Berkeley's God Does Not Perceive

Berkeley's God Does Not Perceive* GEORGE H, THOMAS DOES BERKELEY'SGOD PERCEIVE. 9 Introductory textbooks and the commentaries of most specialists agree in their answer--Yes! The common view is that Berkeley's "to be is to be perceived" principle ran him into the problem of intermittency, i.e., the problem of the existence of bodies when no one is perceiving them, and that to solve this problem he said that they exist continuously because God is always perceiving them. On this basis it is contended that God's perception is an integral part of Berkeley's philosophical system. I intend to refute this accepted opinion by showing that Berkeley's God does not perceive. How and whether Berkeley solves the problem of intermittency I leave for another study. In this article my purpose is only to argue that he does not do it with a perceiving God. If Berkeley did use God's perceiving as a guarantee for the existence of otherwise unperceived bodies, we would expect him to state the doctrine explicitly and frequently in his writings. However, I shall demonstrate that he affirms it in only two problematic passages and that in as many passages he dearly denies it, for reasons central to his system. I shall proceed by examining Berkeley's relevant arguments, book by book.1 In the Philosophical Commentaries Berkeley tells us what he means by "perception": "It is that very having, that passive reception of ideas that denominates the mind perceiving " (PC,301; see also 378:10). He later qualified his statement on the passivity of the mind (PC,672a; PHK,27; DHP,p.196); but he never wavered on the point of identifying perception fundamentally with the reception of ideas from some source other than the perceiverP Berkeley relates God to perception only as the cause of our perception.3 Further- *I wish to thank Dr. Bertil Belfrage of the University of Lurid (Sweden) and Dr. David Berman of Trinity College, Dublin (Ireland) for their helpful comments on the draft of my paper. It is stronger for their careful reading and critical suggestions. 1 The relevant arguments are mainly in the Philosophical Commentaries, the Principles oI Human Knowledge, and the Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. I shall add only single comments on Alciphron, Siris, and Berkeley's correspondence with Samuel Johnson. The quotations from the Commentaries are my own transcription (soon to be published) from the manuscript (British Museum Add. MS. 39305), following A. A. Luce's numbering. All other references , except for one first edition quotation, are from A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, The Works o/George Berkeley (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1948-1957). 2 Berkeley on occasion did broaden the meaning of "perception" to include such things as memory, imagination, and thought. However, all of the broader senses of "perception" depend on ideas received by perception in the narrower sense, and could not exist without them (PHK, 1, 5). a Since the present paper is on God's perception and not ours, that He causes ours and how He doesit is irrelevant to my present purpose. [163] 164 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY more, he says that God has ideas but not that He perceives them. He suggests that the number of ideas in God are greater in number than ours in proportion as ours are greater than a worm's (PC,640-641). Indeed, God includes all ideas, "even Ideas w~ are painfuU & unpleasant" (PC,675). Thus, in the Commentaries Berkeley says that God causes our ideas and that there are ideas in God; but nowhere does he say that God perceives. Early in the Principles ol Human Knowledge is a passage that many interpreters have taken to refer to God's perceiving. For though we hold indeed the objects of sense to be nothing else but ideas which cannot exist unperceived; yet we may not hence conclude they have no existence except only while they are perceived by us, since there may be some other spirit that perceives them, though we do not. Wherever bodies are said to have no existence without the mind, I would not be understood to mean this or that particular mind...