that is to say, he does not deny that the sense-data which we
commonly take as signs of the existence of the table are really signs
of the existence of _something_ independent of us, but he does deny
that this something is non-mental, that it is neither mind nor ideas
entertained by some mind. He admits that there must be something which
continues to exist when we go out of the room or shut our eyes, and that
what we call seeing the table does really give us reason for believing
in something which persists even when we are not seeing it. But he
thinks that this something cannot be radically different in nature from
what we see, and cannot be independent of seeing altogether, though it
must be independent of _our_ seeing. He is thus led to regard the 'real'
table as an idea in the mind of God. Such an idea has the required
permanence and independence of ourselves, without being--as matter would
otherwise be--something quite unknowable, in the sense that we can only
infer it, and can never be directly and immediately aware of it.
Other philosophers since Berkeley have also held that, although the
table does not depend for its existence upon being seen by me, it does
depend upon being seen (or otherwise apprehended in sensation) by
_some_ mind--not necessarily the mind of God, but more often the whole
collective mind of the universe. This they hold, as Berkeley does,
chiefly because they think there can be nothing real--or at any rate
nothing known to be real except minds and their thoughts and feelings.
We might state the argument by which they support their view in some
such way as this: 'Whatever can be thought of is an idea in the mind of
the person thinking of it; therefore nothing can be thought of except
ideas in minds; therefore anything else is inconceivable, and what is
inconceivable cannot exist.'
Such an argument, in my opinion, is fallacious; and of course those who
advance it do not put it so shortly or so crudely. But whether valid or
not, the argument has been very widely advanced in one form or another;
and very many philosophers, perhaps a majority, have held that there is
nothing real except minds and their ideas. Such philosophers are called
'idealists'. When they come to explaining matter, they either say, like
Berkeley, that matter is really nothing but a collection of ideas,
or they say, like Leibniz (1646-1716), that what appears as matter is
really a collection of more or less rudimentary minds.
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