TR Gaddis tears into Dale Carnegie Pt 2 ch 1

[alice wellintown]

2. Berkeley's critique of materialism in the Principles and Dialogues
In his two great works of metaphysics, Berkeley defends idealism by
attacking the materialist alternative. What exactly is the doctrine
that he's attacking? Readers should first note that “materialism” is
here used to mean “the doctrine that material things exist”. This is
in contrast with another use, more standard in contemporary
discussions, according to which materialism is the doctrine that only
material things exist. Berkeley contends that no material things
exist, not just that some immaterial things exist. Thus, he attacks
Cartesian and Lockean dualism, not just the considerably less popular
(in Berkeley's time) view, held by Hobbes, that only material things
exist. But what exactly is a material thing? Interestingly, part of
Berkeley's attack on matter is to argue that this question cannot be
satisfactorily answered by the materialists, that they cannot
characterize their supposed material things. However, an answer that
captures what exactly it is that Berkeley rejects is that material
things are mind-independent things or substances. And a
mind-independent thing is something whose existence is not dependent
on thinking/perceiving things, and thus would exist whether or not any
thinking things (minds) existed. Berkeley holds that there are no such
mind-independent things, that, in the famous phrase, esse est percipi
(aut percipere) — to be is to be perceived (or to perceive).

3.1.2 Spirits as active substances
Berkeley's ontology is not exhausted by the ideal, however. In
addition to perceived things (ideas), he posits perceivers, i.e.,
minds or spirits, as he often terms them. Spirits, he emphasizes, are
totally different in kind from ideas, for they are active where ideas
are passive. This suggests that Berkeley has replaced one kind of
dualism, of mind and matter, with another kind of dualism, of mind and
idea. There is something to this point, given Berkeley's refusal to
elaborate upon the relation between active minds and passive ideas. At
Principles 49, he famously dismisses quibbling about how ideas inhere
in the mind (are minds colored and extended when such sensible
qualities “exist in” them?) with the declaration that “those qualities
are in the mind only as they are perceived by it, that is, not by way
of mode or attribute, but only by way of idea”. Berkeley's dualism,
however, is a dualism within the realm of the mind-dependent.

3.2.6 Spirits and causation
We have spent some time examining the difficulties Berkeley faces in
the “idea/ordinary object” half of his ontology. Arguably, however,
less tractable difficulties confront him in the realm of spirits.
Early on, Berkeley attempts to forestall materialist skeptics who
object that we have no idea of spirit by arguing for this position
himself:

A spirit is one simple, undivided, active being: as it perceives
ideas, it is called the understanding, and as it produces or otherwise
operates about them, it is called the will. Hence there can be no idea
formed of a soul or spirit: for all ideas whatever, being passive and
inert, vide Sect. 25, they cannot represent unto us, by way of image
or likeness, that which acts. A little attention will make it plain to
any one, that to have an idea which shall be like that active
principle of motion and change of ideas, is absolutely impossible.
Such is the nature of spirit or that which acts, that it cannot be of
it self perceived, but only by the effects which it produceth. (PHK
27)
Surely the materialist will be tempted to complain, however, that
Berkeley's unperceivable spiritual substances, lurking behind the
scenes and supporting that which we can perceive, sound a lot like the
material substances which he so emphatically rejects.

Two very different responses are available to Berkeley on this issue,
each of which he seems to have made at a different point in his
philosophical development. One response would be to reject spiritual
substance just as he rejected material substance. Spirits, then, might
be understood in a Humean way, as bundles of ideas and volitions.
Fascinatingly, something like this view is considered by Berkeley in
his early philosophical notebooks (see PC 577ff). Why he abandons it
is an interesting and difficult question;[25] it seems that one worry
he has is how the understanding and the will are to be integrated and
rendered one thing.

The second response would be to explain why spiritual substances are
better posits than material ones. To this end, Berkeley emphasizes
that we have a notion of spirit, which is just to say that we know
what the word means. This purportedly contrasts with “matter,” which
Berkeley thinks has no determinate content. Of course, the real
question is: How does the term “spirit” come by any content, given
that we have no idea of it? In the Principles, Berkeley declares only
that we know spirit through our own case and that the content we
assign to “spirit” is derived from the content each of us assigns to
“I” (PHK 139–140).

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/