George Berkeley - The Great Idealist (BBC In Our Time)

source: Philosophical Overdose    2015年11月22日
George Berkeley was an Anglican bishop who was one of the most important philosophers of the eighteenth century. He was an empiricist who believed that all ideas and knowledge must ultimately be based on our own sense experience, and that objects themselves are nothing but mere collections of qualities or ideas that exist in the mind, a view called immaterialism or idealism. His interests and writing ranged widely, from the science of optics to religion and the medicinal benefits of tar water. His work on the nature of perception and knowledge was a spur to many later thinkers, including David Hume and Immanuel Kant. The clarity of Berkeley's writing, and his ability to pose a profound problem in an easily understood form, has made him one of the most admired early modern thinkers.

Berkeley's subjective idealism seems crazy, but many took him to have a point. Insofar as we only have direct access to our own inner mental representations (e.g. perceptions, ideas, experiences), how could we possibly ever know, or even meaningfully speak or think about, an independent external world? As Berkeley pointed out, an idea can only resemble and represent another idea. So even if there was some underlying material substance behind the appearances, causing sensory impressions within us, we have no way of getting at such. For, we only ever encounter our own inner mental representations and can never step outside to compare such representations with some external mind-independent reality beyond.
Melvyn Bragg discusses the work of George Berkeley with Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, and Michela Massimi. This is from the BBC radio program In Our Time.

A History of Philosophy--Arthur Holmes at Wheaton College

# automatic playing for the 81 videos (click the up-left corner for the list)

source: wheatoncollege     上次更新日期：2015年8月14日

01 The Beginning of Greek Philosophy 49:18
02 The Moral Universe in the Pre-Socractics 1:03:18
03 The Greek Sophists 49:56
04 Plato's Epistemology 59:39
05 Plato's Theory of Forms 56:40
06 Plato on God 54:42
07 God and Plato on the Human Soul 1:05:27
08 Plato's Ethics 43:47
09 Plato (conclusions) and Aristotle's Metaphysics 1:01:17
10 Aristotle's Metaphysics 1 56:57
11 Aristotle's Metaphysics 2 51:42
12 Aristotle's God 1:00:02
13 Aristotle's Epistemology and the Human Soul 1:03:13
14 Aristotle's Ethics 49:28
15 Epicurean Philosophy 1:02:50
16 Stoicism 1:03:32
17 Greek and Roman Skepticism 57:11
18 Middle and Neo-Platonism 56:07
19 Neo-Platonism and the Church Fathers 1:01:44
20 Augustine and Neo-Platonism 47:35
21 Augustine's Christian Philosophy 1:02:25
22 Early Medieval Philosophy 1:04:57
23 Problem of Universals 1:02:37
24 Thomas Aquinas' Christian Aristotelianism 41:17
25 Aquinas on God 1:03:17
26 Aquinas' Moral Psychology and Ethics 58:53
27 Duns Scotus and William of Ockham 1:00:17
28 Summing Up Ockham's Revolution 59:36
29 Francis Bacon 1:01:26
30 Thomas Hobbes 1:02:28
31 Descartes 1:00:23
32 Descartes' Meditations 1 57:53
33 Descartes' Meditations 2 35:48
34 Descartes on God and Nature 1:01:00
35 Descarte's Moral & Psychological Ethics 56:20
36 Spinoza 1:03:08
37 Reason and Emotions in Spinoza 1:01:23
38 Spinoza (continued), Leibniz 1:07:32
39 Leibinz's "Monads" 1:01:27
40 Leibniz on Evil 58:40
41 John Locke 44:32
42 John Locke's Theory of Ideas 1:06:05
43 Locke on Religion, Ethics, and Politics 1:06:25
44 George Berkeley's Idealism 1:00:00
45 Berkeley Replies to Objections 1:04:16
46 David Hume 1:02:15
47 Hume: Do We Know What's Real? 1:04:35
48 Hume on Religion and Ethics 1:01:12
49 Reactions to David Hume 1:01:27
50 Scottish Realism 1:01:43
51 Introducing Immanuel Kant 1:04:22
52 Kant's Epistemology 1:02:37
53 Kant on Understanding 1:04:04
54 Kant on Metaphysics 1:00:58
55 Kant's Ethics 1:06:34
56 German Idealism 1:01:40
57 Hegel 1:02:03
58 Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind 1:00:56
59 Hegel on Absolute Spirit 1:05:56
60 Post-Hegelian Idealism 39:59
61 Whitehead's Process Philosophy 1:03:56
62 Whitehead and Process Theology 1:04:03
63 Whitehead's "Science and Modern World" 1:05:04
64 American Pragmatism 1:06:09
65 John Dewey 59:59
66 Dewey's "Reconstructive Philosophy" 1:02:42
67 Introduction to Existentialism 1:03:23
68 Historical Roots of Existentialism: Kierkegaard 1:02:59
69 Nietzsche and Introduction to Phenomenology 1:02:10
70 Husserl and Heidegger 1:01:42
71 Jean-Paul Satre 1:05:09
72 Other Phenomenologists 1:01:29
73 19th Century Empiricism 1:00:52
74 Bertrand Russell -- Logical Atomism 45:32
75 Ludwig Wittgenstein 51:31
76 Logical Positivism 57:28
77 A.J. Ayer — Language, Truth and Logic 1:05:01
78 Ordinary Language Philosophy 1:00:48
79 Ethics Since Logical Positivism 1:04:39
80 Philosophy of Language 1:00:31
81 Philosophy Today and Tomorrow 52:40