Rise Without Heat

George Berkeley

solipsism

philosophy

light bulb joke

German Idealism

argued that, pace Locke, matter does not exist except as a form of mind.

Not at all, said Bishop George Berkeley (1684j-1758) ; this Lockian analysis of knowledge proves rather that matter does not exist except as a form of mind.

is a philosopher who argues that a hammer's reality for you is not in its materiality, but in the sensations that come from your thumb. If you had no senses, the hammer would not exist for you at all; it might strike your dead thumb forever and yet win from you not the slightest attention.

You protest that your breakfast is much more substantial than a bundle of perceptions; and that a hammer that teaches you carpentry through your thumb has a most magnificent materiality. But your breakfast is at first nothing but a congeries of sensations of sight and smell and touch; and then of taste; and then of internal comfort and warmth. Likewise, the hammer is a bundle of sensations of color, size, shape, weight, touch, etc.; its reality for you is not in its materiality, but in the sensations that come from your thumb. If you had no senses, the hammer would not exist for you at all; it might strike your dead thumb forever and yet win from you not the slightest attention. It is only a bundle of sensations, or a bundle of memories; it is a condition of the mind.

George Berkeley, n.Definitions

George Berkeley