Berkeley's proof of God

[abucs]

I’m not sure I follow. Consider :

•      A computer can create an original picture from two or more existing pictures.

•      Does this mean a computer is complex enough to create it's own picture out of nothing?

• Either way, the computer is complex but not primary.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I’m not sure I follow. Consider :

•      A computer can create an original picture from two or more existing pictures.

•      Does this mean a computer is complex enough to create it's own picture out of nothing?

•      Either way, the computer is complex but not primary.

We understand what it is for a conscious being to form an idea, to “picture” something in their heads. We don’t understand what it is for an object – a piece of “matter” – to create an idea. That notion is almost completely opaque to us.

So Berkeley sidesteps it. God can form ideas, and matter doesn’t form ideas. The cause of our ideas is God.

 

[tafan]

Another thread with a type of ontological argument for God. What a waste of time, IMO.

From “The Belief of Catholics” by Ronald Knox , Chapter 1V (boldness added )

This attempt to prove the existence of God, or to declare the proof of it unnecessary, without reference to the effects of his power which we experience in his visible creation, is a permanent temptation to the human mind. Intellects as far removed from one another as those of Anselm, Descartes, and de Bonald have umdertaken it, and it is probable that they will never lack successors. Protestant thought, in our day, is much wedded not to these but to similar speculations. Thus, you will seldom read any piece of non-Catholic apologetic without coming across some reference to man’s sense of his need for God, or man’s notion of holiness, a notion which can only be perfectly realised in God. The implication of all such language is that it is possible to argue directly from the existence of concepts in our own mind to the existence of real objects, to which those concepts correspond.

The Catholic Church discountenances all such methods of approach to the subject; some of them, at the Vatican Council, she has actually condemned. She discountenances them, at least, if and in so far as they claim to be the sole or the main argument for the existence of God. The main if not the sole, argument for the existence of God–so she holds, and has always held- -is the argument which proves the Unseen from the seen, the existence of the Creator from his visible effects in Creation.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Another thread with a type of ontological argument for God. What a waste of time, IMO.

From “The Belief of Catholics” by Ronald Knox , Chapter 1V (boldness added )

First of all, Mr. Knox’s opinions are not authoritative, nor necessarily plausible. Can you quote me the portions of Vatican II he’s referring to?

Second, Berkeley’s argument for God’s existence is precisely an “argument which proves the Unseen from the seen, the existence of the Creator from his visible effects in Creation”. There’s nothing at all ontological about Berkeley’s argument.

 

[tafan]

First of all, Mr. Knox’s opinions are not authoritative, nor necessarily plausible. Can you quote me the portions of Vatican II he’s referring to?

Second, Berkeley’s argument for God’s existence is precisely an “argument which proves the Unseen from the seen, the existence of the Creator from his visible effects in Creation”. There’s nothing at all ontological about Berkeley’s argument.

No argument that Fr Knox’s opinion’s opinions are not all authoritative. But he was one of the foremost English language Catholic theologians and authors and apologists of the 20th century. He was also a great entertainer (he provided the inspiration to Orson Wells War of the Worlds radio show with his 1926 radio show of “Broadcasting from the Barricades”). He was a writer of fiction. He was a biblical scholar selected by English bishops to provide a new translation of the Bible, he translated the entire bible. He was an intellectual genius, as well as an very devout man.

His book “Belief of Catholics” is IMO one of the best Catholic apologetics books ever written. You can think of it as a Catholic version of Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” and it is far superior.
So don’t discount his argument until you read at least Chapter IV. It can be found online here cin.org/liter/belief0.html .

He was obviously referring to the First Vatican Council, as the book was written before the second. I will have to do some research to find exactly what he was referencing. I will get back to you.

 

[Nihilist]

We understand what it is for a conscious being to form an idea, to “picture” something in their heads. We don’t understand what it is for an object – a piece of “matter” – to create an idea. That notion is almost completely opaque to us.

So Berkeley sidesteps it. God can form ideas, and matter doesn’t form ideas. The cause of our ideas is God.

Exactly. There is another great philosopher (a little after Berkely, a French priest), Malebranche, who argues a somewhat similar position. He says that ‘other substances’ do exist, but it is only God, another Mind, who mediates them to us (and that what we inhabit is in effect a ‘world of ideas’).

 

[Nihilist]

Another thread with a type of ontological argument for God. What a waste of time, IMO.

