Master argument

See Diodorus Cronus § Master argument for the classical master argument related to the
problem of future contingents.

The master argument is George Berkeley's argument that mind-independent objects do not exist because it
is impossible to conceive of them.[1] The argument is against the intuitions that many have and has been
widely challenged. The term "Berkeley's master argument" was introduced by Andre Gallois in 1974.[2]
His term has firmly become currency of contemporary Berkeley scholarship.

Overview
In order to determine whether it is possible for a tree to exist outside of the mind, we need to be able to
think of an unconceived tree. But as soon as we try to think about this tree, we have conceived it. So we
have failed and there is no good reason to believe that trees exist outside of the mind.[3]

When we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we are all the while only
contemplating our own ideas. But the mind taking no notice of itself, is deluded to think it can
and doth conceive bodies existing unthought of or without the mind; though at the same time they
are apprehended by or exist in it self.[3]

Berkeley's argument is an attempt to show that materialism or a mind-independent world is logically

impossible.[4]

Criticism and response

Bertrand Russell among others believed Berkeley's argument "seems to depend for its plausibility upon
confusing the thing apprehended with the act of apprehension":[5]

"If we say that the things known must be in the mind, we are either un-duly limiting the mind's
power of knowing, or we are uttering a mere tautology. We are uttering a mere tautology if we
mean by 'in the mind' the same as by 'before the mind', i.e. if we mean merely being
apprehended by the mind. But if we mean this, we shall have to admit that what, in this sense,
is in the mind, may nevertheless be not mental. Thus when we realize the nature of knowledge,
Berkeley's argument is seen to be wrong in substance as well as in form, and his grounds for
supposing that 'idea'—i.e. the objects apprehended—must be mental, are found to have no
validity whatever. Hence his grounds in favour of the idealism may be dismissed."[5]

Christopher Peacocke writes that although Berkeley is correct that one cannot imagine an unperceived thing
"all that follows is that the possibility of unperceived material objects cannot be established by appeal to
what is imagined. It still could be established by some other route".[6]
Some say that criticisms of Berkeley's argument rely on a misinterpretation of it. Berkeley is not asking us
to imagine something unperceived but to imagine that there could be something unperceived, which is a
more difficult task.[4] Charles Sanders Peirce agreed with Berkeley that "what we think of cannot possibly
be of a different nature from thought itself. For the thought-thinking and the immediate thought-object are
the very same thing regarded from different points of view. Therefore, Berkeley was entirely in the right"
however he criticised his subjective idealism.[7]

Some claim that Berkeley was not making a master argument at all and that what he was actually trying to
show was that the substance 'matter' was actually an abstract concept that passed itself off in peoples' minds
as an object of immediate experience. Rather than say that the matter cannot exist, the critics claim,
Berkeley is saying that it can only exist as an abstract concept and that this abstract concept was
conceptually useless.[8]

References
1. George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, §22 to §23.
2. Gallois, Andre. "Berkeley's Master Argument". Philosophical Review 83 (1974): 55-69.
3. Downing, Lisa, "George Berkeley", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
4. Saidel, Eric. “Making Sense of Berkeley’s Challenge.” History of Philosophy Quarterly, vol.
10, no. 4, 1993, pp. 325–39.
5. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, pages 22 to 23.
6. Peacocke, Christopher (1985). Imagination, experience, and possibility. In John Foster &
Howard Robinson (eds.), Essays on Berkeley: A Tercentennial Celebration. Oxford
University Press.
7. Tiercelin, Claudine (Winter 1998). "Peirce's Objective Idealism: A Defense". Translations of
the Charles S. Peirce Society. 34 (1): 1–28.
8. Philip Pilkington, Berkeley's 'Master Argument' Doesn't Exist, Fixing the Economists (http://fix
ingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/berkeleys-master-argument-doesnt-exist/).

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Master_argument&oldid=1201432625"