BERKLEY
AND PERCEPTION
The enlightenment period of philosophy and
science worked together to split philosophy from theology. As society grew in
the use of practical science, the use of faith and unproven substances began to
fall out of favor. A growing intellect in the average person moved philosophy
away from the church and state, and scholars, (who had based all previous
philosophy, for the most part, on the logic of classic paradigms), to scientific
and logical theories. Perception became a great interest during the
enlightenment period, and our ideas of the creation of the universe, turned
inward. Descartes and Berkeley showed us that our perception of reality is what
creates our world, and that perception differs in each of us.
Berkley went beyond Descartes stating God’s perception is what keeps all
things constant. The rest of our universe is created by our
minds.
Berkeley states we do not see objects,
only traces, colors, shadows, sounds, vibrations, of the objects that we
perceive. He argues through dialogue with Hylas, (scientific thought), and
Philonous, (Berkeley himself):
“That sense data are mental is a thesis which
Philonous supports by detailed examination of the various senses. He begins with
heat and cold. Great heat, he says, is a pain, and pain must be in the mind.
Therefore heat is mental; and a similar argument applies to cold.” (A
History of Western Philosophy, Russell b, 1973,
p649)
In the modern study of perception done by
scientists one of the first things found was that our attention is a key factor
in what we perceive, in our consciousness. Even though things are going on in
our path of vision, it does not mean that we perceive them. Thus, much as
Berkeley says, we do not perceive things as they are in reality, but only that
which we attend to. This phenomenon is explained by science as Inattentional
Blindness.
An example of this was an experiment done to
understand how a policeman ran by two individuals who were beating a third in
plain sight, and did not see it, because his attention was on chasing a
suspected murderer. He was found guilty, but stated categorically he never saw
the beating.
Researchers did an experiment to test if the
officer was telling the truth:
“Inattentional blindness has been
well documented in laboratory experiments, but some months ago Chabris and a
research team that included Simons decided to test it on the street in
conditions similar to what the Boston officer had experienced.
First they asked 20 college
students one by one to pursue a male confederate for about three minutes while
he jogged for about three minutes along a 1,300-ft. route at night in an area
lit with streetlamps. While running about 30 ft. behind, each participant was to
count the number of times the runner touched his head with either his left or
right hand—‘a task that required focused attention.’
About a third of the way into the chase, in a driveway
just off the path, three volunteers staged a fight in which two of them beat the
third. These subjects “shouted, grunted, and coughed,” the researchers
report—and were visible to each pursuing runner for at least 15 seconds before
the chaser passed by. At the end of the route, the researchers asked the
subjects how many head-touches they had counted.“Then we asked whether [they]
had seen anything unusual along the route and then whether they had seen anyone
fighting,” the researchers write. Only seven out of 20 (35%) had seen the brawl”
(Force Science News #213,
http://www.forcescience.org/fsnews/213.html)
This
experiment was repeated in the daytime, and even less students saw the brawl.
The reason for this is that while our eyes take in all the data from reality,
our attention, only allows certain data to be processed. When the students were
concentrating on the amount of taps on the head the runner was doing, their
attention was focused on that runner, all other stimulus even though in plain
view, was not processed by the mind, and thus was invisible to the
chaser.
This is true also for Berkeley who states we only see traces of objects, not the
objects itself. For our eyes take in the data when sighting a tree, but if you
asked another person about the same tree, he would see different things then you
do. Thus we don’t see actual reality, but create our own reality, our own idea
of what reality is:
“Philonous says:‘Whatever is immediately perceived is an
idea; and can any idea exist out of our mind?’” (A
History of Western Philosophy, Russell b, 1973,
p651)
Berkeley states that objects are created in our minds from traces of observation of the
actual object. He further explains that our perception is creating the things we
see. Thus for Berkeley the mind is putting things into our reality through
perception, and this perception creates what we call items or objects, even
those these objects are not the same as real objects. Another physiological
theory proves the logic of this thinking through a natural problem all humans
have, that being a blind spot we have in each eye.
Each
eye has an area in it where the optic nerve connects to the eyeball itself. This
area has no rods or cones and thus cannot provide data for that area of the eye.
This is a blind spot in our observational
view.
