George Berkley
George BerkleyAs man progressed through the various stages of evolution, it is assumed that at a certain point he began to ponder the world around him. Of course, these first attempts fell short of being scholarly. As time passed on, though, these ideas persisted and were eventually tackled by the more intellectual, so-called philosophers. This, excavation of "the external world" began. As the authoritarianism of the ancients gave way to the more liberal views of the modernists, two main positions concerning epistemology and the nature of the world arose. The first view was exemplified by the empiricists, who stared that all knowledge comes from the senses. In opposition, the rationalists maintained that knowledge comes purely from deduction, and that this knowledge is processed by certain innate schema in the mind. Those that belonged to the empiricist school of thought developed quite separate and distance ideas concerning the nature of the substratum of sensible things were composed of material substance, the basic framework for the materialist position. The main figure who believed that material substance did not exist is George Berkeley. In truth, it is the immaterialist position that seems the most logical when placed under close scrutiny.
The initial groundwork for Berkley�s position is the truism that the materialist is the skeptic. His idea is that no one can ever perceive the real essence of anything. In short, the materialist feels that the information received through sense experience gives a representative picture of the outside world and one cannot penetrate to the true essence of an object. This makes logical sense, for the only way to perceive this real essence would be to become the object itself. Although the idea is logical it does contain a certain grounding for agnosticism. Let the reader consider this: if there is no way to actually sense the true material essence of anything, and all knowledge in empiricism come from the senses, then the real material essence can not be perceived and therefore it can not exist. This deserves careful consideration, for the materialist has been self-proclaimed a skeptic. If the believer in this theory were asked if a mythical beast such as a Cyclops existed he would most certainly say no. As part of his reply he might...
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