Why does sensory perception need God’s intervention? : some remarks on Berkeley’s philosophy

Recenzowane materiały z konferencji naukowej: Nowożytne rozważania o naturze ludzkiej, dn. 5-6 grudnia 2008 r., Kraków. Strona wydawcy: https://www.wuj.pl

According to Berkeley, God’s activity explains human sensory perception. Berkeley draws heavily on Descartes’ and Malebranche’s theories explaining the nature of human cognition. In his Meditation VI Descartes juxtaposes two claims concerning the causes of perceptions of sensible things (ideae rerum sensibilium): that cause is a body or a corporeal nature (corpus sive natura corporea), or 'it is God, or some creature more noble than a body’ (vel certe Deus est, vel aliqua creatura corpore nobilior). He rejects the second claim as incompatible with God’s veracity and the God-given human propensity to believe that those perceptions (ideas) of sensible things arise from corporeal objects. At the same time, Descartes also argues that with the help of our intellect we conceive the extension (and any object of pure mathematics) of corporeal objects clearly and distinctly (without being acted upon by them), and therefore we can be sure of their existence, even though they may be different from what we perceive by the senses. The object of intellectual cognition (any mathematical qualities and/or eternal truths) is intelligible because it is not dependent on the sensory cognition of sensible material things. The main and unsolved problem in Descartes’ philosophy is the mutual interaction of ontologically incompatible res cogitans and res extensa. Malebranche and other occasionalists did not succeed in fi nding a solution to this problem, and so they put forward theories claiming that because both substances are ontologically incompatible, God’s intervention is necessary to achieve a correlation between them. Malebranche developed a version of Descartes’ second claim, a hypothetical immaterialism, in the 5th part of the first of his Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion, and excluded any possibility of material extension acting upon the human mind. Berkeley’s solution to the incompatibility problem was different. Reinterpreting Malebranche’s hypothetical materialism, he assumed that only minds or spirits (including God) are real substances, and matter is non-existent. Ideas or sensory objects and their perceptions are evoked in human minds by other minds, and fi rst of all by God. Minds are all of the same ontological status, and for that reason Deus as res cogitans can act upon res cogitantes. Thus the incompatibility problem is solved, or rather it simply disappears. Hence God is the keystone of Berkeley’s philosophical system and does not function as deus ex machina, which in the case of occasionalism is introduced into the theory to save it (ineffectively) from inconsistencies. According to Descartes, what is unchanging, eternal, i.e. ‘a determinate nature or essence or form’ - in this case the extension of sensible material things - is ‘perceived by the mind alone.’ The mind, therefore, is able to perceive what is of its own nature. Berkeley in a sense continues this line of argument and claims that mind is able to perceive only what has a mental (spiritual), non-material nature, i.e., what is evoked by God or other minds. (Citations from Descartes’ Meditations in J. Bennett’s translation, 2010-2015, http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/descmed.pdf)