Berkeley's Master Argument Andre Gallois The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 1. (Jan., 1974), pp. 55-69. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108%28197401%2983%3A1%3C55%3ABMA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R The Philosophical Review is currently published by Cornell University.
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BERKELEY'S MASTER ARGUMENT
I
N THE first dialogue of the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, the following famous argument occurs which I shall
refer to as the master argument. Philonous: ". . . If you can conceive it possible for any mixture or combination of qualities, or any sensible object whatever, to exist without the mind, then I will grant it actually to be so." Hylas: "If it comes to that the point will soon be decided. What more easy to conceive of a tree or a house existing by itself, independent of, and unperceived by any mind whatsoever? I do at this moment conceive them existing after that manner." Philonous: "How say you Hylas, can you see a thing which is at the same time unseen?" Hylas: "No, that were a contradiction." Philonous: "Is it not as great a contradiction to talk of conceiving a thing which is unconceived?" Hylas: "It is." Philonous: "The tree or house therefore which you think of is conceived by you." Hylas: "How should it be otherwise?" Philonous: "And what is conceived by you is surely in the mind." Hylas: "Without question, that which is conceived is in the mind." Philonous: "How then came you to say, you conceived a house or tree existing independent, and out of all minds whatsoever?" Hylas: "That I own was an oversight."l Berkeley in the person of Philonous appears to attach considerable weight to this argument. I t is introduced with the words "But to pass by all that hath hitherto been said, and reckon it for nothing I a m content to put the whole on this issue." A like declaration precedes a similar argument in the Principles, which indicates that what, for this reason, I have called the "master argument" deserves more than the cursory attention that is usually given to it. As it is presented in the Dialogues the master argument seems Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, T . E. Jessop edition, p. 55
200.
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singularly weak. I t is tempting to dismiss it on the grounds that Berkeley commits the fallacy of moving from "necessarily whatever is conceived is conceived" to "whatever is conceived is so necessarily." This charge can be restated in more detail as follows: Hylas does not content himself with the bare assertion that something might exist unconceived by anyone, but proceeds to give examples, "a tree or a house" which he conceived of existing "after that manner." Now the crucial step in the argument appears to be this. Any example of an unconceived object which Hylas cites in order to establish his claim that such objects might, or indeed do, exist is automatically deprived of that status by the very fact of Hylas' citing it as such. Let us grant for the moment that the proposition that some unconceived object exists can be justifiably asserted only if it is possible to mention particular examples of unconceived objects. Further let us grant that mentioning an object entails conceiving it. Conceding this much in no way tells against the logical possibility of there being an unconceived object. At most we have no justification for believing that such objects do exist, which does not by itself tell against believing that they might. Philonous has gone no way toward showing that the possibility of something existing unconceived is ruled out. Still the master argument would be important, to say the least, if it demonstrated an epistemological restriction to things which are in the mind in some stronger sense than simply being the object of some mental state. Berkeley appears, however, to give no reason for thinking that Philonous' claim "And what is conceived by you is surely in the mind" is not either tautological or false. Another weakness of the Dialogues version of the master argument is that Berkeley conflates thinking of or about something with thinking that something is the case. Hylas contends that he can conceive of a tree existing "independently o f . . . any mind whatsoever." O n the one hand, if conceiving of an object having a certain property cannot be safely identified with thinking that an object of that kind has that property, then the master argument fails to get off the ground. I t would then be open to Hylas to maintain that, though he may not be able to conceive of trees existing independent of the mind, this is compatible with him thinking that there are such. O n the other hand, if conceiving of
BERKELEY'S MASTER ARGUMENT
a n object having a property can be equated in the argument with thinking that objects of that kind have that property, then we can provisionally outline the master argument as follows. Let p be the proposition that there are trees unconceived by anyone. Then the desired conclusion is : I t is not possible that p. That is :
(A) -(possibly p) which is supposed to follow from: (3x) (x believes p) entails -p. Hylas believes p. (3) (3x) (x believes p ) .
