are not ideas but notions, he simplymeans that we can talk sensibly about minds because we can't thinkwithout being in direct contact with the act of thinking.

    On this interpretation, a good deal of what Berkeley has to say aboutminds is a natural consequence of the "new theory of ideas" he tookover from Locke and Descartes. Both Locke and Descartes struggled toexpress this same view that all thinking carries with it the awareness ofthe thinking process. In ECHU 2.27.9, Locke says: "it being impossibleto perceive without perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, hear,smell, taste, feel, meditate or will anything, we know that we do so." Ithink this is the same point Descartes is making in a letter to Mer-senne,IZwhere he writes: "For we cannot will anything without know-ing that we will it, nor could we know this without an idea, but I do notclaim that the idea is different from the action itself." That is, the act ofwilling is one in which what is willed is put before the mind, so thatwilling, like other mental events, occurs only in our being aware of thiswilling. Berkeley would object only to the way in which Descartes hasexpressed this point, preferring to say that what we are aware of whenwe are aware of thinking is a notion, not an idea. This is, presumably,for the same sorts of reasons that Descartes warned that such an ideawould not be "different from the action itself." Indeed, Descartes else-where seems sensitive to the sorts of concerns that led Berkeley to sug-gest the distinction between ideas and notions. In the Third Meditation,Descartes distinguished between ideas, which are "like images ofthings" and "other thoughts, that take different forms: when I will,when I fear, when I affirm, when I deny, there is always something Igrasp as the subject of my thought, yet I comprehend something that ismore than the mere likeness of a thing."'3 Berkeley shares, then, withDescartes and Locke, the view that thoughts cannot occur without ourbeing aware of thinking itself. His claim that I am aware of spiritualsubstance seems to follow from an-allegiance to a particular approach

    Descartes, Philosophical Letters, translated and edited by Anthony Kenny (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 93.

    I3 Meditations on First Philosophy, translated by Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis:HackettPublishingCo., 1979), pp. z4-z5.

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    to the theory of ideas and to the claim that the way we have ideas is onlyby being aware of them.IVThe view that Berkeley's theory is inconsistent depends upon anassumption that it is inconsistent to suppose that we can know mindsany differently or any better than the way we know bodies, or that wecan say something different or something more about spirits than aboutmatter. But in fact Berkeley was working within a tradition that sawstrong asymmetries in our knowledge of mind and of matter. Des-cartes, after all, was at pains to point out that "If I judge thatwax existsfrom the fact that I see it, certainlyit follows much more evidently that Imyself exist, from the fact that I see the wax."'4 Berkeley shares withhis predecessors the attempt to explain the qualitative nature of the waythings look to us by referring such qualities to something ideational,dependent upon mental acts of awareness. Berkeley's views can be seen,moreover, as an attempt to render explicit the implications of the claimthat thinking consists solely in the consciousness of thinking. So it isBerkeley, who is committed to a special access to the mind, who is morenearly consistent with this position than is, for example, Locke, whosays we have as good a reason for believing in material substance as wedo in immaterial substance.Nor is it necessary to assume, as does Reid, that the only positionconsistent with the theory of ideas is Hume's. It is true that in Hume'shands the theory of ideas turned into a theory about the relationshipsamong or associations of atomic mental "objects." As such, it seemedto Hume thatAs our idea of any body, a peach, for instance is only that of a particular taste, color,figure, size, consistency etc., so our idea of any mind is only that of particularperceptions,without the notion of anything we call substance, either simple or compound.'But in concentrating on ideas as the objects of thought, Hume neglectedan important feature of psychological states, that they are experiencesof selves or minds. And Hume himself found difficulties in giving anaccount, satisfactory to him, that could explain, in a manner consistentwith the theory of ideas, why some set of ideas belongs to the samemind. Berkeley's account differs from Hume's because, in Berkeley'seyes, to say there can be nothing in the mind except ideas, is not to say

    I4 Meditation II, p. zz.I5 David Hume, An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature, in Hume on Human Nature

    and Understanding, edited by Antony Flew (New York: Collier, i96z), p. z98.

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    that, in having ideas, we are not aware of our "having" of them. Thus,it is possible for Berkeley to conceive of a theory of mind as a theoryabout the doings of an active, perceiving principle, rather than a theoryabout the relations and resemblances among ideas.'6 Clearly, there is agreat deal more that could be said about the kind of theory that emergesfrom Berkeley's approach to mind. But, whatever else may be saidabout Berkeley's theory of mind, it deserves to take a place as a fullyintegrated part of his overall theory, rather than an ad hoc attempt tosalvage convictions about spirit he was unable to give up.'7i6 Indeed, he theoryof The New Theoryof Vision s just such a theory.I7 I am grateful to Robert Schwartz, David Rosenthal and C. M. Turbayne for their help-

    ful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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