An example of this is that pilots are taught to
keep their heads moving and scanning as if there head is on a swivel. The reason
for this technique is to keep pilots from fixing their gaze, and thus having a
fixed blind spot. If one does have a fixed blind spot while flying, it is
possible for another plane to get close without him seeing it. (fovea, the blind
spot - Pilotfriend: www.pilotfriend.com/aeromed/medical/fovea.htm)
But we do not perceive the blind spot in our vision. Scientists state that the
reason for this is that our mind’s fill in the blind spot with a patch with
surrounding visual data. Thus we do not perceive the blind spot, even though it
is physically there:
“But the most important reason that we don’t
see the blind spot is that some mechanism in the
brain ‘fills in’the place where the image disappears"
(Churchland & Ramachandran, 1996)” (Sensation and Perception, Goldstein e,
2008, p51)
Thus we can see that the mind can create a vision
that seems like reality, but really is not. Much like this patch, Berkeley
believes our minds fill in the blanks of actual reality; with what we have an
idea should be there.
“Things as we know them are bundles of sensible
qualities: a table, for example, consists of its visual shape, its hardness, the
noise it emits when rapped, and its smell (if any). These different qualities
have certain contiguities in experience, which lead common sense to regard them
as belonging to one “thing”,but the concept of “thing” or “substance” adds
nothing to the perceived qualities, and is unnecessary.” (A
History of Western Philosophy, Russell b, 1973, p654)
These bundles of sensible qualities, I submit, are created much like the patch of the
blind spot in our eyes. That is we take these bundles and create what we believe
should be there, even if actual reality is not the same. Thus what we perceive
by “seeing” is not real, and may not even be close in reality to the object that
created the bundle of sensibility to begin with:
“In this view, to say that an event is “perceived” is to
say that it has effects of certain kinds , and there is no reason, either
logical or empirical, for supposing that all events have effects of this kind”
(A History of Western Philosophy,
Russell b, 1973, p655)
Thus a table is not an object, but a bundle of sensations which we perceive to be an
object, and we will believe our perception of the sensations, even if the actual
item is not really a table.
Perception studies have also shown us that the environment in which we see something,
influences what we think should be there, and our minds will use the sensations
of an object to create an idea of what the object is.
An example is a girl walking in a forest. She sees a dark grey spot on a tree
trunk, and her mind takes the sensations of the grey spot and labels it as moss.
At this point, the mind is seeing moss, but as she attends to it, by bringing
her gaze into focus on the moss, she sees movement, moss does not move, so it
cannot be moss, as she moves forward, the sensations change by becoming clearer
in focus, and she now sees a Moth. Because she did not know moths were in the
area, the sensation of the Moth, shows in her mind that the sensation was Moss,
until she changed her sensations by attending to it. This happens all the time
with all we sense in our lives. (Sensation and Perception, Goldstein e,
2008, p51)
Thus we understand Berkeley’s ideas about objects
and perceptions, and have backed his claims about perception with scientific
theories. But Berkeley went on to say that God’s perception is what keeps all
of our perceived items from disappearing when we are not looking. To prove this
theory, I will use one of my own, that God can be everywhere and perceive all,
in our known universe. To do this we will leave science, and proceed to logic,
but before we do, we acknowledge the laws of our universe as being true within
the framework of accepted physics, astronomy, and mathematics.
If something created our universe, it had to be
outside of it, at the time of creation. This does not mean that the rules of
our universe will apply to the creator, as he is outside our
universe.
Thus if something created our universe, and the
speed of light is the fastest one can go in our universe, this does not mean
the creator cannot go faster than the speed of light. This is because he is or
was outside of our universe. Thus we must ask, “What would happen if the
creator is travelling faster than the speed of
light?”
Einstein states that if a man is travelling at
the speed of light in a spaceship, and leaves earth, that when he returns to
earth, the people on the planet will have aged quicker, then the
astronaut:
“This leads to the famous "twin paradox" in which
one twin is rocketed at high speed across the galaxy and back home. Even at a
velocity close to the speed of light, the journey would take tens of thousands
of years from the vantage point of Earth, but because of his high relative
motion the astronaut would age more slowly than he or she would than on Earth,
and would return home only a few years older. His twin would be long dead.” (A
Trip Forward in Time. Your Travel Agent: Einstein:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/science/28cheap.html)
Thus if the creator of our universe can
move faster than the speed of light, this effect would be increased. If we
assume this logic is sound, depending on the speed traveled, the creator could
have left at any time, and could return at any time. For the sake of argument we
will call anything that can travel faster than the speed of light,
God.
The only way conceived by science to escape the
laws of our universe, is by breaking the speed of light. Once one has achieved
this speed, the laws of science and our universe do not apply. Thus we could not
perceive god if he is traveling faster than the speed of light, unless he slows
down; for he would not be in our universe.
