Irish Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753) took the somewhat un-conventional position of denying that the external (i.e., mind-independent) world has any reality. Berkeley is thus a ‘subjective idealist’, since, for him, the world contains only minds (subjects) and their constituent ideas, and a subject only ever apprehends their own mental contents. His view is neatly summarised by the Latin slogan noted above, which roughly translates as ‘to be is to be perceived’.
But if to be is to be perceived, then how could there even be a tree falling in the forest to make a sound, if no one is there to hear it – or rather, to think about it? What a very strange world that would be, with things coming into existence as we think of them, and disappearing when we stop! Berkeley’s answer is that there is an all-perceiver: God, who is the cause of the ideas we apprehend. But nonetheless, and un-surprisingly, even with this addition, his view has never proved too popular! | |||