"Hylas. But according to your notions, what difference is there between real things, and chimeras formed by the imagination, or the visions of a dream, since they are all equally in the mind?

Philonous. The ideas formed by the imagination are faint and indistinct; they have besides an entire dependence on the will. But the ideas perceived by sense, that is, real things, are more vivid and clear, and being imprinted on the mind by a spirit distinct from us, have not a like dependence on our will. There is therefore no danger of confounding these with the foregoing: and there is as little of confounding them with the visions of a dream, which are dim, irregular and confused. And though they should happen to be never so lively and natural, yet by their not being connected, and of a piece with the preceding and subsequent transactions of our lives, they might easily be distinguishable from realities." (Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Dialogue 3)

Berkeley uses Philonous as his voice in his 'three dialogues' and I am sympathetic to what is expressed. In this essay I will explore what Berkeley's view of reality is, both for us and through the mind of God, which is important for his distinction between 'real' and 'imaginary' things. His distinction is fair but with problems. It seems to me that his argument of how 'real' things exist and his arguments for direct causation of all things by God end with a world view that is only intelligible if we introduce abstracted mental entities that fill the same role as matter. Thus, whilst Immaterialism, as Berkeley describes it, solves some mind-body problems but it solve problems of abstraction and scepticism as Berkeley believed it would.

Berkeley is correct that there is a difference between externally delivered images and internal ones. Internally generated images are disconnected with our wider sense of reality. There is some overlap however as our view of the external world can be interfered with by our thoughts and beliefs. Much of vision is not the direct perception of our eyes but what our minds construct for us based on what the eyes transmit, and sometimes our minds get it wrong and we have visions of images that do not exist despite us not willing it to be so. If all images are delivered by God then God sends incorrect images rather than them being a result of faulty biological mechanisms. However, the basic distinction between the two types of images still holds.

Berkeley holds all ideas (sensations/images) are caused by minds, some by our own, some not, and thus presumably by an external mind, one capable of creating strong vivid ideas with regular content and able to deliver them to us, thus greater than our own. It seems natural to suppose a like explanation of all images, so images being created by image-producing minds is not without merit, but there is no law of logic that necessitates this. If we knew of multiple minds doing this we might argue via induction, but we only know of one mind that can do such a thing, our own. However, given that we still know only one idea-creating mechanism and fail to make account of any other, it seems fair to adopt this mechanism as a total explanation.

Even accepting an external mind as a deliver-of-ideas, not all of Berkeley's ideas are so evident. Berkeley conceives of minds creating ideas directly, but other theorists have explored the possibility of ideas creating other ideas. Thomas Hobbes describes the mind as containing a series of causally related 'train of thoughts'. The beginning of such a chain of thoughts is held to be sensory experience, as 'there is no conception in man's mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense' (Hobbes, 1998: 9) The power of imagination is simply the bringing to consciousness images that have been previously received by sense impression. If true then we do not create images at all and thus we need an alternative generation theory for ideas than Berkeley's. It is hard to conceive of ideas not originally experienced through sense, as Descartes describes 'For clearly painters, when they try to imagine the most unusual sirens and satyrs, cannot assign natures to them which are completely mew; rather, they simply mix up the different parts of animals' (Descartes 2000: 20)

If there is no generation of ideas in our minds then we shouldn't assume that an external mind can do so but we still need a deliverer-of-ideas, but there's no reason to assume this deliverer-of-ideas is similar to our minds or that it is a creator-of-ideas. This could bring Berkeley more in line with Classical Theism which suggests that God is alien to our minds but it still damages his inferences. We know something is delivering us ideas according to a regular order, but its nature and relation to the genesis of ideas is unknown.

Descartes also explains that 'even if these ideas do not depend on my will, that does not prove that they originate from external things. For just as those impulses … seem to be distinct from my will, even though they are within me, so likewise it is possible that there is some other faculty … which is the origin of those ideas' (Descartes 2000: 34) Some things arise out of us that we do not consciously will. Some things that seem to be external may be truly internal. This makes possible the regularity of received images being internally generated. This means that Berkeley's arguments are not undeniable, though they can only be denied through the above variety of scepticism, which I shall not do.

I still think there are more issues that need to be explored, and hence it is worthwhile to discuss exactly what reality created by an external deliverer-of-ideas would look like.

Berkeley needs to establish the permanence of reality outside of ourselves and thus introduces the all-seeing mind of God. It is true that anything in our minds and capable of being experienced by us should be in the mind of an omniscient God by definition, but we should test the intelligibility of this claim via example

Let's suppose a tree exists without any minds apart from God's to perceive it. According to Berkeley there is no material object that the tree is, all there is are perceptions of ideas that we call 'a tree'. Perhaps God sees the tree from all angles and distances, and tastes, and hears and feels it in all ways, but this is a bit hard to understand.

A clearer way of understanding may be through looking at the nature of sensible objects and experiences. Two people can look at the 'same' fire but have two different sensible fires. As Berkeley non-committingly describes 'if the term same be used in the acceptation of philosophers, who pretend to an abstracted notion of identity, then … it may or may not be possible for divers persons to perceive the same thing' (Berkeley 1988: 193).

Two people feeling a fire will experience different sensations. Also, two people feeling different fires can be conceived as experiencing the same sensation. If two people feel a heat of the same degree, colour of the same shade, sound of the same note, then it seems reasonable that the sensation is the 'same' in Berkeley's notion of it. At least two minds share every sensation we have, our own and God's. The consequences are that two people experiencing the 'same' fire in normal terms may experience different ideas whilst two people experiencing 'different' fires in normal terms may experience the same idea. To say God knows all sensible objects is now easier to understand, it means He possesses knowledge of all possible sensations, that is of all colours, degrees of heat, pitches and volumes, et cetera. He then shares them with us in different combinations and patterns in order to create our experiences. Ones that relate to one another are called the 'same', but external object are an illusion.