(I)
(2)
As we have seen, this fails to establish (A) unless Berkeley is allowed the further unargued-for premise: possibly p entails (possibly (3x) (x believes p & p ) ) . I n any case, several crucial steps are clearly missing from the argument. Without some filling in, what reason is there to accept ( I ) ? I t is at this point that the distinction between thinking that and thinking about becomes important, for only the latter cognitive state can take a non-propositional object. Put another way, if I say that I am thinking about a tree, then, if asked, I should be able to produce an identifying description of the tree about which I claim to be thinking-for example, the tallest tree in my garden. O n the other hand, I could perfectly well think that there is a tree which, say, no one has ever perceived without commiting myself to producing on demand an identifying description of a particular unperceived tree. Philonous persuades Hylas that there is something which is the object of Hylas's thought which Hylas thinks is not the object of any thought. Which gives us step ( I ) since it implies that what Hylas thinks is false. Hylas might have replied that the only admission he is forced to make is that he thinks that there is a tree which no one is thinking about, from which it does not follow that any tree is the object of Hylas's thought. That is, Philonous moves illegitimately from: Hylas thinks that (3x) (4x. no one is thinking about x) to (3x) (4x. Hylas is thinking about x ) . ~ Not to mention the fact that the latter claim has existential import which the former lacks.
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Berkeley's confusion of thinking that with thinking of or about is understandable in the light of his rejection of abstract ideas. All thinking for Berkeley about anything we can be said to perceive involves having ideas of objects with determinate properties. Sometimes he appears to identify the ideas which accompany, or even constitute, thinking, with the objects of thought, treating the former as if they instantiated properties like color and extension. At any rate, since thought about a class of objects, for Berkeley, implies imaging a member of that class with determinate characteristics, it is natural for him to conflate thinking of something with thinking that something is the case. I n order to think about a class, we must contemplate an object which functions as a representative of that class, of which we could produce an identifying description, since it has determinate characteristics. Together with Berkeley's conflation of ideas and their objects, there is a corresponding assimilation of having ideas to perceiving, where imaging is treated as a kind of self-induced perception. Berkeley's failure to distinguish clearly between ideas and their objects on the one hand, and imaging and perceiving on the other, is particularly evident in the Princibles version of the master argument : But say you, surely there is nothing easier than to imagine trees, for instance in a park, or books in a closet, and no one by to perceive them. I answer, you may do so, there is no difficulty in it, but what is all this, I beseech you, more than framing in your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and at the same time omitting to frame the idea of any one that may perceive? But do not you yourself perceive or think of them all the while? This therefore is nothing to the purpose: it only sho\vs you have the power of imaging or framing ideas in your mind: but it doth not show that you can conceive them existing unconceived or unthought of, which is a manifest rep~gnancy.~ Berkeley held the view that words denote ideas,4 and that if we are not to be misled by language we must attend to the ideas corresponding to the words we are using. Any idea we attempt to frame," corresponding to an expression like "unperceived tree" ( (
The Principles o f Human Knowledge, T . E . Jessop edition, sec. 23, p. 50.
Which is not, of course, their only function or a function of all words.
