A summary of the week from Brins


Another normal week. There isn't really much special to be said for this week, and I have yet to see something bad happen to counter my statement from the previous post. Yes, it's just a nice, normal week at the CICC.

Yes, I did make it to the philosophy club this week, at which we studied Berkeley (if that's how it's spelled) and his bloffering on the idea of everything in the Universe existing to us only as an idea in our heads. Confused? Let's put it in another sense: what he's saying is, whatever we see, feel or hear is not what is inherently there, but rather what we are experiencing in thought. He uses a very interesting argument to back that up - which I find quite feasible - that it is impossible for us to experience or even conceive sensation (whether seeing, smelling, imagining etc.) without thinking about it. With that, he claims that we cannot see or do anything without thinking about it, henceforth what we see and do are merely our thoughts. While he acknowledges that things exist, he believes our perception of them existing (in any way, shape or form) is confined to our thoughts.

He kind of slipped up when he started going into the idea of objects ceasing to exist when we weren't in their vicinity... or did he?

No, because then he concluded that the Universe was God's mind, and so it always existed (he was a bishop, you see.) That last one seems a bit hazy to me, at least in its wording, but there you go. Of course, around Berkeley's time, philosophers like him were trying to convince aethists and sceptics of the existence of God, and so it was any old excuse to get Him involved in their theories, really.

I certainly can see great sense and logic in what Berkeley's blabbering on about for the most part, even if it may well be a load of cobblers' buckles.

But enough about that, I'm sure you want to be going about your business. Goodbye, meinem leibschenes!

P.S.: Happy birthday, Rob!
  ¶ 6:44 pm