But this is not all together comfortable. Some solace can be found in thinking of reality as the pattern of experiences rather than the independent sensations. Thus a piece of music is one 'thing' rather than a collection of numerous sensations common to all sound.

Reality as pattern is detrimental to Berkeley, as I will now show. Believing God to reveal one store of sensations via a pattern we can interact with and that constitutes reality, this pattern is discoverable via worldly interaction but the pattern is not a sensible object, it is not immediately perceived by the senses. Only if the order is being spontaneously created is it immediately discovered, but this is a pre-created order of things that dictate what sensations are impressed upon us 'according to certain rules or laws of nature' (Berkeley: 1988: 65) . God always hears all sounds, but allows us to experience it according to a pre-laid pattern.

God operates to a plan with science being the uncovering of those plans. This is not absurd and seems to make some sense. Scientific descriptions of reality are increasingly abstracted from our worldly experience. Not composed of phenomenological images but of mathematics and abstract entities that cannot be pictured. The mathematical system isn't directly related to what we see but to the movement of abstract entities interacting with one another. There is no need to assume abstract entities like this are material rather than immaterial.

In illustration I will draw an analogy between our reality and that of a virtual reality. Assume a virtual reality that is complete with all senses, in which we encounter numerous 'objects' that lack material reality. A computer delivers us ideas via a plan in computer language. In such a reality the organisation of the reality is independent of its perceivers of it. Inside the computer is an abstracted reality where 'virtual objects' interact. This objects lack material reality and the computer is merely impressing ideas onto us, but we would still approach a reality in the same way we do this one. This seems an intelligible way of making sense of an immaterial reality. God's method of creating a reality for us is akin to that of 'virtual reality'

Two issues need to be explored here. The first is whether or not such a reality could be considered 'real' in an important sense. Secondly, whether this reality live up to what Berkeley wants out of an immaterial reality, id est, an argument against scepticism and abstraction.

As to the first issue; we would have to treat the 'reality' as real. I don't think that realities have to be material to be truly 'real'. H. H. Price defends the notion of an immaterial reality that is meaningfully 'real' in his hypothesis of an immaterial afterlife, where he comments: 'Nor need such a world be so 'thin and unsubstantial' as you might think … there is nothing imaginary about a mental image … the paradox arises from the ambiguity of the verb 'to imagine'. It does sometimes mean 'to have mental images' But more often it means 'to entertain propositions without believing in them' (Price 1996: 422-3) Like Price's image world, Berkeley's reality and a virtual reality which we could not leave would not merely be entertained but we would care about what happens in it and it would matter. We would have reasons to interact seriously with such a world.

Hence a deliverer-of-images created reality can be an intelligible and acceptable reality. Yet, whilst I have drawn this from what must be inferred from Berkeley in order to maintain intelligibility, it does not achieve all of Berkeley's aims.

Berkeley wants to avoid scepticism by avoiding abstracted objects. My account of Berkeley's immaterial reality does involve abstracted objects. God does not just possess sensations, but a system of virtual objects/archetypes whose abstract location determines what sensations we receive. Berkeley also makes reference to objects having a singular archetype; 'And … so may you suppose an external archetype on my principles external, I mean, to your own mind; though indeed it must be supposed to exist in that Mind which comprehends all things; but then this serves all the ends of identity' (Berkeley 1988: 194)

These archetypes are not immediately sensible, but abstracted. We come to know these archetypes in the same manner we come to know the material archetypes, via the patterns that guide them. If we are to take the object archetypes that are behind our ideas as real and not the ideas themselves, then we must accept that our ideas of mental archetypes are just impressions of something separately real also. It seems that Berkeley must be guilty of abstraction (and thus all the problems of scepticism that accompany it) just as materialist philosophers are.

In illustration let's build a simple mental reality. Imagining a small reality consisting of a room with plain walls, with a table in its centre, and a vase upon the table, then consider walking around it and what we would see. What we would be doing is using a constructed mental map to determine what phenomenological experiences we ought to receive as we moved. If we wanted to know the truth of the reality we would want to know the map which is permanent and regular, not the immediately sensible objects which vary. The abstracted reality is real, not the sensible objects.

Berkeley's view on what is real and the nature of causation suffers from three problems. Firstly, the lack of a logical reason to assume ideas can only be created by minds given we only have experience of our own. Secondly, whether minds can create ideas at all. Thirdly, whether or not understanding reality as being contained within the mind of God forces us to understand reality as an abstracted system discovered by exploring the patterns revealed to us by God, rather than being sensible objects of perception itself. Between these three ideas, I feel Berkeley's attempted outlaying of reality is false, though immaterial views of reality not entirely without merit.

At the time of originally writing the above essay I had little knowledge of Kant's metaphysics, and hence Berkeley was the only major philosophy I had to associate with Idealism.

To this end I found myself taking the entire philosophy more seriously than I do now. Of course I disregarded what Berkeley may have considered major components of his philosophy, but all the same. I became increasingly tempted by the idea that what reality composed of was a mental fabrication which we created in order to map sense impression from 'elsewhere'.

Ironically this development of Berkeley was not to far short of how I would interpret Kant, and hence it should not be surprising in my essays on Kant to find that they have strong Idealist influences. In Kant I found a more respectable way of talking about 'mental fabrications' as being 'real', and indeed, more 'real' than mere sense impression.

For that reason, in the next essay on this topic you shall find a discussion of space as being essentially 'virtual', in the same manner as I begin to suggest in this essay.