George Berkeley
1685-1753 · British Empiricism · Prominent
Berkeley was an Irish bishop who denied that matter exists outside minds. To be is to be perceived, esse est percipi in his Latin: a table is a bundle of sights and feels, and it does not blink out when you leave the room, because God perceives it without pause. What there is comes down to minds and their ideas. He offered the argument as a defense of common sense against the materialists.
Signature
The position Berkeley is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain
- Perception
- Idealism
Positions on the 9 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- strongly leans Purposeful (100 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain (100 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- strongly leans Describable (0 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Universals
- strongly leans Nominalism (100 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (100 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- strongly leans Vertical (0 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence (100 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- strongly leans Objective (100 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
11 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Berkeley refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Idealism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience / Grounded in God
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will / Divine Providence
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Mind-Only
What is the origin of reality? - Authority
- Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Role of Emotion
- Aesthetic Necessity
What is the proper role of emotion? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?