From “The Belief of Catholics” by Ronald Knox , Chapter 1V (boldness added )

It is not an ontological argument. Berkeley (following the English tradition of Ockham), explicity denounces even the existence of ‘abstract entities’. His argument is actually strictly empirical (and he is classified as one of the British Empiricists, along with Locke and Hume).

Mr. Knox, moreover, is not speaking on behalf of the Church. In fact, the view he expresses is wrong, and he should not presume to say which arguments are ‘approved’ by the Church. The cosmological arguments, and its variants, are the very worst arguments for God’s existence.

The most sound arguments for God’s existence are those of Descartes and Berkeley.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Exactly. There is another great philosopher (a little after Berkely, a French priest), Malebranche, who argues a somewhat similar position. He says that ‘other substances’ do exist, but it is only God, another Mind, who mediates them to us (and that what we inhabit is in effect a ‘world of ideas’).

Berkeley actually wrote about Malebranche, so I think they were at worst contemporaries. And Berkeley’s system is better, because Malebranche was forced to posit “occasionalism”, whereby God miraculously causes matter to change every time mind makes a decision. Berkeley can explain things much more simply by not having to posit this occult connection between mind and matter.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

The most sound arguments for God’s existence are those of Descartes and Berkeley.

Whatever the merits of Descartes’s arguments, he didn’t have a right to assert the premises, since these premises would be false if the evil demon hypothesis were true.

 

[Nihilist]

Berkeley actually wrote about Malebranche, so I think they were at worst contemporaries. And Berkeley’s system is better, because Malebranche was forced to posit “occasionalism”, whereby God miraculously causes matter to change every time mind makes a decision. Berkeley can explain things much more simply by not having to posit this occult connection between mind and matter.

I agree that Berkeley’s system is more economical- and the matter in Malebranche seems to me a redundant ‘parallel world’.

But, mention Malebranche, because many people instinctively find Berkeley’s system to be somehow absurd (although it is not).

Although I agree with Berkeley, his system does not seem to address the problem of evil. As he point out, neither does the ‘traditional’ model either.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Although I agree with Berkeley, his system does not seem to address the problem of evil. As he point out, neither does the ‘traditional’ model either.

Yes, I think that is the central point. As long as Berkeley’s system does not make the problem of evil worse, the problem of evil isn’t a strike against it.

I’m not sure if it makes the problem of evil worse.

 

[tafan]

It is not an ontological argument. Berkeley (following the English tradition of Ockham), explicity denounces even the existence of ‘abstract entities’. His argument is actually strictly empirical (and he is classified as one of the British Empiricists, along with Locke and Hume).

Mr. Knox, moreover, is not speaking on behalf of the Church. In fact, the view he expresses is wrong, and he should not presume to say which arguments are ‘approved’ by the Church. The cosmological arguments, and its variants, are the very worst arguments for God’s existence.

The most sound arguments for God’s existence are those of Descartes and Berkeley.

The proof offered in the OP appears to me, being a complete amateur, to fit one of ontology, or as Fr. Knox would say an “attempt to prove the existence of God, or to declare the proof of it unnecessary, without reference to the effects of his power which we experience in his visible creation, is a permanent temptation to the human mind”.

On a side note: the continued reference to Ronald Knox as “Mr.” appears to me to be an anti-clerical slight. While Fr Knox used his name Ronald Knox as an author, it seems that if we are going to supply a title, it should certainly be “Fr.” or “Rev.”, most certainly not “Mr.” which should be used, especially on a Catholic forum, for lay people only. You may not have much respect for the man as a philosopher or theologian (which would put you at great odds with the vast majority of Catholics who have studied him), you should a lease respect his clerical state.

As to Fr Knox being wrong: I will provide the following condemnations from the Holy Office :

Errors of the Ontologists*
[From the decree of the Sacred Office, Sept. 18, 1861, “they cannot be safely taught”]

2841 Dz 1659 1. Immediate knowledge of God, habitual at least, is essential to the human intellect, so much so that without it the intellect can know nothing, since indeed it is itself intellectual light.

2842 Dz 1660 2. That being which is in all things and without which we understand nothing, is the divine being.

2843 Dz 1661 3. Universals considered on the part of the thing are not really distinguished from God.

2844 Dz 1662 4. Congenital knowledge of God as being simply involves in an eminent way all other cognition, so that by it we hold as known implicitly all being, under whatever aspect it is knowable

2845 Dz 1663 5. All other ideas do not exist except as modifications of the idea by which God is understood as Being simply.

2846 Dz 1664 6. Created things exist in God as a part in the whole, not indeed in the formal whole, but in the infinite whole, the most simple, which puts its parts, as it were, without any division and diminution of itself outside itself.

