Berkeley's Likeness Principle

Notes and Discussions BERKELEY'S LIKENESS PRINCIPLE IN BOTH THE Principles o] Human Knowledge and the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Berkeley presents the representationalist with a dilemma which expresses his fundamental objection to that theory. In the Principles (Section 8), he writes: But, say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without the mind, yet there may be things like them, whereof they are copies or resemblances, which things exist without the mind in an unthinking substance. I answer, an idea can be like nothing but an idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure. If we look but ever so little into our own thoughts, we shall find it impossible for us to conceive a likeness except only between our ideas. Again, I ask whether those supposed originals or external things, of which our ideas are the pictures or representations, be themselves perceivable or no? If they are, then they are ideas and we have gained our point; but if you say they are not, I appeal to anyone whether it be sense to assert a colour is like something which is invisible; hard or soft, like something which is intangible; and so of the rest? (Italics mine.) The strength of this argument is that, if it holds, it holds against the very possibility of represented entities which exist unperceived. (Note the position under attack is that "there may be things" of which ideas are copies.) It is not merely a matter of exhibiting the sceptical consequences which beset the theory. Berkeley begins with the heart of representationalism. It is the claim that in addition to sensory objects* (ideas), there are unperceived and unperceivable entities to which presented objects correspond and make known. Berkeley intends to show there can be no such entities. He begins with a pair of alternatives: the entities represented by sensible objects are either perceived by some mind or not. If they are perceived, then the representationalist: (a) has retracted his original claim that they are unperceived and unperceivable; and (b) must acknowledge that the represented entities are ideas which cannot exist unperceived. What is perceived is an idea. If, on the other hand, the representationalist contends that the entities represented by sensory objects are unperceived, then he is holding that unperceived entities and (perceived) sensory objects correspond to one another. This claim, Berkeley suggests, is contradictory or meaningless. The alleged correspondence rests upon a supposed resemblance or likeness between a perceived object and an unperceived object, but there can be no resemblance between these two. The "only thing like an idea is an idea." If an unperceived object resembles a perceived object (an idea which must be perceived), then it is itself an idea and is perceived. The representationalist's claim is self-refuting. And, Berkeley maintains , if it is claimed that an idea can be like or resemble a non-idea, the term, See also Section 57 and, for passages from the Three Dialogues, Berkeley, The Works o] George Berkeley, A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, eds. (Edinburgh: Nelson and Sons, 1949), II, 189-190 and 206. (Hereafter, the Luce-Jessop edition will be referred to as Works.) Compare, too, entry B378 of the Philosophical Commentaries, in Works, I, 45. * I shall use sensory object and presented object as equivalent expressions. [631 64 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY "resemble," is without meaning. Berkeley's argument, then, is that on the first alternative, the representationalist abandons his theory or asserts a contradiction, while on the second, he speaks in a meaningless or contradictory fashion. It seems clear that a serious representationalist would accept the second alternative and try to avoid Berkeley's conclusion. Hence, the principle that the only thing like an idea is an idea (hereafter, the Likeness Principle), is the critical premise in the argument. Furthermore, since the argument against representationalism is crucial for Berkeley's rejection of material substances, the Likeness Principle is a fundamental element of his immaterialism. ~ It might seem that even more fundamental to Berkeley's philosophy is the term "idea." He seems to argue as follows: All the things we perceive are ideas. Ideas cannot exist unperceived. The only...