Can a being that created a universe like ours
perceive us? It would seem that if he is traveling faster than the speed of
light, and cannot slow his speed, then the answer would logically be no, as he
is not in our universe.
But if he could slow down and drop below the
speed of light, we would be able to perceive him, but now the rules of our
universe would apply, as it does for anything which travels less than the speed
of light. Thus God would be mortal while traveling under the speed of light, and
would begin to age. If he could not regain acceleration to get above the speed
of light again, he would be trapped, and thus, depending on his velocity,
faster leading to longer life, would eventually die.
But what if he could control his speed, and make
it slower, or faster, then the speed of light, whenever he wished. Then he would
be the God we have conceived in our religious minds, a being who could be
anywhere at any time, and nowhere, (nowhere being that which is outside of our
universe).
Now if we take four points such as bases on a
baseball field, and we had a runner who could travel at the speed of light, he
would seem to be at all the bases at the same time to an observer. The runner
would be able to perceive each of the bases as he thought of them, because he
is basically at all the bases at the same time physically. Thus his attention
would make each base real, as he thought about it.
Berkeley states that God’s perception is what
keeps everything looking real in our universe. If we extend our runner to be
able to travel faster than the speed of light, and he can perceive all of our
universe at the same time, by either travelling fast enough to be everywhere at
the same time to our concept of time, or can be outside of our universe, and
perceive all of it faster than the speed of light, his perception could be
everywhere in our universe, and know all of our universe. This perception of God
about our universe, I believe, is what Berkeley is stating in his philosophy.
That is the objects we sense, are the perceptions God has about our universe,
and because he perceives all, our universe, inside God’s perspective, is
constant.
Berkeley gave us many ideas about perception
which we have shown to be scientifically accurate through the physiological and
conceptual knowledge we have of the process of perception. He much like
Descartes shows us that our thoughts create our own reality. Berkeley goes on
to say that the constancy of the objects we think we see, are not the same as
the objects in reality. He goes on to say that our minds create from traces and
bundles of sensations the world we live in. He goes on further to reason that
God’s own perception of our universe is what keeps our world and universe
together, when we look away from objects. Thus we are perception, inside a
perception, of a universe. I have, hopefully, proven logically that if a being
can go faster than, and can slow down below, the speed of light, at will, he
could be the God, or at least God’s perception, of our minds, and the God of
Berkeley’s philosophy.
AND PERCEPTION
The enlightenment period of philosophy and
science worked together to split philosophy from theology. As society grew in
the use of practical science, the use of faith and unproven substances began to
fall out of favor. A growing intellect in the average person moved philosophy
away from the church and state, and scholars, (who had based all previous
philosophy, for the most part, on the logic of classic paradigms), to scientific
and logical theories. Perception became a great interest during the
enlightenment period, and our ideas of the creation of the universe, turned
inward. Descartes and Berkeley showed us that our perception of reality is what
creates our world, and that perception differs in each of us.
Berkley went beyond Descartes stating God’s perception is what keeps all
things constant. The rest of our universe is created by our
minds.
Berkeley states we do not see objects,
only traces, colors, shadows, sounds, vibrations, of the objects that we
perceive. He argues through dialogue with Hylas, (scientific thought), and
Philonous, (Berkeley himself):
“That sense data are mental is a thesis which
Philonous supports by detailed examination of the various senses. He begins with
heat and cold. Great heat, he says, is a pain, and pain must be in the mind.
Therefore heat is mental; and a similar argument applies to cold.” (A
History of Western Philosophy, Russell b, 1973,
p649)
In the modern study of perception done by
scientists one of the first things found was that our attention is a key factor
in what we perceive, in our consciousness. Even though things are going on in
our path of vision, it does not mean that we perceive them. Thus, much as
Berkeley says, we do not perceive things as they are in reality, but only that
which we attend to. This phenomenon is explained by science as Inattentional
Blindness.
An example of this was an experiment done to
understand how a policeman ran by two individuals who were beating a third in
plain sight, and did not see it, because his attention was on chasing a
suspected murderer. He was found guilty, but stated categorically he never saw
the beating.
Researchers did an experiment to test if the
officer was telling the truth:
“Inattentional blindness has been
well documented in laboratory experiments, but some months ago Chabris and a
research team that included Simons decided to test it on the street in
conditions similar to what the Boston officer had experienced.
First they asked 20 college
students one by one to pursue a male confederate for about three minutes while
he jogged for about three minutes along a 1,300-ft. route at night in an area
lit with streetlamps. While running about 30 ft. behind, each participant was to
count the number of times the runner touched his head with either his left or
right hand—‘a task that required focused attention.’
