Berkeley and Molyneux on Retinal Images

As a philosopher, Berkeley had many purposes. The central ones were refute the scepticism inherent in the Newtonian world, criticize the innovations of the philosophers, natural philosophers and mathematicians, and demonstrate, in opposition the deistic view of a distant Deity, the immediate presence of God. Berkeley saw that the chief source of the scepticism, errors and perplexities besetting men's minds was the prevailing belief, shared by the common man and the philosophers, that there are material entities or external objects which are capable of existing whilst unperceived by any minds. This belief was an essential part of the doctrine which Berkeley called materialism. It is likely that Berkeley was a convinced immaterialist before he wrote the Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision,1 and even before he began fill his two private notebooks, now called the Philosophical Commentaries,2 but it seems that when he began the Commentaries, he had found neither arguments support his conviction, nor answers possible objections. By the time he began write the Principles of Human Knowledge,3 he had found his arguments, and knew how answer all the objections immaterialism that he could think of. One important objection constitutes the Third Objection in the Principles. This is based on the facts of vision: . . . we see things actually without or at a distance from us, and which consequently do not exist in the mind. 4 Consideration of this difficulty gave birth to the Essay.5 The above objection was the view of the common man. He thought that external objects can be directly seen. The philosophers, e.g., Locke, Malebranche and Descartes, corrected this mistake of the vulgar, and asserted that external objects can be seen only mediately or indirectly by means of certain immediate objects of sight which do not exist outside the mind and which are images or resemblances of external things.6 Berkeley felt that if the views either of the common man or of the philosophers were correct, then immaterialism was impossible. In the Principles, Berkeley indicates what the Essay had accomplished. It had shown that

Retinal · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · History of Science and Medicine · Medicine · Ophthalmology · Philosophy · Optometry

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