B E R K E L E Y ' S M E T A P H Y S I C S
Two new books by PETER B. LLOYD
A fresh and sympathetic treatment of one of the most under-estimated of the major philosophers.Time and again, one hears the refrain that "Berkeley's arguments are irrefutable, but we just know that he must be wrong". Consonantly with this somewhat prejudiced dismissal of Berkeley's philosophy, his works are often seen as mere target-practice for the training of philosophy students. Taking Berkeley seriously is not in fashion.
In fact, Berkeley confronts central questions in philosophy and offers solutions to problems that are still highly contentious in such fields as consciousness studies. Ignoring Berkeley has more to do with historical bias and a reluctance to check out the most radical critiques of the modern background assumptions of what reality consists in. With the philosophy and science of mind thrown into a state of crisis by the mystery of consciousness, and with the concept of physical reality being turned on its side by quantum mechanics, the time is overdue for a sympathetic reconsideration of Berkeley's philosophy of mental monism.
In what may turn out to be an additional bonus for revisiting Berkeley's metaphysics, it is argued that some of the anomalous phenomena that have been reported in parapsychology laboratories may be given a natural and coherent explanation in a Berkeleian ontology.
The first volume of this series, "Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics" provides a critique of the major players in consciousness studies, and offers a revised version of Berkeley's semantic argument for mental monism. The second volume, "Paranormal Phenomena and Berkeley's Metaphysics" applies the philosophy.
Background information and published papers relating to these books can be
found at
the author's
Philosophy Home Page. There is a review by David Lorimer, published in Network, the journal of the
Scientific and Medical Network.
ORDERING
Consciousness
Book details:
- Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics
269 pp, paperback, £15.00, ISBN 1-902987-00-4. - Paranormal Phenomena and Berkeley's Metaphysics
341 pp, paperback, £15.00, ISBN 1-902987-01-2.
You can buy a copy online from Amazon UK, or directly from the publisher:
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Current orthodoxy in science and philosophy insists that reality is fundamentally physical. Whatever the mind is, it must somehow or other be reducible to patterns of electrical and chemical signals inside the brain.
But what of our introspected first-person awareness of conscious experience? This seems so utterly and irreconcilably different from the physical brain that it is very hard to see how there can be any hope of performing the promised reduction. David Chalmers has famously tagged this the 'Hard Problem' of consciousness, in contrast to the 'Soft Problem' of mapping out the neural correlates of conscious mental events.
If there is a solution to the Hard Problem, it will need to be very strange. All the easy avenues have already been studied intensively. Even the 'best hope' of consciousness studies - property dualistic functionalism - falls far short of giving a convincing answer to question of why physical events in the brain should have any conscious experience associated with them.
Berkeley offers just such a solution. In mental monism, the Hard Problem is turned on its head: consciousness is accepted as the primary reality and the physical universe is an abstract construct derived from conscious experiences.
Many difficult problems arise in attempting to develop a working Berkeleian model of the mind. Given the prize that it promises - the solution of Chalmers' Hard Problem - it is worth while. The author argues that the project of developing an uncompromisingly Berkeleian model of the mind can be successfully completed, and is worthy of the effort that it will require.
For more information, click on the following links:
| Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Synopsis | Contents | Excerpts | ||
| Paranormal Phenomena and Berkeley's Metaphysics | ||||
| Synopsis | Contents | Excerpts | ||
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOKS
Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics
The mind-body problem
Description of what the mind-body problem is about, and how Berkeley's philosophy provides the only solution to it. Modern consciousness studies are leading inexorably to the conclusions that Berkeley reached three centuries ago. (Section 1.1)
Where is your mind?
If the conscious mind were just something going on in the material world, if it were no more than electrical signals interacting inside physical brain tissue, then the mind would have a precise position in space. In fact, consciousness cannot be located in space. (Section 2.1)
Creeping androidisation
If all the nerve cells in your brain were to be replaced gradually by silicon chips which perform identical functions, would you notice any difference? If not, then consciousness is no more than a mere epiphenomenon of the information processing that your brain performs. If there is a difference, however, then we must confront the non-physicality of mind. (Section 2.7.1)
Summary of Berkeleianism
A short and succinct statement of the main points of Berkeley's metaphysical philosophy: mental monism. (Section 3.5.1)
Corollary: consciousness is not physical
After working through the central argument for mental monism - Berkeley's semantic argument - we look at the independent application of the same line of thinking to the problem of consciousness. Even if you feel that you cannot yet accept full-blown mental monism, a restricted form of the argument nonetheless tells you that consciousness is not reducible to the physical brain. (Section 4.10)
Paranormal Phenomena and Berkeley's Metaphysics
Need for a new scientific paradigm
Established science has failed to address the nature of paranormal phenomena. A new paradigm is needed if we are to understand the paranormal in a cogent manner. (Section 1.2)
Berkeley versus Eastern philosophies
There are many interesting points of contact between Berkeley's metaphysical philosophy and the esoteric doctrines of Eastern systems such as the Hindu Vedanta and Buddhism. Paradoxically, the Eastern philosophies are often more widely known in the West than Berkeley's. (Section 2.13)
Traditions, anecdotes, and data
Paranormal phenomena are undoubtedly stranger than anything science has had to deal with in the past. Their dependence on the beliefs and mental states of the experimenter create entirely new problems and challenges to accepted norms of objectivity. Nonetheless, in the final analysis, our understanding of the paranormal realm must be scientific, because that is the only kind of real understanding there is. (Section 3.2.1)