by Greg Goode
Available in printed and Kindle versions!
What if the world we call “physical” is not physical at all?
Enlightening the Physical World explores a common anti-materialist view of the world shared by the eighteenth-century philosopher George Berkeley and the twentieth-century Direct Path inspired by Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon. Both approaches point to the same insight: Our familiar belief in an independently existing material world cannot withstand careful scrutiny.
This book examines Berkeley’s most engaging work, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713), emphasizing useful insights for Direct Path inquiry into so-called physical objects. Through this shared perspective, readers are invited to reconsider what the “physical world” really means.
Publisher’s Note
The Radius Press is extremely pleased to introduce you to two very helpful companions on your journey of inquiry into the true nature of the world and yourself. The first is Greg Goode, a contemporary teacher of the Direct Path (a form of Advaita-Vedantic self-inquiry that teaches that world, body, and mind are all one pure consciousness). The second is George Berkeley, an eighteenth-century Anglican bishop, who argued for God’s existence by proving that to be is to be perceived.
The ease with which Greg crosses centuries and worldviews to befriend Bishop Berkeley is typical of Greg. The Direct Path, especially the way Greg teaches it, encourages open inquiry into your own experience. To discover what, exactly, you really know (and what you really are) requires setting aside all assumptions and simply being open to what you experience directly, which, if you truly embrace the method, leaves you with a kind of lighthearted freedom. The spaciousness you discover at the center of your own being works its way outward into your personality, and walls come down.
The dissolution of the boundaries between worldviews—boundaries that prevent us from learning from each other—is precisely the mission of the Radius Foundation, which seeks to put disparate paradigms in conversation, instead of combat, with each other. In addition to introducing Advaita-Vedantic self-inquiry and Berkeley’s Christian-flavored philosophy to each other, Greg encourages an alliance between spirituality and philosophy. He offers Berkeley’s logical progression through the deconstruction of matter as not just a philosophical argument for the intellect, but also an aid to contemplative spirituality.
Why Berkeley, and why this book now?
Over his years of teaching, Greg has noted that the seeming reality of matter—which is summarized in the view we call “materialism”—tends to be a sticking point for many students of Direct Path, Advaita, and nondualism as they work to discover the true nature of the world and themselves. By focusing on this particular element of nondual inquiry, Greg accomplishes several important tasks: He helps students past a particularly difficult hurdle; he offers a framework—especially by including experiments for the reader to carry out—that the student can apply to all adventures in inquiry; and, perhaps most important, he emphasizes the importance of preparation and integration of one’s various life activities as helpful and even crucial for progress in contemplative spirituality—including not only the Direct Path and Vedanta, but also analytic meditation in Buddhism, Kabbalah in Judaism, and lectio divina in Christianity.
This book is structured as a study guide to Berkeley’s Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. Berkeley’s book is written as a conversation between friends, which makes it one of the most engaging and accessible books of philosophy in the Western tradition. Hylas is like us—he has trouble letting go of the concept of matter, and he’s a two-steps-forward-one-step-back kind of traveler. Like us, he often reverts to old arguments whose defeat he has already admitted—because Berkeley and Greg understand how stubborn the concept of matter can be. Philonous, Hylas’s interlocutor, by contrast, speaks with a kind of relaxed openness that has nothing to fear. He not only makes a logical argument but demonstrates both the approach we should have to inquiry and the effect it will have on us.
Greg takes this engaging work of Berkeley’s and makes it even more accessible to us by walking us through the argument, offering us context that is sometimes missing, providing insights on how Berkeley’s arguments can help students of the Direct Path and nonduality in general, and adding twenty-five experiments and contemplations to help readers build a bridge between the logical arguments and their own direct experience. The book also includes the entire text of Berkeley’s dialogue, in a modern English rendition from the Early Modern Texts publication project. In short, Greg has used every available means to put Berkeley’s insights fully at the disposal of the modern nonduality student.
