Locke and Berkeley: Empiricism, Ideas, and the Nature of Reality

Locke's Empiricism: Common Sense and Ideas

John Locke, in a Cartesian manner, defends the need to reflect on one's own knowledge. Following Cartesian principles, he defines knowledge as the agreement or disagreement between ideas, and not as an agreement between ideas and things, as classical thought did. This shift from classical thought means modern philosophy focuses not on what the world is in itself, but on what happens within our consciousness – that is, all of our ideas.

Idea Source and Type

Descartes claimed that the mind has innate ideas generated by our own reason. Locke rejects this possibility, arguing that reason is not creative, but rather receives content, merely perceiving the agreement or disagreement between these contents. Experience is the sole source and limit of what can fill the mind.

Types of Ideas

• Simple Ideas: Obtained directly through experience, either by:
  • Sensation (sense experience)
  • Reflection (desires, emotions)
• Complex Ideas: Produced by the mind from simple ideas.

With both simple and complex ideas, knowledge is constructed.

Substance

Substance is a complex idea that is not innate. It is a concept we posit as the underlying support for qualities we perceive, even though it is not directly experienced.

Berkeley's Idealist Empiricism

George Berkeley was aware that the success of the new science was inevitable, and also of the dangers this success could pose to religion, especially materialism. Christianity, if it wanted to survive, had to find a way of coexistence with the new knowledge. Berkeley chose to utilize empiricism, one of the most modern and scientific philosophies, to justify the legitimacy and even the necessity of religion.

Locke claimed, without proof, the existence of an external world of material nature as the source of our ideas. Berkeley insists that if we remain faithful to what experience shows us, we must recognize that reality consists solely of ideas, by the very fact of being perceived. An essential component of ideas is their immateriality.

Matter as Unnecessary Complication

When answering the question about the origin of the ideas we perceive, Descartes had already made clear the difficulty of connecting matter with consciousness. However, Berkeley dared to deny the existence of the material world. Berkeley's ontological scheme is simple and clear: a God who creates ideas, and minds that perceive them. That is enough to justify our experience.

Berkeley rejects the reality of material things as unnecessary and inconsistent with strict empiricism, defending an immaterialist conception that excludes any possibility of reducing reality to matter.