About a third of the way into the chase, in a driveway
just off the path, three volunteers staged a fight in which two of them beat the
third. These subjects “shouted, grunted, and coughed,” the researchers
report—and were visible to each pursuing runner for at least 15 seconds before
the chaser passed by. At the end of the route, the researchers asked the
subjects how many head-touches they had counted.“Then we asked whether [they]
had seen anything unusual along the route and then whether they had seen anyone
fighting,” the researchers write. Only seven out of 20 (35%) had seen the brawl”
(Force Science News #213,
http://www.forcescience.org/fsnews/213.html)
This
experiment was repeated in the daytime, and even less students saw the brawl.
The reason for this is that while our eyes take in all the data from reality,
our attention, only allows certain data to be processed. When the students were
concentrating on the amount of taps on the head the runner was doing, their
attention was focused on that runner, all other stimulus even though in plain
view, was not processed by the mind, and thus was invisible to the
chaser.
This is true also for Berkeley who states we only see traces of objects, not the
objects itself. For our eyes take in the data when sighting a tree, but if you
asked another person about the same tree, he would see different things then you
do. Thus we don’t see actual reality, but create our own reality, our own idea
of what reality is:
“Philonous says:‘Whatever is immediately perceived is an
idea; and can any idea exist out of our mind?’” (A
History of Western Philosophy, Russell b, 1973,
p651)
Berkeley states that objects are created in our minds from traces of observation of the
actual object. He further explains that our perception is creating the things we
see. Thus for Berkeley the mind is putting things into our reality through
perception, and this perception creates what we call items or objects, even
those these objects are not the same as real objects. Another physiological
theory proves the logic of this thinking through a natural problem all humans
have, that being a blind spot we have in each eye.
Each
eye has an area in it where the optic nerve connects to the eyeball itself. This
area has no rods or cones and thus cannot provide data for that area of the eye.
This is a blind spot in our observational
view.
An example of this is that pilots are taught to
keep their heads moving and scanning as if there head is on a swivel. The reason
for this technique is to keep pilots from fixing their gaze, and thus having a
fixed blind spot. If one does have a fixed blind spot while flying, it is
possible for another plane to get close without him seeing it. (fovea, the blind
spot - Pilotfriend: www.pilotfriend.com/aeromed/medical/fovea.htm)
But we do not perceive the blind spot in our vision. Scientists state that the
reason for this is that our mind’s fill in the blind spot with a patch with
surrounding visual data. Thus we do not perceive the blind spot, even though it
is physically there:
“But the most important reason that we don’t
see the blind spot is that some mechanism in the
brain ‘fills in’the place where the image disappears"
(Churchland & Ramachandran, 1996)” (Sensation and Perception, Goldstein e,
2008, p51)
Thus we can see that the mind can create a vision
that seems like reality, but really is not. Much like this patch, Berkeley
believes our minds fill in the blanks of actual reality; with what we have an
idea should be there.
“Things as we know them are bundles of sensible
qualities: a table, for example, consists of its visual shape, its hardness, the
noise it emits when rapped, and its smell (if any). These different qualities
have certain contiguities in experience, which lead common sense to regard them
as belonging to one “thing”,but the concept of “thing” or “substance” adds
nothing to the perceived qualities, and is unnecessary.” (A
History of Western Philosophy, Russell b, 1973, p654)
These bundles of sensible qualities, I submit, are created much like the patch of the
blind spot in our eyes. That is we take these bundles and create what we believe
should be there, even if actual reality is not the same. Thus what we perceive
by “seeing” is not real, and may not even be close in reality to the object that
created the bundle of sensibility to begin with:
“In this view, to say that an event is “perceived” is to
say that it has effects of certain kinds , and there is no reason, either
logical or empirical, for supposing that all events have effects of this kind”
(A History of Western Philosophy,
Russell b, 1973, p655)
Thus a table is not an object, but a bundle of sensations which we perceive to be an
object, and we will believe our perception of the sensations, even if the actual
item is not really a table.
Perception studies have also shown us that the environment in which we see something,
influences what we think should be there, and our minds will use the sensations
of an object to create an idea of what the object is.
An example is a girl walking in a forest. She sees a dark grey spot on a tree
trunk, and her mind takes the sensations of the grey spot and labels it as moss.