Greg Goode and the Direct Path
I first met Greg more than ten years ago, when I was seeking spiritual guidance. I had been a member of a Sufi order for almost forty years, but I had found my practice wanting. In collaboration with a few other members of my order, who were also close friends, I set out to find something that would enrich our spiritual lives. This sense that something is missing, I’m sorry to say, is not unusual among long-time spiritual students. I have often attended spiritual gatherings and retreats and have met senior members of the group—people who have been practicing their method for many years—who have found that their practices have become rote or mechanical and lack the wisdom and depth that had brought them to the spiritual life in the first place.
Our exposure to the Direct Path was the antidote to the complacency and hollowness that had set in over the years. The Direct Path provided the kind of direct personal experience that my friends and I had been missing. Indeed, that kind of direct personal existential knowledge of reality had been available all along, if only we had known how to look. We returned to our practice of Sufism with knowledge and insight that vivified our traditional practices and allowed them to open onto deeper knowledge of God and Unity. But we also became students of the Direct Path, as it offered such a clear and practical methodology to knowing the true nature of reality—from the point of view not of philosophy, but of existential knowing. Further, as I reflected on my Direct Path insights and the life it had given to my spiritual practice as a Sufi, I came to realize that, too often, this kind of preparation is missing from many spiritual methodologies, both traditional and modern. This realization of the need for a whole spiritual life inspired my work (and forthcoming book) on The Unified Path, which brings this notion of wholeness to all spiritual practices, traditional and modern.
This book is quintessential Greg Goode: He combines impeccable scholarship with the warm and intimate tone of companionship. Greg has a remarkable talent for being perfectly clear without overcomplicating. As I read this manuscript, I had the same experience over and over: As soon as an objection would pop into my head, I would find it addressed in the next paragraph (“You may be wondering …” Yes, that’s exactly what I was wondering!). This book is born not only of the philosophical and spiritual insights Greg has gained, but also of his experience of how these insights are received by students.
As you let Greg guide you through Berkeley’s book, aim for the kind of openness that Greg demonstrates himself. Engage fully with the text. See how it works on you. This approach will connect your mind with your heart, so that what you discover will not remain merely theoretical but will constitute an eminently practical approach to knowledge, clarity, and happiness.
Foreword
This book is written primarily for students of the Direct Path, which is a method of nondual inquiry in the Advaita Vedanta tradition developed by Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon (1883–1959). Nondualism occupies an ancient, well-developed, and secure place in the philosophical and religious traditions of the East, to the extent that philosophical inquiries form an important part of religious practices there. Such a role is largely absent from Western religious practices, such that while the Western nondual tradition stretches back to ancient Greece, most Westerners are unaware of this part of their cultural intellectual heritage.
For those of us with the twenty-first-century Western mindset steeped in the duality of mind and matter and the paradigm of scientific materialism, the central metaphysical claim of nonduality, when fully appreciated, is profoundly challenging, even bewildering. For a student of nonduality, the overarching message that “all is awareness/consciousness” may be understood in principle or at an intellectual level, but the subsequent stages of grappling with the implications to fully “own” the understanding is where the real work is done. It can be extremely baffling work, and many give up the challenge—some, sadly, when they are almost there. Being in a community or even a loosely connected group of fellows can be supportive and of great help, but most of us bring own objections, prejudices, and blind spots, to further muddy already confused waters. In the great majority of cases, students of the path need guidance, sympathy, and help.
Many years ago, and without any prior introductions, I reached out to Greg with a question, which, as I recall, was about physicality. Greg provided some pointers, and not long afterward, I became a contributor to some groups undertaking intense nondual inquiry.
After some time, Greg realized that my key obstacle was in relation to three-dimensionality, distance, and the conviction that physical things are “out there.” I had a strong commitment to the belief that objective material reality exists beyond experience: the duality of mind and matter.
