. Berkeley’s arguments for the existence of God werethat the ideas that humans are aware of, do not depend oneveryone’s wishes and, if that is the case, then these ideashave to have some kind of existence apart from our minds.Furthermore, if none of us can be responsible for the ideas weperceive than there must be some other “thing” that controls oroccupies the ideas.
Therefore, the other mind has to be greaterthan ours and that person’s mind is God. When Berkeley introduced the idea that God is theuniversal mind, it is crucial to the argument because it is theroot difference of perception between Hume’s and Berkeley’sdisagreement. On page 25, Berkeley states that “from what has been said, it follows, there is not any other substance than spirit, or that which perceives,” which proves that the will orspirit is constantly perceiving the world so it is continuouslyoutside of the human perception. Propounding this idea alsomeans that when a person does not look at the object, it doesnot mean that it goes away. In contradiction to Berkeley, Hume puts forth that there are two different kinds of perception: impressions and ideas. Impressions are the original perceptions and the ideas are the copies of impressions.
For example, for the first time a person sees an object, they could have an impression of that specific object. Nonetheless, later on, when that person sees the object again, they will have an idea of the object in their memory. While our impressions or ideas may come from sensory experience, the mind wants to create a relationship between the ideas. Therefore, this is the reason why it effects on how we experience things. Our mind wants us to think of the object, but when we do not see the object anymore, we want to believe that the object is still there.
Hume’s argument is based on impressions and ideas and the things that do not have an impression or an idea are in thestate of effects that do not exist. Additionally, sinceimpressions and ideas are correspondent than the ideas arealways derived from perception. Moreover, Hume rejects the principle of universal causation, the principle of induction, and the rejection of an external world. Hume’s understanding ofthe principle of universal causation is that the cause can neverbe perceived and demonstrated. He supposes that the only thingwe have is the present impressions, the ideas of impressions,and the connections or interferences.
Likewise, his rejectiontowards the principle of induction is due to the idea that wealso assume. For example, we assume that the laws that we createwill be held constant. However, Hume is determined that there isno reason to believe in this because we cannot demonstrate thatthe future will remain like the past through experimentation.Lastly, Hume depletes the existence of God and substance. Humeencounters that the experience we have every day is based on asequence of impressions, which could be and are unrelated toeach other, are not necessarily attached to the external world.In other words, we can never know what is outside of our ownperceptions because we only have the power to know our ownperceptions. This statement holds justification for knowledge ofthe world and knowledge of God’s existence. Additionally, Humebelieves that since God and substances, also proclaimed to bepart of the material world, cannot be a result of perceptionbecause they could not be demonstrated by mathematical proof.
Itconcludes that both, God and substance, cannot be known toexist. Hume’s and Berkeley’s conception of perception is exquisite and their arguments are equitable. These philosophers argued for the same theme yet their conception of perceiving ideas and things in this world, are significantly different. The biggest difference, that I wanted to make accountable in this paper, was Berkeley’s idea of our mind perceiving things with the help of God.
Whereas, Hume has attacked the idea of God, however he believes that there is not an existence of God and God does not aid us with perceiving things in this universe. The only idea that they had in common was that the only source of genuine knowledge is from experience. Even Hume states on page 20 that “What is the foundation of all our reasoning’s and conclusions concerning that relation? It may be replied in one word, Experience.” This shows that, both philosophers have different perspectives, yet everyone needs experience in order to perceive the different objects and/or ideas. In conclusion, Hume’s and Berkeley’s discussion ofperception had fair arguments, however the root of theirarguments are what made their beliefs different. Hume andBerkeley shared a common ground of the idea of perception,however the biggest difference was Berkeley based his argumentof perception of God and Hume decided that there was more to theargument than with the answer of God.
