George Berkeley: Rocks Are Not Physically Real

Bishop George Berkeley

George Berkeley: A Rock Is A Mental Perception. There Is No Matter. Only Mind and Perceptions

George Berkeley (1685 –1753), known as Bishop Berkeley, was an Irish philosopher whose main theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others). This theory denies the existence of material substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are only ideas in the minds of perceivers and, as a result, cannot exist without being perceived. 

When Is A Head Like A Rock?

Hamlet said that he could be bounded in a nutshell and count himself king of infinite space. And so we all can. We have a three pound universe inside our skulls. Some would argue that we don't stop at the porches of our eyes, ears, and skin, that these receptors are themselves only mental. A sensation, be it visual, tactile, olfactory, cannot refer to anything beyond itself--nothing "out there." The brain shapes input according to useful patterns. Take the eye as an example. Retina images are scrambled by neurons when passed to the visual cortex. The brain doesn't convert image pieces back to original pictures. Neural conditioning allows it to create suitable responses. Rapid visual stimulation induces in the brain an illusion of what is out there. Thus the question of boundary, of stopping, is a question for meta-physicians. Infinite space, old chap, infinite space may be we are.

"Out there" is itself an idea, some would say. They would add, Oh, sure, we can touch a table, kick a rock, hear a band, see a wall but the touching, the kicking, the hearing, the seeing are only perceptions linked with sensations.

Samuel Johnson tried to prove a rock was real by kicking it. To George Berkeley's theory that all is mental, solipsistic, he said "I refute it thus!" after kicking the rock. He refuted nothing. He felt the rock against his shoe, which was only a sensation. He saw it skitter down the street, also sensation. Etc. The idea of an object is just that--an idea. We must live with assumptions, not validations.

We can assume a subjective world with Bishop Berkeley or one of subject and object with Dr Johnson, but assume we must. Unless, as has been said of Eastern sages (some of whom are charlatans), we learn to see through assumptions altogether.

But I have my boundaries, too. I stop here. I'll leave all that to the sages and metaphysical philosophers.

So, then, the same subject, consciousness, but a change of theme. Here are some curious anecdotes having to do with decapitation and consciousness. Who or what was the "I" decapitated in these anecdotes? Don't ask me. You can make of them what you want.

Beaurieux and Languille. Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Guillotined head opens its eyes! This is the bizarre story of Monsieurs Beaurieux and Languille and a macabre study done in 1905:

Q. Would a guillotined person die instantly or would the severed head live long enough to feel itself hit the ground? How could anyone but those executed ever know?

A. This grisly question is more answerable than one might think. In France in the days of the blade, some of the condemned were asked to blink their eyes to show continued consciousness after decapitation, and a few heads blinked for up to 30 seconds, says Dale McIntyre in New Scientist. "How much of this was voluntary and how much due to nerve reflex action is speculation. Most nations with science sophisticated enough to determine this question have long since abandoned decapitation as a legal tool."

Addressing the reflex issue, one Dr. Beaurieux observed the execution of a murderer in 1905, told in History of the Guillotine by Alister Kershaw. First he saw in the head spasmodic movements of eyes and lips for 5-6 seconds. Then the face relaxed, the lids half closed, "exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to observe every day in the exercise of our profession."

"It was then that I called in a strong sharp voice: 'Languille!' " The lids lifted, and Languille's "undeniably living eyes" fixed on the doctor, after which they closed again. Moments later he called out again, fetching another look by Languille. But a third call went unheeded.

"I have just recounted to you... what I was able to observe. The whole thing had lasted 25-30 seconds."

The above Q & A excerpt comes from the Cincinnati Inquirer (cincinnati.com), 26 August 2002.

The beheading account below, by Cecil Adams, derives from a site called The Straight Dope (straightdope.com) and is dated 12 June 1998:

Charlotte Corday. After Charlotte Corday was guillotined for murdering Jean-Paul Marat, the executioner slapped her cheek while holding her severed head aloft. Witnesses claimed the cheeks reddened and the face looked indignant. According to another tale, when the heads of two rivals in the National Assembly were placed in a sack following execution, one bit the other so badly the two couldn't be separated.

A soldier in Korea. [Can the brain be proven to remain conscious for a duration after decapitation?] This didn't seem like the sort of question that could ever be conclusively resolved.

Or so I thought. Then I received a note from a U.S. Army veteran who had been stationed in Korea. In June 1989 the taxi he and a friend were riding in collided with a truck. My correspondent was pinned in the wreckage. The friend was decapitated. Here's what happened:

"My friend's head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside-down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me, to his body, and back to me. He had direct eye contact with me when his eyes took on a hazy, absent expression . . . and he was dead."