I was not alone and far from unusual in my travails. Along with a few others, Greg formed a group to investigate these specific issues. A major resource of our investigations involved the philosophy of the eighteenth-century Irish cleric George Berkeley. For me, a Westerner and a geoscientist, deeply committed to conventional ideas of time, space, matter, and scientific materialism, Berkeley was transformational. What he said about human knowledge, experience, perception, and understanding was closely connected to the precepts of the early stages of nondual inquiry. The manner in which he said it was open, friendly, and accessible, and the way he unlocked my ideas of distance and three-dimensional space was a joy. Like many of my fellows, I devoured Berkeley.
The start of that investigation would have been around the year 2012. For the next three or four years, I referred almost continually to the works of Berkeley and Krishna Menon (Atma Darshan and Atma Nirvriti). Tiny copies printed in six-point text even came trekking with me through the mountains on holiday.
Throughout it all, Greg helped to reveal the logic and nuances of the texts, and in relation to the Three Dialogues in particular, he shed light on the well-crafted arc of the conversation between Hylas and Philonous. In this present work, Greg has brought this teaching experience together to provide a rich meta-narrative of their conversation and commentary on the philosophical points.
The fundamental departure point for nondual inquiry is to consider that our knowledge of the world is based on our experience, and we typically divide and categorize our knowledge into objects, which appear within experience. Berkeley insisted that the objects of our experience for which we have reliable first-hand knowledge are those we know as colors, shapes, textures, tastes, smells, etc.
Berkeley considers these experiences to be unconditioned by our previous knowledge—he refers to them as “immediate”—and he draws a distinction with things that are not perceived directly but known in reference to, or combination with, prior knowledge—which he refers to as “mediate.” He asserts that material objects (that is, composed of matter) fall into the latter category, meaning that we never experience matter directly because that would require qualities that we can sense to actually inhere within a mind-independent object. There is no evidence for this—we can’t say what evidence would even look like—and it would imply that matter is both conscious and unconscious. No, we experience perceptions and sensations, or as Berkeley as Philonous describes them, “sensible” objects. Matter is not a sensible object; therefore, we cannot know it even in principle—which is surely not a good basis for developing a system of knowledge!
Really understanding what Berkeley means by “sensible objects” is the key that unlocks Berkeley’s immaterialism (aka idealism). Berkeley seems to have intuited the importance of this concept because he has Hylas repeatedly misunderstanding or forgetting the idea throughout the Dialogues, and Philonous taking pains to remind and reorientate him. What does Berkeley mean by “sensible objects”? He means “perceived qualities” such as colors, sounds, tastes and textures. We assume that he means “physical objects existing independently of the mind.” But Berkely argues tirelessly against mind-independence. One of the most powerful ways to realize what Berkeley means by “sensible objects” is to work through Berkely’s argument that we do not touch the same objects we see. Berkeley’s argument is fascinating and compelling, and involves the famous thought experiment called the “Molyneux problem” (see Section 3.8 [I]). In short, the Molyneux problem imagined a man born blind who gains his sight as an adult. To what extent does this man’s knowledge of shapes such as cubes and spheres from the sense of touch transfer to his sense of sight? If shapes belong inherently to mind-independent external objects, then we would assume the transfer of knowledge to be instantaneous. But is it? In Berkeley’s day, this was a fascinating and helpful thought experiment, especially since at the time there were no medical or research cases available to consult. Even today, studying the Molyneux problem is an excellent way to study Berkeley.
For understanding of what we call three-dimensional space, Berkeley’s insights are to be greatly valued. He originated some unique thought experiments, one of which is described in his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), which imagines the experiences of a disembodied intelligence possessing vision as its only sense modality. This thought experiment is effectively the corollary of the Molyneux problem (which imagines someone with only touch). Berkeley uses the “vision-only” thought experiment in the New Theory of Vision to argue that that extendedness, distance, and shape are not qualities common to sight and to touch. If these qualities are not common to sight and touch, then the materialist arguments that they inhere in objects outside the mind is thereby weakened. With this understanding of extension, Berkeley challenged Newton’s notion of absolute space, which states that space is an objective, universally valid framework that exists independently of objects and observers.
