Editing Subjective idealism (section)

==History==<!-- all except criticism section, which was cut from [[Idealism]]'s section on S.I. , which has not received reports of lack of citation -->
Thinkers such as [[Plato]], [[Plotinus]] and [[Augustine of Hippo]] anticipated idealism's [[wikt:immaterialism|immaterialistic]] thesis with their views of the inferior or derivative reality of matter. However, these [[Platonism|Platonists]] did not make Berkeley's turn toward subjectivity. Plato helped anticipate these ideas by creating an analogy about people living in a cave which explained his point of view. His view was that there are different types of reality. He explains this with his [[Allegory of the cave|cave analogy]] which contains people tied up only seeing shadows their whole life. Once they go outside, they see a completely different reality, but lose sight of the one they saw before.<ref>{{cite web |author=Plato |title=The Allegory of the Cave |url=https://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum40/cave.pdf |website=Stanford}}</ref> This sets up the idea of Berkley's theory of immaterialism because it shows how people can be exposed to the same world but still see things differently. This introduces the idea of objective versus subjective which is how Berkeley attempts to prove that matter does not exist. Indeed, Plato rationalistically condemned sense-experience, whereas subjective idealism presupposed [[empiricism]] and the irreducible reality of [[sense data]]. A more subjectivist methodology could be found in the [[Pyrrhonism|Pyrrhonists']] emphasis on the world of appearance, but their skepticism precluded the drawing of any [[ontology|ontological]] conclusions from the epistemic primacy of phenomena.

[[Yogacara|Yogacarin]] thinkers such as the 7th-century epistemologist [[Dharmakirti|Dharmakīrti]], identified ultimate reality with sense-perception. The most famous proponent of subjective idealism in the West was the 18th-century [[Ireland|Irish]] philosopher [[George Berkeley]], whose popularity eclipsed his contemporary and fellow Anglican philosopher [[Arthur Collier]], who perhaps preceded him in refuting material existence or, as he says a "denial of an external world." Berkeley's term for his theory was ''immaterialism,'' according to which the material world does not exist, and the phenomenal world is dependent on humans. Hence the fundamental idea of this philosophical system (as represented by Berkeley or [[Ernst Mach|Mach]]) is that things are complexes of ideas or sensations, and only subjects and objects of perceptions exist. "''Esse est percipi''," meaning, "to be is to be perceived," is how Berkeley summarized his argument.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=George Berkeley |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/#2 |website=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}</ref> He believed that things exist if they are understood and seen the same way, writing: "for the Existence of an Idea consists in being perceived".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Berkeley |first1=George |title=A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge |date=1734 |publisher=Scolar Press}}</ref> This categorizes everything as objective or subjective. Matter is subjective because everyone perceives matter differently. 

Berkeley believed that all material is a construction by the human mind. According to the [[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]], his argument is: "(1) We perceive ordinary objects (houses, mountains, etc.). (2) We perceive only ideas. Therefore, (3) Ordinary objects are ideas."<ref name=":0" />

Berkeley's claim that matter does not exist is in opposition to the materialists. "If there were external bodies, we couldn’t possibly come to know this; and if there weren’t, we might have the very same reasons to think there were that we have now":<ref name="auto1">{{cite web |last1=Berkeley |first1=John |title=The Principles of Human Knowledge |url=https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/berkeley1710_2.pdf |website=Early Modern Texts |access-date=May 21, 2019}}</ref> "A thinking being might, without the help of external bodies, be affected with the same series of sensations or ideas as you have."<ref name="auto1"/> Berkeley believed that people cannot know that what they think to be matter is simply a creation in their mind.

Others have contested that premise (2) is false because it fails to distinguish between "two sorts of perception;"<ref name=":0" /> people perceive objects and then have ideas about them. This might seem to obviously be the case, but it is also contestable. Many psychologists believe that what people actually perceive are tools, impediments, and threats. The research study in which people were asked to count the number of basketball passes made in a video showed that people do not see everything in front of them, even a gorilla that marches across a high school gym.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Simons |first1=Daniel |title=Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events |url=http://www.chabris.com/Simons1999.pdf |journal=Perception |year=1999 |volume=28 |issue=9 |pages=1059–1074 |doi=10.1068/p281059 |pmid=10694957 |s2cid=1073781 |access-date=May 21, 2019}}</ref> Similarly, it is believed that humans react to snakes more quickly than would be possible if the reaction were consciously driven. Therefore, it is conceivable that the perception of objects goes straight to the mind.
    
Berkeley pointed out that it is not obvious how motion in the physical world could translate to emotion in the mind. Even the materialists have difficulty explaining this; Locke believed that to explain the transfer from physical object to mental image, one must "attribute it wholly to the good pleasure of our Maker."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Locke |first1=John |title=Of the Extent of Human Knowledge |url=http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/johnlocke/BOOKIVChapterIII.html |website=Enlightenment |access-date=May 21, 2019}}</ref> According to Newton's laws of physics, all movement comes from the inverse change in another motion, and materialists believe that what humans do is fundamentally move their parts. If so, the correlation between objects existing and the realm of ideas is not obvious. For Berkeley, the fact "that the existence of matter does not help to explain the occurrence of our ideas"<ref name=":0" /> seems to undermine the reason for believing in matter. If the materialists have no way of knowing that matter exists, it seems best to not assume that it exists.

According to Berkeley, an object is real if is perceived by a mind. God, being omniscient, perceives everything perceivable, thus all real beings exist in the mind of God. However, it is also evident that we each have free will and self-reflection, and our senses suggest that other people also possess these qualities. For Berkeley, to theorize about a universe that is composed of insensible matter is not a sensible thing to do; there is no evidence of a material universe, only speculation about things that are by fiat outside of our minds.

Berkeley's assessment of immaterialism was criticized by [[Samuel Johnson]], as recorded by [[James Boswell]]. Responding to the theory, Dr. Johnson exclaimed "I refute it ''thus''!" while kicking a rock with "mighty force". This episode is alluded to by Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's ''Ulysses'', chapter three. Reflecting on the "ineluctable modality of the visible", Dedalus conjures the image of Johnson's refutation and carries it forth in conjunction with Aristotle's expositions on the nature of the senses as described in ''[[Sense and Sensibilia (Aristotle)|Sense and Sensibilia]]''. Aristotle held that while visual perception suffered a compromised authenticity because it passed through the diaphanous liquid of the inner eye before being observed, sound and the experience of hearing were not thus similarly diluted. Dedalus experiments with the concept in the development of his aesthetic ideal.