5 July 2004 Lecture Summary

First day of the second term! After a brief look at the second-term requirements, we dived right into the philosophical work.

Philosopher Examined: Berkeley.

Line of Thought: The Lecture had three (very diverse) parts, each of which was intended to give students tools that will be helpful for understanding Berkeley's immaterialism.

1. The first part of the lecture gave a brief overview of Berkeley's life in order to argue that his philosophical work always has a practical purpose that needs to be kept in mind.

2. The second part of the lecture looked at Berkeley's theory of vision, particularly as it is found in New Theory of Vision and Alciphron. In essence, I went through Berkeley's visual language argument for the existence of God, which can be found summarized here. Knowing the elements of his theory of vision will prove useful for getting a clearer understanding of his immaterialism.

3. The third part of the lecture looked at Berkeley's investigations into tar-water. The primary point of this part of the lecture was not to learn Berkeley's views about the nature of tar, but to show what he believes to be the correct way to go about philosophical (and therefore scientific) inquiry.

Activity: Students broke into groups to examine Berkeley's poem, "On Tar," which can be found here.