Berkeley argued further against the absolute-space idea in his essay De Motu (1721). There he proposes a thought experiment of a single body moving in (Newton’s) absolute empty space. To Berkeley, the very idea of single body moving in absolute space with no observer present is self-defeating, because we effectively smuggle ourselves as the observer into the scenario without admitting it. Interestingly, the “smuggling” fiction appears repeatedly in nondual inquiries.
Objections to Berkeley abounded, and notable attempts included Jonathan Swift’s and that of the famous poet and critic Dr. Samuel Johnson. On one occasion, Swift supposedly refused to open a door when Berkeley came calling. Swift quipped that Berkeley should be able to walk through it! More famous perhaps was the retort of Dr. Johnson, as recorded by Boswell. When Boswell told Dr. Johnson that Berkeley’s philosophy seemed untrue but also impossible to refute, “Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, ‘I refute it thus.’”
It’s true that certain aspects of Berkeley’s theory have struck critics as unintuitive, such as Berkeley’s claim that all perceptual ideas are communicated to us by God. But when it comes to just what it is that we perceive, objections such as Swift’s and Dr. Johnson’s rely on misunderstandings of Berkeley’s work.
For example, both Berkeley and his materialist critics speak of “sensible things,” but differ on the meaning of the term. The critics assume that sensible things are mind-independent physical objects. This is the conventional meaning of the term. It is exactly what Berkeley wishes to challenge. For Berkeley, “sensible things” are those things that appear to our senses, such as colors and sounds. This terminological difference between Berkeley and his critics is more than just semantic. It leads to all manner of disagreement and confusion. Following the conventional “physical object” meaning of the term, materialists claim that sensible things exist outside the mind. Skeptics wonder whether sensible things even exist. On the other hand, Berkeley, following his “what appear to the senses” meaning of “sensible things,” never denies the existence of sensible things. He also argues that sensible things cannot exist outside of a mind.
Disagreements like this occur over and over in Berkeley’s Three Dialogues. They have a clever pedagogical purpose. In his commentary, Greg points out how Hylas, the materialist, tends to “forget” Philonous’s (i.e., Berkeley’s) “ideas in the mind” meaning of the term “sensible thing.” This gives Philonous another chance to remind him. Hylas begins to agree for a short time, until he forgets again. Hylas’s mistakes are used as Philonous’s teaching opportunities.
Dr. Johnson’s attempt to refute Berkeley by kicking a stone is funny and unforgettable. It also misses the point, and has become identified as a logical fallacy called argumentum ad lapidem or appeal to the stone. Nevertheless, it’s still true that we, as first-time readers of Berkeley, tend to sympathize with Dr. Johnson and Hylas.
Berkeley was not a skeptic. He did not wish to refute or deny our experience. He was not saying that what we call the physical objects of perception are not real. Rather, he was pointing out that their reality is composed entirely of experience, namely our sensations and perceptions, or what he calls “sensible things.” In the manuscript preface to his Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley pleads:
I earnestly desire that every one would use his utmost endeavours to attain to a clear and naked view of the ideas he would consider, by separating them from all that varnish and mist of words, which so fatally blinds the judgement…. Unless we take care to clear the first principles of knowledge from the incumbrances and delusions of words, we may make infinite reasonings upon them to no purpose. We may deduce consequences, and never be the wiser.
When we do actually use our utmost endeavors in inquiry, the truth of what Berkeley taught resolves into crystal clarity, and it is startling and sweet. Both physicality and distance remain but become somehow intimate and dimensionless.
It is my hope and expectation that this book will become a go-to resource for students stuck cleaving, without properly realizing it, to the duality of mind and material physicality, including, crucially, three-dimensional physical separation. There can be no more qualified or sympathetic guide to this work than Greg.
In both the present book and some of his previous publications, Greg relates a story from his days at Rochester College studying under renowned Berkeley scholar Professor Colin M. Turbayne. After some time grappling with Berkeley, he ran into the Prof’s office declaring, “I got it! I finally understood what Berkeley is saying.” Prof. Turbayne replied, grinning, “Now go tell others.” It is a proposition that Greg has taken forward by giving freely his time and energy in the years since, patiently and sensitively guiding students along the path. This book is the latest addition to his oeuvre and, shall, I am sure, be welcomed and used by many. My copy of his book The Direct Path is by far the most dog-eared and battered of my collection, and I expect no less of this.
