Explain Berkeley’s statement “To be is to be perceived.” Did Berkeley deny the existence of external reality?
George Berkeley was an Anglo-Irish philosopher, who established fame with three major works. His primary achievement was the advancement of theory on “immaterialism”. He has tackled the several major issues in philosophy, such as problems of perception, importance of language and the difference between primary and secondary qualities.
Berkeley attempted to demonstrate his idea that matter does not exist and he was against materialism. He considered the ideas of materialistic philosophers as false. He agreed on some of the ideas of Locke and disagreed on some of his other ideas. According to Berkeley, all things come into existence not only by the presence of physical world but only when they are perceived. His conclusions were bold telling that reality consists of our perceptions and nothing more.
He also discussed about the primary and secondary qualities in a different way. According to him, there is no existence of primary qualities, whereas secondary qualities are not due to experiences but due to our perceptions. He said that only the secondary qualities exist, and rejected the physical world. Thus, he stated in his conclusion that “to be is to be perceived”.
In his discussions, Berkeley did not deny the existence of external reality but only denied that there is no existence of matters in the external reality. He was against the idea of materialism and believed on immaterialism. He also explained that the existence of external reality is due the god’s perception. He says that humans perceive things that exist in the external reality through our senses. He concluded both the facts that “to be is to be perceived” and “the existence of external reality is perceived by us and the existence is due to the God’s perception”.