58
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has then to satisfy two incompatible requirements. I t has to serve as the denotation of the expression in question, and so must be unperceived. I t must also be introspected-that is, perceived-by any person claiming to have such an idea. Granting all that can be said against both versions of the master argument, we might question whether the foregoing criticisms are really as damaging as they appear. While it is true that the argument requires considerable reformulation if it is to be at all persuasive, one is left with the persistent feeling that Berkeley's central point so far has been missed. Though conceiving of, conceiving that, imaging, and perceiving are distinguishable, they may turn out to be conceptually related in such a way that the master argument retains much of its force. One of the most puzzling features of the Dialogues version of the master argument is that, even if valid, it is difficult to see what support it lends to Berkeley's central thesis that whatever is perceivable is perceived. One explanation we have already considered is that Berkeley treats conceiving as a species of perceiving. There is, however, another more interesting alternative. I n the rest of this paper I shall try to elaborate on the thought that the Dialogues and Principles versions of the master argument cannot be properly understood in isolation from one another. I wish to suggest that the central point that emerges from both these arguments taken together reflects on the conditions for ascribing the possession of a particular concept-namely, the concept of a perceivable. An individual must satisfy a number of diverse criteria before he can be said to be in possession of a concept. One in particular concerns us here, a criterion that has played a prominent role in the history of philosophy which may be called the imagistic criterion. I t can be stated simply enough. I n order for someone to have the concept of things of a certain kind, he must be able to image things of that kind. The same thing applies to the concept of an event, action, process, and so forth. ' Some philosophers have talked as though concepts and images could be identified, but, of course, one need not take that view to see imaging as a necessary component in conceptualizing. There are difficulties enough, however, with the thesis that the capacity
ANDRE GALLOIS
to image goes hand in hand with conceptual capacities. For one thing, an analysis of what it is to have a concept in terms of the ability to image has an air of circularity, at least if it is allowed that imaging itself involves the exercise of concepts. Be that' as it may, the ability to image appropriately appears to be neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having a concept. I t is not a necessary condition, for an individual may have little or no capacity for imaging without in any way limiting his capacity to think. Also, there seems to be a contingent limitation on the capacity of human beings generally to image certain things. A well-known example is that of the chilagon. I t is not a sufficient condition since a given image may, as it were, do duty for distinct concepts, where possession of the one does not imply possession of the other. An image of Brigitte Bardot could serve equally well as an image of a woman or an image of a film star. All these objections against an imagistic theory of what it is to have a concept are familiar enough, but there remains a relation between imaging and the ascription of concepts which is worth exploring. If we say that someone has a concept of a certain kind, then one requirement he must meet is that if he images at all with respect to anything to which that concept applies, he must image correctly. One way of elucidating the force of this demand is to focus on the ways of describing what we can be said to image. I may image any one of a number of things if requested to image, say, the Empire State Building, and may describe what I am imaging in a variety of different ways. For example, I might content myself with, say, the description "the tallest building in New York" or, more noncommittally, as just "a building in New York" or still more noncommittally as "something oblong and grey." One thing I could not say without calling into question either my linguistic competence or my possession of the concept of a building is that I am imaging something with four legs and a head. We can then think of a concept as collecting together a class of images associated with it and, by a natural extension, the same concepts collecting together the same images. Of course, this illustration of the point I wish to make about the relation of imaging and conceptualizing could equally well be construed as a point about the way in which the sense of an expression depends
BERKELEY'S MASTER ARG UMEJVT
on the truth conditions of sentences in which it figures. They are distinct, however, and putting the matter in terms of imaging rather than truth conditions will serve, I believe, to get a firmer grasp on what Berkeley might be saying. We are now in a position to resume discussion of the master argument and see, in the light of what has been said above about conceptualizing and imaging, how Berkeley might have sidestepped the objection that he fails to distinguish between thinking that, thinking about, and imaging. If someone claims that a property could be instantiated, then it seems reasonable to insist that he should be prepared to replace the initial variable in the open sentence " x is 4" with a definite or indefinite description so that a closed sentence which could be true obtains. I n other words, he should be able to specify a kind or kinds of things which, though they may contingently not be, could be 4. So in the passage quoted from the Dialogues, even had Hylas not done so in