Finally, there is one piece of advice that Greg has related over and over in private, published, and verbal communications, and it is one that I wish I had taken to heart sooner. Appropriately enough, it is called the “Heart Opener,” and as always, Greg places it as item number one on the agenda when undertaking inquiry. The Heart Opener is a kind of guided visualization whereby we knowingly center ourselves as the awareness to which things appear. No matter how apparently intellectually demanding a topic of inquiry appears, a few moments with the Heart Opener beforehand is gold. Thank you, Greg, for the teachings, the Heart Opener, and this new book.
John Lamont-Black, Ph.D.
Trento, Italy
Preface
This is a study guide for George Berkeley’s 1713 book, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists. It is an expanded version of a much shorter PDF file I prepared in 2017 for the Direct Path group on Facebook. That PDF version was much less detailed and discussed only the first of the three dialogues. It proved helpful to people working with the Direct Path, and I had promised to follow up with a monograph covering the second and third dialogues. This is it.
The purpose of this book is to examine the major arguments in Berkeley’s text from the perspective of a Direct Path inquirer. How can Berkeley’s eighteenth-century insights help the contemporary nonduality student trying to deconstruct the notion that the physical world is objectively existent? There are many ways. I find Berkeley’s ideas to be amazingly relevant and helpful. He considers many of the same questions that nonduality students ask.
Why is the issue of physicality so important? For so many people who look into Direct Path inquiry, physical stuff seems the most real. In terms of Direct Path teaching, physicality occupies about 30% of the subject matter, but 90% of the difficulty. Physical stuff seems to be the most serious exception to nonduality’s teaching that consciousness is all there is. For the nonduality inquirer, everyday experience in and around the physical world seems to contradict nonduality.
Also, because physicality is such an important part of our thinking, we tend to apply physical metaphors to nonphysical things, and perhaps even take these metaphors literally. We can think of the mind as a physical container, with some things inside it and more things outside. If we say we have a mental block, we may visualize curtains or walls physically dividing different spaces. We may think of “reasonable ideas” as spatially gathered into a privileged inner circle, with “unreasonable ideas” relegated to the outside.
For Direct Path students, thinking in physicalist terms can cause puzzlement in later parts of the inquiry. This confusion reveals itself in several Direct Path questions that arise. Sometimes even advanced students ask whether two or more observers ever see the same thing. The question seems to be about one’s own mind and other minds, and how perceptions arise into awareness. But the question actually assumes a literal spatial layout, for example, with two observer-bodies occupying different positions on this side of a street, and an observed physical object visible over there, across the street. I have even heard nonduality teachers answer this question in a way that retains the physicalist assumption with no attempt to debunk it.
Another example of physicalist assumptions being carried into nonphysical questions comes up with regard to cause and effect. For example even when we think of a thought causing another thought, we usually think that the paradigm case of causality is when one physical object pushes another. This model seems so convincing that we may find ourselves applying physical terms to nonphysical things, such as thoughts. We may think of one thought causing another by touching or pushing it. The Direct Path is structured so that we begin by looking at physicality. If we are able to deconstruct the idea that physical things exist, then this gives us a great advantage when we turn our attention to mental things, and to relations such as causality, time, and space. Being free of the belief in physical matter, we are that much closer to being free of the belief in these nonphysical phenomena as well.
That is, what if physicality simply doesn’t exist in the first place? If we realize this, then all the subsequent aspects of our self-inquiry are much easier.
It turns out that Berkeley is an excellent guide to this kind of investigation. His two dialogue partners discuss the multiple observers question and the physical causes question, and many more.