2847 Dz 1665 7. Creation can be thus explained: God, by that special act by which He knows Himself, and wills Himself as distinct from a determined creature, man, for example, produces a creature.

And I will further offer Thomas Aquinas’s criticism of St Anslemn’s ontological proof:

Reply to Objection 2. Perhaps not everyone who hears this word “God” understands it to signify something than which nothing greater can be thought, seeing that some have believed God to be a body. Yet, granted that everyone understands that by this word “God” is signified something than which nothing greater can be thought, nevertheless, it does not therefore follow that he understands that what the word signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally. Nor can it be argued that it actually exists, unless it be admitted that there actually exists something than which nothing greater can be thought; and this precisely is not admitted by those who hold that God does not exist.

The latter, admittedly, does not apply to your original post, however it does go quite a ways in saying that Fr. Knox is not so plainly wrong, as you assert.

Your assertion that the cosmological arguments are the “very worst”, is absolutely absurd and your opinion only.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

The proof offered in the OP appears to me, being a complete amateur, to fit one of ontology, or as Fr. Knox would say an “attempt to prove the existence of God, or to declare the proof of it unnecessary, without reference to the effects of his power which we experience in his visible creation, is a permanent temptation to the human mind”.

On a side note: the continued reference to Ronald Knox as “Mr.” appears to me to be an anti-clerical slight. While Fr Knox used his name Ronald Knox as an author, it seems that if we are going to supply a title, it should certainly be “Fr.” or “Rev.”, most certainly not “Mr.” which should be used, especially on a Catholic forum, for lay people only. You may not have much respect for the man as a philosopher or theologian (which would put you at great odds with the vast majority of Catholics who have studied him), you should a lease respect his clerical state.

Did it ever occur to you that a person might not have heard of Father Knox?

Of course, if you mention a “Ronald Knox”, I will call him Mister, until told he is not a mister.

And again, Berkeley’s argument is not an ontological argument. No philosopher I know of would ever call it an ontological argument. It is actually a cosmological argument, because it uses God as an explanation for the existence of phenomena. It’s what philosophers call an “inference to the best explanation”.

I don’t like ontological arguments either. They contain existence claims in their conclusion without positing existence claims in their premises. Berkeley’s argument does not do that.

 

[tafan]

Did it ever occur to you that a person might not have heard of Father Knox?

Of course, if you mention a “Ronald Knox”, I will call him Mister, until told he is not a mister.

And again, Berkeley’s argument is not an ontological argument. No philosopher I know of would ever call it an ontological argument. It is actually a cosmological argument, because it uses God as an explanation for the existence of phenomena. It’s what philosophers call an “inference to the best explanation”.

I don’t like ontological arguments either. They contain existence claims in their conclusion without positing existence claims in their premises. Berkeley’s argument does not do that.

Yes, it occurred to me. Which is why, after you first used the term “Mr”, I intentionally used the term Fr., in order to provide a subtle and understanding correction. It was only after Nihilist used the term “Mr.” a second time, which appeared to be intentional, did I make the more forceful correction.

And I will accept your’s and Nihilist’s assertion that the OP proof is not an ontological proof. I simply stated how it appears to fit in Fr Knox’s categorization. Most of my last post was intended to defend Fr Knox’s viewpoint, which was explicitly called “wrong”.

BTW: if you haven’t heard of him, I highly recommend his book, The Belief of Catholics. Furthermore, the Knox Bible ( knoxbible.com/history_of_knox_bible.html ) is a very good English translation.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

BTW: if you haven’t heard of him, I highly recommend his book, The Belief of Catholics. Furthermore, the Knox Bible ( knoxbible.com/history_of_knox_bible.html ) is a very good English translation.

Thanks for the tip!

 

[Nihilist]

The proof offered in the OP appears to me, being a complete amateur, to fit one of ontology, or as Fr. Knox would say an “attempt to prove the existence of God, or to declare the proof of it unnecessary, without reference to the effects of his power which we experience in his visible creation, is a permanent temptation to the human mind”.

On a side note: the continued reference to Ronald Knox as “Mr.” appears to me to be an anti-clerical slight. While Fr Knox used his name Ronald Knox as an author, it seems that if we are going to supply a title, it should certainly be “Fr.” or “Rev.”, most certainly not “Mr.” which should be used, especially on a Catholic forum, for lay people only. You may not have much respect for the man as a philosopher or theologian (which would put you at great odds with the vast majority of Catholics who have studied him), you should a lease respect his clerical state.