At this point, the mind is seeing moss, but as she attends to it, by bringing
her gaze into focus on the moss, she sees movement, moss does not move, so it
cannot be moss, as she moves forward, the sensations change by becoming clearer
in focus, and she now sees a Moth. Because she did not know moths were in the
area, the sensation of the Moth, shows in her mind that the sensation was Moss,
until she changed her sensations by attending to it. This happens all the time
with all we sense in our lives. (Sensation and Perception, Goldstein e,
2008, p51)
Thus we understand Berkeley’s ideas about objects
and perceptions, and have backed his claims about perception with scientific
theories. But Berkeley went on to say that God’s perception is what keeps all
of our perceived items from disappearing when we are not looking. To prove this
theory, I will use one of my own, that God can be everywhere and perceive all,
in our known universe. To do this we will leave science, and proceed to logic,
but before we do, we acknowledge the laws of our universe as being true within
the framework of accepted physics, astronomy, and mathematics.
If something created our universe, it had to be
outside of it, at the time of creation. This does not mean that the rules of
our universe will apply to the creator, as he is outside our
universe.
Thus if something created our universe, and the
speed of light is the fastest one can go in our universe, this does not mean
the creator cannot go faster than the speed of light. This is because he is or
was outside of our universe. Thus we must ask, “What would happen if the
creator is travelling faster than the speed of
light?”
Einstein states that if a man is travelling at
the speed of light in a spaceship, and leaves earth, that when he returns to
earth, the people on the planet will have aged quicker, then the
astronaut:
“This leads to the famous "twin paradox" in which
one twin is rocketed at high speed across the galaxy and back home. Even at a
velocity close to the speed of light, the journey would take tens of thousands
of years from the vantage point of Earth, but because of his high relative
motion the astronaut would age more slowly than he or she would than on Earth,
and would return home only a few years older. His twin would be long dead.” (A
Trip Forward in Time. Your Travel Agent: Einstein:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/science/28cheap.html)
Thus if the creator of our universe can
move faster than the speed of light, this effect would be increased. If we
assume this logic is sound, depending on the speed traveled, the creator could
have left at any time, and could return at any time. For the sake of argument we
will call anything that can travel faster than the speed of light,
God.
The only way conceived by science to escape the
laws of our universe, is by breaking the speed of light. Once one has achieved
this speed, the laws of science and our universe do not apply. Thus we could not
perceive god if he is traveling faster than the speed of light, unless he slows
down; for he would not be in our universe.
Can a being that created a universe like ours
perceive us? It would seem that if he is traveling faster than the speed of
light, and cannot slow his speed, then the answer would logically be no, as he
is not in our universe.
But if he could slow down and drop below the
speed of light, we would be able to perceive him, but now the rules of our
universe would apply, as it does for anything which travels less than the speed
of light. Thus God would be mortal while traveling under the speed of light, and
would begin to age. If he could not regain acceleration to get above the speed
of light again, he would be trapped, and thus, depending on his velocity,
faster leading to longer life, would eventually die.
But what if he could control his speed, and make
it slower, or faster, then the speed of light, whenever he wished. Then he would
be the God we have conceived in our religious minds, a being who could be
anywhere at any time, and nowhere, (nowhere being that which is outside of our
universe).
Now if we take four points such as bases on a
baseball field, and we had a runner who could travel at the speed of light, he
would seem to be at all the bases at the same time to an observer. The runner
would be able to perceive each of the bases as he thought of them, because he
is basically at all the bases at the same time physically. Thus his attention
would make each base real, as he thought about it.
Berkeley states that God’s perception is what
keeps everything looking real in our universe. If we extend our runner to be
able to travel faster than the speed of light, and he can perceive all of our
universe at the same time, by either travelling fast enough to be everywhere at
the same time to our concept of time, or can be outside of our universe, and
perceive all of it faster than the speed of light, his perception could be
everywhere in our universe, and know all of our universe. This perception of God
about our universe, I believe, is what Berkeley is stating in his philosophy.
That is the objects we sense, are the perceptions God has about our universe,
and because he perceives all, our universe, inside God’s perspective, is
constant.
Berkeley gave us many ideas about perception
which we have shown to be scientifically accurate through the physiological and
conceptual knowledge we have of the process of perception. He much like
Descartes shows us that our thoughts create our own reality. Berkeley goes on
to say that the constancy of the objects we think we see, are not the same as
the objects in reality. He goes on to say that our minds create from traces and
bundles of sensations the world we live in. He goes on further to reason that
God’s own perception of our universe is what keeps our world and universe
together, when we look away from objects. Thus we are perception, inside a
perception, of a universe. I have, hopefully, proven logically that if a being
can go faster than, and can slow down below, the speed of light, at will, he
could be the God, or at least God’s perception, of our minds, and the God of
Berkeley’s philosophy.