One reason I am so fond of this book is that I studied it in graduate school with Prof. Colin M. Turbayne, a world-class Berkeley scholar. In the several classes I took with him, Prof. Turbayne was a tireless advocate of Berkeley’s immaterialism. There was one point in the book that gave me more trouble than all the rest. It was in the Third Dialogue where Philonous offers what almost seems like a throwaway line: “Strictly speaking, Hylas, we don’t see the same object that we feel” (p. ). To me, it seemed so obvious that we do see the same object that we feel that I was stumped for about a week. I kept asking questions and Prof. Turbayne answered with great patience. I had “forgotten” what it is that we perceive, according to Berkeley. We don’t perceive physical objects such as spheres and cubes. What we actually perceive is colors and textures. And they are not the same things. This came to me in a flash. At that point the rest of Berkeley’s philosophy snapped into focus for me and made perfect sense. The next day, I rushed into Prof Turbayne’s office and said, “I got it! I finally understand what Berkeley is saying!” He looked at me briefly and replied with a wry grin, “Good. And now go tell others.”
That was about fifteen years before I discovered philosophies like Advaita Vedanta and the Direct Path. But when I did come to these teachings, the non-materialist gestalt had settled quite well. It had actually improved the quality of my life in many ways. Some of these aspects of freedom from materiality are also discussed in this book.
When I encountered the parts of Vedanta and the Direct Path that discuss the physical world, there were no stumbling blocks. My immediate reaction was “Yes, this is my experience.” I never felt prompted to ask about multiple observers or physical causes. By then, my questions were about other things, such as intention, free will, and personal identity. Berkeley is not a resource for these issues. He mentions them, assumes them, but doesn’t deconstruct them. He doesn’t push toward monism or nonduality. I remember Prof. Turbayne explaining this in class. He said that Berkeley was a Christian clergyman for his entire professional life, and didn’t want to go too far. So he refrained from deconstructing the mind the way he deconstructed matter.
I find it amazing that there is so much overlap between Berkeley’s treatment of matter and the Direct Path’s. Berkeley’s work has helped me and many others. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!
How to Use This Book
Berkeley’s Three Dialogues is a masterful work, both as philosophy and as literature. It is fun and informative to read. If you wish to read the dialogues themselves, turn to Part II. If you wish to follow the examination of the arguments against materialism, then begin with Part I. The Table of Contents can be used to find topics of interest. I have broken the dialogues into numbered sections, according to the topics discussed. The sections in Parts I and II have the same names and numbers, along with the designator (I) or (II), which indicates whether the given section is explanatory (I) or part of Berkeley’s text.
Note on the Text
For the Three Dialogues and several other texts from Berkeley and others, I have used the Early Modern Texts editions. Early Modern Texts (https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/) is the online educational project created by the philosopher Jonathan Bennett (1930–2024). The site contains well-formatted PDF files of many philosophers from the early modern era. They are free to download and have been prepared so as to make them easier to read while retaining the important ideas and arguments. This book contains the full text of the Early Modern Text edition of Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. I chose this edition because of its accessibility and clarity, especially for readers less familiar with eighteenth-century English. Because this edition has an educational focus, Prof. Bennett has added occasional comments and notations to the text. These include explanations and clarifications in square brackets ([]), as well as small bullets (•). The small bullets are used in some sentences to help the eye follow their structure more easily. Small dots (·) indicate material that has been added for clarification. This book is also an educational project. All proceeds go to the Radius Foundation, a registered nonprofit foundation, 501(c)3, which fosters dialogue and the communication of ideas.
Section 1.1 (I) Immaterialism is more reasonable than materialism
In this section, Berkeley seeks to align his immaterialist philosophy with common sense and against skepticism. If we pit the two dialog partners against each other, Hylas (the materialist) and Philonous (the immaterialist), it might seem that Philonous is the skeptic. After all, he is the one who denies the existence of matter. This is what Hylas says. But Berkeley argues that it is actually the other way around. The one who affirms the existence of matter is inevitably led to skepticism.
Hylas: It is indeed somewhat unusual: but my thoughts were so taken up with a subject I was talking about last night that I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to get up and walk in the garden.