.

Berkeley’s is not an ontological proof, since it is based on empirical data (in fact, empircal data in its entirety), since we are ‘given’ ideas (in the form of sensations not of our own volition or invention), which show the existence and operation of a Superior Mind.

The problem with cosmological proofs is that they all come down to the same thing- they involve asserting both that ‘everything has a cause’, and that ‘there is one uncaused Being’. The proofs of Berkeley, Descartes and Anselm at least do not go down this path, which is per se indemonstrable.

As for the way I described Knox, I certainly did not mean him disrespect. I did not realise he was the same Knox who made a very good translation of the Bible (his translation of the book of Wisdom is still used in the English version of the Roman Breviary). But, he still doesn’t speak on behalf of the Church, and he is still capable of being wrong. For a start, St. Anselm is a Doctor of the Church- and therefore his view carries more weight.

BTW, a Google search shows he was a ‘Monsignor’. I suppose he was also a Dr. and Prof.
We might call Russel ‘Mr’., instead of ‘Lord’, etc., or ‘Mr. Ayer’, instead of “Sir Alfred”. I wouldn’t read anything into it. You (nor I) haven’t been saying ‘Bishop Berkeley’. Using the title “Mr.” isn’t a sign of disrepect at all.

 

[polytropos]

I have been re-reading Berkeley, and suggest that his proof of God is absolutely convincing. In fact, he does seem to cover all possible objections comprehensively.

Forgetting the old “thus I refute him” business (which seems to be based on a misunderstanding of him anyway), the proof goes:

1. What exists in my head (those things I call ‘sense perceptions’, etc.), are ideas.
2. Ideas can only exist in a thinking subject.
3. But all the ideas in my head are not my own creation or volition, some are merely received by, or communicated to me.
4. Therefore, there must be another mind (much more powerful and wiser than mine), which generates the ideas in my head which are not my own inventions.

I don’t see how, as presented above, it can be refuted.

This is pretty interesting. I don’t even think it necessarily stands or falls with Berkeley’s general metaphysics.

There may be an issue with the inference to (4), though. That I have not created the ideas I am acquainted with does not imply that they existed modally as ideas prior to my understanding of them, so the inference to another mind does not seem to be valid*. (The Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding would be that my phantasma are understood through sensible forms, which can subsist in one respect in natural substances, “mindlessly.” [On further analysis one might conclude that there is a mind behind their existence, as Aquinas does, but to establish that would be to forgo Berkeley’s proof entirely.])

*Well, the proof as given is not valid anyway. There is some other premise being invoked implicitly to justify the inference to (4). It is probably something like “If my ideas are communicated to me, then they existed in another mind independently of their existence in my mind”. That premise, I’d think, requires further argument and is possibly subject to counterexamples.

 

[polytropos]

The cosmological arguments, and its variants, are the very worst arguments for God’s existence.

The most sound arguments for God’s existence are those of Descartes and Berkeley.

Two of Descartes’s three arguments are cosmological arguments (and Descartes’ ontological argument is weaker than Anselm’s, IMO) that borrow substantially from scholastic cosmological arguments (relying heavily, for example, on the principle of proportionate causality).

The trademark argument also arguably relies on some implausible claims about language and perfection. (I haven’t given this idea sufficient analysis yet, but one of my professors once claimed that Descartes’ trademark argument is meant to show that God is not intelligent because language is inherently imperfect, and the trademark argument relies on God not being capable of “language-like” thought. ie. Because our thinking allows us to frame false judgments, it is an imperfection, and our idea of imperfection is parasitic on an idea of perfection, which by the principle of proportionate causality must be caused by something that is perfect–and therefore unthinking–unlike us. In that sense he reads Descartes as something of a heretic, so I am not sure how plausible the reading is. But the argument as framed is weakened by neglecting the an analogical understanding of simple intelligence that does not exclude perfection. One might claim that it even leads to contradiction in that the principle of proportionate causality demands that there is some cause of our intelligence–though if it is denied that intelligence is a perfection, perhaps not.)

 

[Prodigal_Son]

This is pretty interesting. I don’t even think it necessarily stands or falls with Berkeley’s general metaphysics.

There may be an issue with the inference to (4), though. That I have not created the ideas I am acquainted with does not imply that they existed modally as ideas prior to my understanding of them, so the inference to another mind does not seem to be valid*. (The Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding would be that my phantasma are understood through sensible forms, which can subsist in one respect in natural substances, “mindlessly.” [On further analysis one might conclude that there is a mind behind their existence, as Aquinas does, but to establish that would be to forgo Berkeley’s proof entirely.])

