PHILOS 14 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: East Los Angeles College, Political Philosophy, Empiricism
Document Summary
Barkley"s idealism- being perceived by the understanding necessitates existence. Everybody that composes the world has no subsistence without a mind, and that there being is to be perceived or known. So long as they are not perceived by me or do not exist in my mind, they either have no mind or subsist in some eternal spirit. If what a thing is, is it"s being perceived, then the notion of a material substance that has a mind independent existence is called into question. If we accept the basic cartesian account of the idea, without the assumption of innate ideas, then barkley"s idealism is the conclusion. There is no epistemological basis for a mind independent world of material beings. Empiricist approach of ideas deriving from sense means a mind independent material world has some fundamental contradictions. We must explain how we each perceive things that exist in causal relations. How do we prove the existence of god as a non-empirical spirit.
