To Be Is to Be Perceived by Berkeley - Essay Example

From this supposition, Berkeley concludes that people should never fall in a state of worship for their own ideas, "but rather address their homage to that Eternal Invisible Mind which produces and sustains all things" (94, Emphasis Berkeley's). In that sense, Berkeley puts much emphasis on the maker, whom he refers to as the Superpower or eternal mind, rather than the objects themselves.

In a nutshell, the essence of Berkeley's supposition is that every material object is nothing more than an idea and that human minds are usually engaged in the process of perceiving all these material objects in the universe. That is, Berkeley denies the physical existence of material and claims that all objects are just ideas in the intellect (Borderland). What is astonishing in this argument is the extension Berkeley makes about the world of spirits. Although he denies the physical existence of objects, which actually exist and are tangible, he strangely asserts the existence of spirits, which can not be easily perceived by human minds (Borderland). He believes that the very presence of ideas in the minds of human beings proves the existence of spirits, as ideas can be only produced by spirits, according to Berkeley.

For Berkeley, the spirit is both an active and passive being, as it can be both a producer and receiver of ideas. This notion gave Berkeley the means through which to prove the existence of a finite spirit, who is God. Because he assumes that all material objects in the world are just ideas in our minds, Berkeley thought of the origin of these ideas and the infinite and uncontrollable power that imposes these ideas on human spirits ("The Philosophy of George Berkeley"). This infinite superpower, according to Berkeley must be the spirit of God, who is omnipotent and all-existing in order to help all human minds to perceive the innumerable objects that exist in the physical world (Borderland). Thus, Berkeley's philosophical views regarding objects and the way they are perceived by the mind drove him to prove the existence of God.

This demonstration of the existence of God helped solve some of the problems that may emerge from Berkeley's immaterialist assumption about the perception of objects. That is, for Berkeley, the existence of God explains how objects exist in reality without people's perception of them. If, for instance, there is a place where no one exists, while some physical objects exist, a debate will emerge whether the objects in this place really exist or not ("The Philosophy of George Berkeley"). However, Berkeley asserts that these objects still exist even if no one perceives them because they are still perceived by God. That is mainly because God, for Berkeley, never sleeps nor even winkle, so nothing of the material objects disappears from the material world. However, this argument, as made by Berkeley, may generate a problem regarding the dependence of God on the presence of His created objects; that is, Berkeley makes a weird co-relation between God and Matter. Berkeley puts it as follows: God just exists to perceive the physical objects in the world, which are nothing more than ideas in human minds (Borderland). Because the foundation of his philosophical idea about material objects is vague and fragile, his conclusion regarding the existence of matter and the infinite power of God is also weak and unsupported.