Mind, Matter and Spirit: How Berkeley Confronted the Philosophical Gaps of His Predecessors

Abstract

This paper examines how Irish philosopher George Berkeley attempted to resolve the philosophical issues left behind by René Descartes and John Locke, situating his immaterialism as a resolution to their theories, but also a simplification of them. Rene Descartes’ dualism, which distinguished the mind and body as fundamentally different substances, lacked a true explanation of their interaction. This fueled unwanted skepticism of certainty around knowledge. John Locke, who rejected Cartesian innate ideas, grounded knowledge in experience drawn from the senses. However, he introduced the problematic idea of “material substance”, which was an imperceptible “something” that ultimately undermined the gains his theories provided to the philosophical community. Berkeley rejected both Cartesian innate ideas and Lockean substance, arguing instead that objects are nothing more than groups of ideas perceived by one’s mind and sustained permanently by divine perception. In collapsing the gap between object and perception, he removed the need for explanations of mind-body interaction as well as substances that were fundamentally unknowable. This offered a simplified framework grounded in immediate experience and religion. While his reliance on God relocates skepticism rather than fully dispelling it, his immaterialism proved a significantly more coherent foundation for understanding both knowledge and reality. By emphasizing perception as the basis of knowledge, he created a controversial ideology that offers deep insights into both the historical and contemporary struggle to establish certainty when faced with doubt.