George Berkeley Quotes on Knowledge
Berkeley's Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713) develop the most rigorous early modern idealism. The argument for esse est percipi — to be is to be perceived — proceeds from the empiricist premise (shared with Locke) that the immediate objects of knowledge are ideas to the conclusion that the supposed material substance underlying ideas is an unintelligible postulate, since whatever could be said for it could equally be said for the ideas alone. The continuance of the world unperceived by any finite mind depends on its continual perception by God; the resulting framework is intended to defend ordinary common sense and Christian theology together against the threat of materialism and skepticism Berkeley located in Locke and his successors.
Quotes
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“To be is to be perceived.”
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, §3 -
“Few men think, yet all will have opinions.”
Philonous to Hylas. The Second Dialogue. This appears in a passage first added in the third edition, (1734) -
Attributed to George Berkeley:
“It is impossible that I should conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it.”
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“And what are these same evanescent Increments? They are neither finite Quantities nor Quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the Ghosts of departed Quantities?”
quoted in C. K. Raju, Cultural Foundations of Mathematics , Vol. 10, Pt. 4 : The Nature of Mathematical Proof and the Transmission of the Calculus from India to Europe (India: Pearson Longman, 2007) -
“For no one's authority ought to rank so high as to set a value on his words and terms even though nothing clear and determinate lies behind them.”
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