mentioning a tree and a house, Philonous would have been justified in asking Hylas to elaborate on his claim that something might exist unperceived by mentioning the sorts of things that could so exist. Further, if Hylas thinks that a 4 might exist unperceived-say, a table-then it follows that Hylas has the concept of an unperceived 4; and if he has this concept then he can image appropriately with respect to it. This last step is important, for it bridges the gap between thinking that something perceivable might exist unperceived and imaging an unperceived perceivable. If it can be taken, then the complaint that one need not produce an identifying description of an unperceived tree or house which one is currently imaging loses its force. I t is true that one need not image a tree, still less the tree in one's neighbor's garden, while thinking that there is such a tree. The suggestion is rather that one must have the capacity, perhaps unrealized, to image a tree in order to entertain this thought. So far nothing has been said about the necessary connection between being perceived and being perceivable which Berkeley wishes to argue for. I t is now time to introduce into the discussion Berkeley's test for necessary connections between properties. Briefly, we discover such necessary connections by reflecting upon our capacity to image something having one property while
ANDRE GALLOIS
lacking another. One major argument that Berkeley brings against the primary-secondary quality distinction is that it is inconceivable that anything could have extension without color, for in imaging something as extended we are ips0 facto imaging it as having some color. This is not the place to launch into an elaborate defense of the much-criticized imagistic criterion of necessity. (Some would deny that it makes sense to talk about distinct properties being necessarily connected at all and perhaps rely on a criterion related to an analysis of necessity in terms of linguistic convention or stipulation which is, I think, even less defensible than an imagistic criterion.) I t is appropriate, however, to say something here about the plausibility of the thesis that knowledge of necessity is based upon what we discover about the limits of our powers of imagination. The major, and to many conclusive, criticism of the view that necessary connections are revealed by the powers of imagination is one we have already noted in another context-namely, that such powers may be contingently limited. I t may be true, though certainly it is open to question, that because something is necessarily not the case we cannot imagine it being the case, but the converse is not true. An imagistic test for necessity, as it were, puts the cart before the horse. A good deal more space than I can devote here would be required to develop a really adequate reply to this point. I can at least indicate the outline of a reply, however. In brief, hypothesizing a necessary connection because of a general failure to image things of a certain sort may turn out to be the best explanation for such failure. Of course, this can amount to no more than a plea for tolerance for an imagistic test for necessity without elucidating in some detail what is meant by "best explanation" in this context. I do not, however, propose to engage in that task here, since I am not out to establish the validity of the master argument, but only its considerable plausibility in the light of some assumptions themselves not implausible. I t is now time to return to the master argument and spell out these background assumptions. Whenever one can be said to image, one can be said to image a potential experience and moreover an experience which is potentially one's own. One way
BERKELEY'S MASTER ARGUMENT
of making clearer this rather vague statement about the relation between imaging and experiencing is as follows. Suppose that I am asked to image the table in the next room and describe what I am imaging. A typical description might be: a table with an oval brown top, white legs, and so forth. Now the list of features of the imaged table (which of course need not be construed as features of a mental picture) could equally well count as a list of features of what one perceives when one perceives a table. This brings out the connection between imaging and perceiving. In the case of visual imagery the content of an image is limited to what can be taken in at a glance. In this way visual images can be said to reproduce visual experiences that one might have (which is not to say that they are a kind of self-induced visual experience). Consequently, imaging an x and imaging oneself perceiving an x are not separable tasks. I t makes perfectly good sense to talk about revising my imagery-that is, replacing one image with anotherso that if the table contingently has some feature one can image it at one time having that feature, and at another as lacking that feature. I may image a table at one time as brown, at another as red. Putting it, then, in terms of the features that we can be said to image something as having: if I image the following, a table perceived by me, is there any feature of the object of my state of imaging which I can delete so that I am left with an image of a table but not an image of a table perceived by me? I t is fairly clear that there is no such feature. If this is so then we can reconstruct the master argument as follows : ( I ) H ylas
thinks that possibly (3x) (x is perceivable and x is unperceived). ( 2 ) If what Hylas thinks is true, then the concepts being the possible object of some percebtion and being the object of some percebtion do not necessarily apply to the very same things. (3) I n order to sustain the claim that something could be both perceivable and unperceived, it must be possible to have an image of a perceivable which is not an image of something perceived.