*Well, the proof as given is not valid anyway. There is some other premise being invoked implicitly to justify the inference to (4). It is probably something like “If my ideas are communicated to me, then they existed in another mind independently of their existence in my mind”. That premise, I’d think, requires further argument and is possibly subject to counterexamples.

I’ve always thought of it as an “inference to the best explanation”. Here are the two competing hypotheses:

(1) Ideas suddenly come into existence when a mind engages with matter. (This is happening constantly, with new ideas always being created, and old ideas constantly dying).

(2) Ideas are contained as ideas in another mind. They never begin existing and never cease to exist, since God is timeless. They only change relationally, insofar as they become present to various minds at various times.

The first explanation involves positing a new type of entity (matter) and involves tackling the problem of how things could come to exist or be destroyed. The second explanation doesn’t have any of those problems. It moves from the known to the known, instead of positing the entirely unknown (matter) to explain the known.

 

[polytropos]

I’ve always thought of it as an “inference to the best explanation”.

Hmm. I think reading it this way could potentially raise other issues. If the proof is an inference to the best explanation, then it is not a demonstration, and some of its unintuitive consequences might be weighed against whatever plausibility hypothesis (2) has. (For what it’s worth, I don’t find it incredibly plausible.)

For example, there has been some discussion of Malebranche and occasionalism, but I see Berkeley as tending toward occasionalism in a weaker sense. For example, consider a case of change. On Berkeley’s view, our perceptions are changing because God is conveying different ideas to us. The instance of change appears to be a consequence of God’s “displaying” one perception after another. To try to get away from this understanding of the situation would require positing intrinsic principles of operation in certain sorts of perceptions. This sort of defeats the purpose of taking the idealist route to avoid positing matter. (It’s also the course that Berkeley does not take; he regards any sort of scientific generalizations as fortuitous and contingent, consequences of God’s benevolence to make the world intelligible and livable.)

Berkeley’s metaphysics also have undesirable implications for the problem of other minds that are compounded by trying to eliminate matter. (I would deny that one alternatively must “posit” matter as though it is a theoretical entity. I would deny that if we know “the external world” through perceptions, then what we know are themselves perceptions.) Berkeley distinguishes categorically between perceivers (like you and I, and God) and things-perceived (ideas, perceptions). So I cannot perceive you. For that reason, it’s arguably difficult even to formulate the following scenario: You and I look at “the same” tree from “different angles.” (I use scare quotes to denote the ostensibly naive realist interpretation.) For Berkeley, is it really the same tree? Are our ideas the same? It seems as though they are not, because our perceptions are not the same. You see one side of the tree, and I see the other. So why should we be looking at the same tree? Unless there is something apart from our perception of the tree (ie. matter, something subsisting), there doesn’t seem to be any reason to tie our perceptions together as being of the same idea.

Relatedly, it’s plausible that two observers can’t have the same idea, that part of the identity conditions of an idea is that the idea is the idea of a particular observer. And that raises issues about whether God’s ultimate, grounding perceptions could be ours either. If you and I can’t have the same idea of a tree, then God and I can’t either, so that hypothesis (2) is not even an explanation.

Another problem is drawn from other natural-theological sources. Most philosophers who hold that God is simple would acknowledge the need to devise a simple analysis of his knowledge. God has a single intellective act, and his intellection is not compound. But many of those features will be incompatible with our own intellection and perception. So for our ideas to be God’s ideas, God’s ideas would have to be non-simple. (One could deny God’s simplicity. I regard that as pricey, but for someone who doesn’t, I think it is still problematic because Berkeley’s inference to the best explanation would be subject to a priori refutation if other demonstrations of God’s existence and nature succeed. And as Thomists like Haldane have argued, Aquinas’s proofs can be made to work even under idealist assumptions.)

The first explanation involves positing a new type of entity (matter) and involves tackling the problem of how things could come to exist or be destroyed. The second explanation doesn’t have any of those problems. It moves from the known to the known, instead of positing the entirely unknown (matter) to explain the known.

I don’t find the parsimony considerations too compelling because (as I said above), I think there are a lot of factors weighing against the explanatory adequacy of Berkeley’s idealism. (That said, my background in Berkeley is fairly limited, and I’m basing my critiques on the way he was presented in a course I took, which may not be representative of the views of people who take Berkeley seriously.)