I have spoken with the author and am satisfied that the event occurred as described. One can of course never be certain about these things. Nonetheless I repent my previous skepticism. Cecil Adams
__________________________________________________
During my stay in Paris, the sight of a public execution revealed to me the weakness of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head divided from the body, and heard the sound with which they fell separately into the box, I understood, not with my reason, but with my whole being, that no theory of the wisdom of all established things, nor of progress, could justify such an act; and that if all the men in the world from the day of creation, by whatever theory, had found this thing necessary, it was not so; it was a bad thing, and that therefore I must judge of what was right and necessary, not by what men said and did, not by progress, but what I felt to be true in my heart. Leo Tolstoy
__________________________________________________
Of his marvelous invention, Doctor Joseph Guillotin said that it was swift, merciful, and that its victims would only feel a rush of fresh air. How could he have known? Was his confidence based on the testimony of somebody like Languille? ;-)

Non-Duality’s No-Self and Antonio Damasio

Non-Duality’s No-Self and Antonio Damasio

Non-Duality is the term for a view of the world as not two, but one—not the duality of a person and the world outside him or her, but instead a subjective experience in which the perceiver and the perceived participate with one another in a sense, according to some experiencers, that all is part of incessant movement, a dance, so to speak. There is no experiencer, no experienced. All is experienc-ing. Everything is part of the subjectivity, with nothing outside. The view derives from Eastern belief, principally Hindu advaita, which literally means without duality and from Buddhism (Zen, for example).

A central tenet of non-duality is that self—that which we call our self—does not exist. The evidence is offered by a methodology. The disciple is told to look for his self, and to do so relentlessly. Eventually, he concludes that he cannot find it. Only thoughts, feelings, and sensations are there. These are subjective—part of a world which is wholly conscious and without "external" objects. As for the chair in which he sits, all that is also subjective. The pressure of his body against the seat is sensation. His visual perception of it is also sensation. A sense of self-survival does not disappear. What fades eventually or vanishes abruptly is the autobiographical self, the sensation that "I am angry," or "I am upset," as examples. Sub-personalities remain. The predilection for mystery novels, as an example, does not go away. A liking of certain types of people remains. One still gets angry, etc, but the sensation passes quickly rather than lingering as fixed-cause for the autobiographical self ("They are always doing that to me.") Advaita and Buddhism have no problem with Damasio's arguments.

The reader would be unwise to dismiss all this as so much balderdash. Quite able intellects, including philosphers George Berkeley and David Hume, have been unable to disregard conclusions they reached. Hume, for example, concluded as much about the self—that insufficient evidence can be found for its existence. Berkeley posited that nothing is material, and to be is to be perceived. Esse est percipi. Speaking only about self, Antonio Damasio has a different take on the situation. Damasio, M.D., Ph.D., currently is Allen Professor of Neurology, and Head of the Neurology Department at the University of Iowa. In Descartes’ Error* he offers another way to look at the phenomenon of the self. (* Subtitled, Emotion, Reason, and The Human Brain) As an example of his point, he refers to neural signals from the elbow joint. Of these signals he says, they

“will happen in the early somatosensory cortices in the insular regions [of the brain].”

Of them, he also states,

“Note again, that this is a collection of areas, rather than one center.”

With this comment Damasio offers a point of view as to why the self cannot be found when we introspect for it, either through deliberate search or with meditation. We gain a simple inference from his remark. Introspection requires focus, and focus implies search for isolated neural phenomena. The self is not part of isolated phenomena. It is part of a collective. Picture the focused beam of a flashlight. Self cannot be found with such a search.

By again referring to the early sensory cortices in the brain, he elaborates and makes an important observation regarding the self. First, the build-up to his comments on the self, then what he has to say about the self. In the build-up to his points, he explains that the early sensory cortices generate topographical representations. That is, the cortices represent sensory input to other areas of the brain. But if that were the end of it,

”I doubt we would ever be conscious of them as images. How would we know they are our images? “

He states that they would mean nothing to us, these representations. We would not know what to do with them. He says something would be missing, subjectivity—a subject to make meaning out of them. Something else is needed. Here is his first point:

“In essence, those neural representations must be correlated with those which, moment by moment, constitute the neural basis for the self. “

That is, without a sense of self, they offer no utility for the organism, which must use them to survive in the moment or to plan ahead. It must make meaning out of them.

He lays to rest the homunculus, the little man inside, the intermediary, which somehow bridged Descartes’ gap between mind and the world outside. His second point:

“Self is not the infamous homunculus, a little person inside our brain, perceiving and thinking about the images the brain forms. It is, rather, a perpetually re-created neurobiological state. Years of justified attack on the homunculus concept have made many theorists equally fearful of the concept of self. [Emphasis mine—he does not lend support to the no-self camp] But the neural self need not be homuncular at all. What should cause some fear, actually, is the idea of a selfless cognition.”

In short, cognition cannot occur without a self to cognize things. Introspect, meditate, all you want but, according to Damasio, don’t use your findings as evidence of no-self. Given his explanation, the attempt to find a self implies cognition at work, with a self involved in the effort. Even though self cannot be found—because cognition involves focus and self is non-focused—the neural self is involved in the very attempt to find itself.

Damasio's thesis in Descartes' Error is that Rene Descartes mistakenly held that thinking can be separated from emotion. That can be found in Mind Shadows at Descartes' Error:Antonio Damasio, Somatic Markers, As-If Loops, and Moral Decision-Making, 11 April 2004.

Beaurieux and Languille, When Is A Head Like A Rock?

