George Berkeley Nature of Existence in This Term Paper

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George Berkeley

NATURE OF EXISTENCE

In this reading, we come across an interesting discussion, which focuses on the nature of existence of things and persons. Here, the two friends Hylas and Philonous are trying to argue the true nature of existence with Hylas, being a materialist arguing in favor of existence without or without perception while Philonous believes that to exist, mind should have an idea of the ting and without idea, things simply do not exist. Philonous is of the view that when we cannot see a thing in our mind, it is impossible to say that it actually exists. In other words, it is our senses that help us establish the existence of something but if they fail to do, that thing simply wouldn't exist. He cites the example of fire, which can be seen and touched but if our senses fail to acknowledge its heat, this fire would simply lose its existence. Hylas however argues that while some sensible things like God can only be perceived by mind but cannot be seen, so He exists even if we can't see him. But all other things exist whether the mind can perceive it or not. For example, if we cannot think of an orange, it doesn't mean that this fruit doesn't exist.

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A found Philonous's theories absolutely ridiculous because whether mind can perceive something or not, whether it has idea of that or not, if it exists, it certainly dos exist. For example, if someone tells me that he met a person with only three fingers on his hand, I might nto be able to think of such a person but that doesn't altogether negate the claim made by my friend. Secondly, there are so many things that we have not yet seen but we can think of them because human beings possess logic and reason / for example, while we have seen other galaxies than the Milky way, we have been told that many other galaxies exist in the universe. We have all the reason to believe that they do even though we cannot exactly picture them.

I believe what Philonous meant by his argument was that unless something cannot be seen from mind's eye, its existence should not be believed o that….....

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