ANDRE GALLOIS
([s] follows from [ 2 ] in conjunction with an imagistic criterion of necessity, the demand that Hylas be in a position to mention the kind of thing that could be both perceivable and unperceived, and finally, that he can image appropriately something of this kind if he is to qualify as having the concept of an unperceived perceivable). (4) Hylas cannot meet the condition embodied in (3) and his failure in this respect is not the result of a contingent limitation of Hylas's powers of imaging. The desired conclusion that nothing could be both perceivable and unperceived follows. That the above reconstruction of the master argument is not unfaithful to Berkeley is, I submit, indicated in the following passage from the Principles: So likewise, when we attempt to abstract extension and motion from all other qualities, and consider them by themselves, we presently lose sight of them, and run into great extravagancies. All of which depend on a two fold abstraction: first it is supposed that extension, for example, may be abstracted from all other sensible qualities and secondly that the entity of extension may be abstracted from its being percei~ed.~ Now it may be that in this passage Berkeley is attempting no more than to remind the reader of his earlier arguments concerning the primary-secondary quality distinction, abstract ideas, and the esse est percipi principle. I think it is more plausible, however, to suppose that he is doing more than this: that is, pointing to a connection between these arguments. Just as we cannot image something as extended and colorless, so we cannot image something as extended and unperceived. We could say that though we cannot image an unperceived perceivable we may still have an abstract idea of it were it not, Berkeley would reply, for the incoherence, or, at least, obscurity of this notion. This last remark makes it look as though the plausibility of the master argument is contingent upon the success of Berkeley's Principles, sec. 99, p. 85.
BERKELEY'S MASTER ARC U M E N T
attack on abstract ideas. Now certainly Berkeley seemed to think that this is in fact the case. Then the master argument would be open to the criticism that Berkeley's rejection of abstract ideas results from confusing a concept with an image, a criticism which I think would be misplaced. I t would be misplaced because, as I have tried to show, this step in the argument can be restated as a point about the relation between concepts and images and does not depend on identifying them. Can we accept the validity of the master argument in its present form? Certainly it would be difficult to accept and would have been difficult for Berkeley to have accepted, for we can equally derive from it a solipsistic conclusion for there is no distinctive feature which an experience is imaged as having when one images it as potentially one's own. This is one way ofintroducing what, it seems to me, is the central flaw in the master argument. That is to regard being the object of some perception as a feature that something could be imaged as having, and to conclude that since nothing could be imaged as lacking this feature, then necessarily if anything is perceivable it is perceived. What is wrong with this move is that one cannot talk about imaging something as perceived in the same way that one can talk about imaging something as brown. "Is perceived" .is not a predicate that could figure in any description of what one is imaging. So any talk of, as it were, abstracting the associated property from the content of one's imagery is inappropriate. I t would be unsatisfactory to leave the matter here without saying something about why being perceived is not an imageable feature in the way in which being brown is. If my interpretation of the master argument is correct, it turns on two points: that we cannot discriminate between imaging a potential perception of something and imaging something potentially perceivable, and that there is no difference in the content of one's imagery between imaging a potential perception of something and imaging oneself in that perceptual state. If there were a difference between imaging a perceptual experience and imaging oneself having that perceptual experience, then the master argument would fail. At most we could derive from it the rather unexciting conclusion that whatever is perceivable is perceivable. I n order to image some-
ANDRE GALLOIS
thing perceivable we must image it as perceivable-that is, as the object of a possible perceptual experience-rather than as perceived-that is, as the object of someone's perceptual experience; namely, our own. I n recent discussions on the subject of the ascription of mental states, it has been pointed out6 that one could not ascribe a present mental state to oneself on the basis of a distinctive characteristic of that state which marks it, so to speak, as one's own. I n order to do so one would have to be in the mental state in question and so be in a position to recognize it as one's own. I n the light of this remark it is hardly surprising that to image a perceptual state is to image being in that perceptual state. I t is not that in imaging a perceptual state it is impossible to abstract from the content of one's imagery that feature which makes the perceptual state one's own, but rather that it makes no sense to talk about any mental state having such a feature. I t may seem from the last few remarks that I am in danger of confusing a feature of an object of a perceptual state-namely, being the object of a perceptual state-with a feature of a perceptual state-namely, being someone's perceptual state. This, however, is not so. Rather my argument is that if we wish to talk about the property of being perceived as an imageable feature, then we can do so only if there is some distinctive content to an image of a perceived object. How could there be any such distinctive content to one's imagery? As we have seen, the claim that to image something that could be perceived is to image it as the object of a perceptual state can be interpreted in a more or less innocuous way. Interpreted one way, all this amounts to is that in imaging an object one is imaging it as having those properties which could be mentioned in a description of what one perceives if one perceives that object. Interpreted in another way, it becomes the more exciting thesis that, included in the content of one's imagery, and necessarily so, is some feature which indicates that the object is the object of someone's perceptual state. See: Shoemaker, Self Knowledge and Self Identity, (Ithaca, 1963);J. Bennett, Kant's Anahtic (Cambridge, 1966); P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London, I 966).