Hamlet said that he could be bounded in a nutshell and count himself king of infinite space. And so we all can. We have a three pound universe inside our skulls. Some would argue that we don't stop at the porches of our eyes, ears, and skin, that these receptors are themselves only mental. A sensation, be it visual, tactile, olfactory, cannot refer to anything beyond itself--nothing "out there." Thus the question of boundary, of stopping, is irrelevant. Infinite space, old chap, infinite space is what we are.

"Out there" is itself an idea, some would say. They would add, Oh, sure, we can touch a table, kick a rock, hear a band, see a wall but the touching, the kicking, the hearing, the seeing are only perceptions linked with sensations.

Samuel Johnson tried to prove a rock was real by kicking it. To George Berkeley's theory that all is mental, solipsistic, he said "I refute it thus!" after kicking the rock. He refuted nothing. He felt the rock against his shoe, which was only a sensation. He saw it skitter down the street, also sensation. Etc. The idea of an object is just that--an idea. We must live with assumptions, not validations.

We can assume a subjective world with Bishop Berkeley or one of subject and object with Dr Johnson, but assume we must. Unless, through meditation, we learn to see through assumptions altogether, as has been told of Eastern sages.

They pose the question, Who am I? Harvey Smedlap? That's only a name. Spouse, parent, lover? Those are also labels. How about personality or mood--loyal, hard working, angry, sad? These features come and go. The sages say I am not anything described by words; yet, I am. Here is a koan from Zen: What was my face before my parents were born? Think about it. Meditate on it. It becomes quite revealing.

More on this discussion at a later date. Here, though, is a related item, one that addresses the issue of consciousness. Consider it in terms of subject (mind) losing its object (body). Does all consciousness depend on the brain? What is consciousness? Or, what is is?

In the passages which follow, the writers assume that conscious is localized in the brain. They indicate no curiosity toward after-effects on the body. Nor is it the capitalized Consciousness of which sages speak.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Guillotined head opens its eyes! This is the bizarre story of Monsieurs Beaurieux and Languille and a macabre study done in 1905:

Q. Would a guillotined person die instantly or would the severed head live long enough to feel itself hit the ground? How could anyone but those executed ever know?

A. This grisly question is more answerable than one might think. In France in the days of the blade, some of the condemned were asked to blink their eyes to show continued consciousness after decapitation, and a few heads blinked for up to 30 seconds, says Dale McIntyre in New Scientist. "How much of this was voluntary and how much due to nerve reflex action is speculation. Most nations with science sophisticated enough to determine this question have long since abandoned decapitation as a legal tool."

Addressing the reflex issue, one Dr. Beaurieux observed the execution of a murderer in 1905, told in History of the Guillotine by Alister Kershaw. First he saw in the head spasmodic movements of eyes and lips for 5-6 seconds. Then the face relaxed, the lids half closed, "exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to observe every day in the exercise of our profession."

"It was then that I called in a strong sharp voice: 'Languille!' " The lids lifted, and Languille's "undeniably living eyes" fixed on the doctor, after which they closed again. Moments later he called out again, fetching another look by Languille. But a third call went unheeded.

"I have just recounted to you... what I was able to observe. The whole thing had lasted 25-30 seconds."

The above Q and A excerpt comes from the Cincinnati Inquirer (cincinnati.com), 26 August 2002.

The beheading account below, by Cecil Adams, derives from a site called The Straight Dope (straightdope.com) and is dated 12 June 1998:

After Charlotte Corday was guillotined for murdering Jean-Paul Marat, the executioner slapped her cheek while holding her severed head aloft. Witnesses claimed the cheeks reddened and the face looked indignant. According to another tale, when the heads of two rivals in the National Assembly were placed in a sack following execution, one bit the other so badly the two couldn't be separated.

[Can the brain be proven to remain conscious for a duration after decapitation?] This didn't seem like the sort of question that could ever be conclusively resolved.

Or so I thought. Then I received a note from a U.S. Army veteran who had been stationed in Korea. In June 1989 the taxi he and a friend were riding in collided with a truck. My correspondent was pinned in the wreckage. The friend was decapitated. Here's what happened:

"My friend's head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside-down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me, to his body, and back to me. He had direct eye contact with me when his eyes took on a hazy, absent expression . . . and he was dead."

I have spoken with the author and am satisfied that the event occurred as described. One can of course never be certain about these things. Nonetheless I repent my previous skepticism.

Cecil Adams
__________________________________________________

During my stay in Paris, the sight of a public execution revealed to me the weakness of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head divided from the body, and heard the sound with which they fell separately into the box, I understood, not with my reason, but with my whole being, that no theory of the wisdom of all established things, nor of progress, could justify such an act; and that if all the men in the world from the day of creation, by whatever theory, had found this thing necessary, it was not so; it was a bad thing, and that therefore I must judge of what was right and necessary, not by what men said and did, not by progress, but what I felt to be true in my heart.

Leo Tolstoy
__________________________________________________

Of his marvelous invention, Doctor Joseph Guillotin said that it was swift, merciful, and that its victims would only feel a rush of fresh air. Was his confidence based on the testimony of somebody like Languille? ;-)