George Berkeley: Esse Est Percipii

George Berkeley (1685-1753) is an English Philosopher known for his idealism. He was the Bishop of Cloyne and his religious interests did heavily impact his philosophy: God, in Berkeley isn’t like the Biblical God. He follows in the tradition of John Locke and is heavily influenced by Malebranche, b and René Descartes. He is known to have written A New Theory of Vision, Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous to name a few.
Berkeley referred to himself as the defender of common sense, though some of his ideas are absurd and hard to digest to begin with. He denies the existence of matter or material substratum, as used by Descartes and Locke. In his denial, he is heavily influenced by Thomas Hobbes, in terms of the importance he gives to linguistics. His denial of material substratum is what forms the grounds for Locke calling out

To put it simply, “To be is to be perceived” or “Esse Est Percipii”. His ultimate refutation of matter is a two part argument. The first part of this argument is governed by the need for a relative substratum backed by the relation it bears to sensible qualities and the lack of clarity around it. The second part of the argument deals with if extension is something distinct from a substratum, and extension is an accident, then each extension will have an underlying extension so on and so forth leading to ad infinitum. He further argues the case for Esse Est Percipii, in how even if you try to conceive a tree, not perceived by the mind it still remains conceived by the mind. To sort the problem of distance with this regard, he puts forth the idea that even though you can’t clearly see the moon and the stars but you can still conceive them, thereby restricting their existence to your mind. Neither sense nor reason can inform you of the things you immediately perceive outside of the