BERKELEY'S MASTER ARG UMEN'T
My suggestion is then that the only candidate for this role would be a feature which an individual's perceptual states must have in common in order for him to count7 them as his perceptual states. If this is correct, the question then is can there be any such feature ? Giving a negative answer to this question leaves open the following alternatives. Either it is not possible for someone imaging a potential experience to discriminate on the bases of the content of his imagery (what features he images the experience as having) between imaging that experience as his own and just imaging that experience, because if we image an experience we must image it as having that feature which makes it someone's experience, or because it is simply inappropriate to talk about imaging experiences as having some feature in virtue of which they are owned. If one opts for the first alternative, then since imaging something that could be perceived amounts to imaging the kinds of experiences one would have in perceiving it, the conclusion of the master argument would be difficult to reject. Not to mention a stronger solipsistic conclusion. O n the other hand, if one opts for the second alternative, then the master argument loses its force, for its plausibility, as we have seen, depends on the acceptability of an imagistic criterion of necessity, and such a criterion applies only to imaged features. Ironically, Berkeley chose the first alternative and gave in the Principles8 the central reason for choosing the second. It will perhaps be said, that we want a sense (as some have imagined) proper to know substances withal, which if we had, we might know our own soul, as we do a triangle. To this I answer, that in case we had a new sense bestowed upon us, we could only receive thereby some new sensations of ideas of sense. But I believe no body will say, The phrase "in order for him to count" is 'crucial here. There may be a characteristic which all my mental states must share, in order to count as mine: e.g., if what is often referred to as a no-ownership theory is correct, that they all stand in a determinate causal relatioqship to states of a particular body. The point, however, is that it could not be on the basis of recognizing that a given mental state has this characteristic that I recognize that it is mine. Princifiles, sec. 136, pp. 103-104.
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that what he means by the terms soul and substance, is only some particular sort of idea or sensation. We may therefore infer, that all things duly considered, it is not more reasonable to think our faculties defective, in that they do not furnish us with an idea of spirit or active thinking substance, than it would be if we should blame them for not being able to comprehend a round square. What I think Berkeley is pointing to here is that no matter what features our experiences have, we could not recognize an experience as our own in virtue of recognizing that it has some feature, for in order to effect the latter recognition with respect to any given experience we must be in a position to recognize that we have it. I n particular, we could not ascribe experiences to ourselves in virtue of standing in some relation to an experience of ourselves, for the same problem of ascribability would arise for the latter. In the light of this consideration it is no surprise that imaging an experience is not distinguishable in terms of the content of what is imaged from imaging oneself having that experience. How could there be any such distinctive content, since if there were we could on that basis ascribe experiences to ourselves in a way in which we cannot ? If this analysis of the basic flaw of the master argument is substantially correct, then the argument amounts to somewhat more than the trivial sophism it is often made out to be. Berkeley was obtaining philosophical mileage from an unclarity about the conditions for the self ascription of experiences which was unresolved, I believe, until Kant's discussion of these issues in the
Critique. I t must seem to many that my discussion of Berkeley has been rather anachronistic: framed in terms that he would never have used. T o those who feel this way I offer the following defense. A philosopher in attempting to express a point of central importance to him might have been able to do so with greater success had concepts and distinctions developed at a later point in the history of philosophy been available to him at that time. For those who follow there is always the risk, utilizing such concepts and distinctions, of distorting his views in an effort to state them with greater force and clarity. I t is a risk which I think ought to be taken when
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confronted with an argument which is at once suggestive, puzzling, of obvious importance to the philosopher in question and, on the surface at least, lacking in plausibility. Such is the case, I would say, with Berkeley's master argument.
ANDREGALLOIS
University of Florida
