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Full Idea
How matter should operate on a spirit, or produce any idea in it, is what no philosopher will pretend to explain; it is therefore evident there can be no use of matter in natural philosophy.
Gist of Idea
No one can explain how matter affects mind, so matter is redundant in philosophy
Source
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §50)
Book Ref
Berkeley,George: 'The Principles of Human Knowledge etc.', ed/tr. Warnock,G.J. [Fontana 1962], p.89
A Reaction
An intriguing argument for idealism, which starts in Cartesian dualism, but then discards the physical world because of the notorious interaction problem. Of course, if he had thought that matter and spirit were one (Spinoza) the problem vanishes.
| 13470 | Mass is central to matter [Newton, by Hart,WD] |
| 15978 | I take 'matter' to be a body, excluding its extension in space and its shape [Locke] |
| 12718 | Secondary matter is active and complete; primary matter is passive and incomplete [Leibniz] |
| 19416 | Not all of matter is animated, any more than a pond full of living fish is animated [Leibniz] |
| 19422 | Every particle of matter contains organic bodies [Leibniz] |
| 19436 | Bare or primary matter is passive; it is clothed or secondary matter which contains action [Leibniz] |
| 7560 | Leibniz struggled to reconcile bodies with a reality of purely soul-like entities [Jolley on Leibniz] |
| 6731 | No one can explain how matter affects mind, so matter is redundant in philosophy [Berkeley] |
| 14301 | We have no good concept of solidity or matter, because accounts of them are all circular [Hume] |
| 16603 | In the 17th C matter became body, and was then studied by science [Pasnau] |