Philonous: That’s good! It gives you a chance to see what innocent and agreeable pleasures you lose every morning. Can there be a pleasanter time of the day, or a more delightful season of the year? That purple sky, those wild but sweet notes of birds, the fragrant bloom on the trees and flowers, the gentle influence of the rising sun, these and a thousand nameless beauties of nature inspire the soul with secret raptures.
Hylas is the materialist, the one who believes in the objective existence of physical substance and physical properties that exist independently of all minds. Philonous is the “idealist,” arguing that what we perceive is ideas, not external objects.
But notice that it’s Philonous who is more in touch with things. He is in intimate touch with the season, the sky, the birds, trees, and flowers. Hylas is lost in thought!
This illustrates part of Berkeley’s argument that his philosophy makes the world immediate (what nonduality would call “direct”) for us. If we were to believe, like Hylas, that the true world is made of unthinking, inert substance that can’t be seen, then we would end up feeling separated from it. This sense of separation is inherent in what Philonous calls “skepticism.”
Hyl: I was considering the odd fate of those men who have in all ages, through a desire to mark themselves off from the common people or through heaven knows what trick of their thought, claimed either to believe nothing at all or to believe the most extravagant things in the world. This wouldn’t matter so much if their paradoxes and scepticism didn’t bring consequences that are bad for mankind in general.
This early part of the dialogue establishes a motive for our looking into Berkeley’s ideas. Why should we be interested in them? He positions his philosophy as an antidote to skepticism (Berkeley and Jonathan Bennett spell it the British way, “scepticism”).
Skepticism functions as a bargaining chip in this part of the discussion.
Hylas and Philonous agree upon this: Neither one wants to be branded a skeptic. For this reason, each of them is arguing that his philosophy is further from skepticism.
In the seventeenth century, skepticism had a less favorable reputation than it has now. Back then, when religion was still a powerful force in society, skepticism was associated with atheism and the lack of moral or intellectual standards. Very few people wanted to be thought a skeptic. But today, skepticism is associated with science, and even with the idea that the scientific approach is truer than any alternative account of the world.
Phil: I entirely agree with you about the bad effects of the paraded doubts of some philosophers and the fantastical views of others. I have felt this so strongly in recent times that I have dropped some of the high-flown theories I had learned in their universities, replacing them with ordinary common opinions. Since this revolt of mine against metaphysical notions and in favour of the plain dictates of nature and common sense, I swear that I find I can think ever so much better, so that I can now easily understand many things which previously were mysteries and riddles.
Philonous is positioning his philosophy as common sense, an approach to life that follows the dictates of nature. This is another motivating idea. Most people don’t want a high-flown metaphysical theory.
Phil: I seriously believe that there is no such thing as what philosophers call ‘material substance’; but if I were made to see anything absurd or sceptical in this, then I would have the same reason to renounce this belief as I think I have now to reject the contrary opinion.
Philonous is arguing against physical substance. He sees belief in it to cause more skepticism than a lack of belief in it. Why? Because the kind of physical substance that people thought existed objectively in Berkeley’s time was something that we couldn’t perceive directly, but only through its effects on us—that is, through our sensory impressions. It was thought that the idea of physical substance was needed, or else there could be nothing that would explain our experience.
This physical substance was thought at once to be real, and also to be imperceivable.
If we can perceive ideas, but not the external substance that we imagine is needed to cause them, then we are forced into skepticism about whether our ideas and interpretations about physical substance are true. Of course Hylas thinks that Philonous is the skeptic because Philonous doesn’t believe in matter.
Hyl: What! can anything be more fantastical, more in conflict with common sense, or a more obvious piece of scepticism, than to believe there is no such thing as matter?
They go back and forth about skepticism for a while. They end up on p. 2 agreeing that skepticism is the distrust of the senses, the denial of sensible things. This allows them to go on to examine just what sensible things are. Is the sensible thing the hot external object that is sensed (as Hylas says)? Or is it the feeling of painful heat (as Philonous says)?