Bishop Berkeley and
Networked Intelligence
According to his notebooks, George Berkeley, later Bishop of Coyne,
had already discovered the “amazing truth… that nothing properly but…
conscious things do exist”(1) while he was still a young man, recently graduated from
Trinity College, Dublin. By the time he was 25
years old he had become the founder of the doctrine of Immaterialism in A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
that was first published in Dublin in
1710. According to the doctrine of
Immaterialism there is no reality outside of the human mind, and material objects have
therefore to be perceived by a human mind in order to exist.
In modern terms, George Berkeley’s doctrine of Immaterialism would
support the notion that the Universe is a virtual reality.
George Berkeley certainly was not the first person to come up with
this notion that all objects in the external world can be taken as mental constructs by
virtue of the fact that they can only be perceived through the senses of the observer. In the western philosophical tradition this notion
can be found as far back as the ancient Greek philosopher Pyrrho of Elis (360?-275? BC)
and in the eastern philosophical tradition, this notion that the external world is
illusionary, mere ‘name and form’, is a dominant theme of the Hindu Upanishads
dating back about 3,000 years BC.
Taken in its historical context, Berkeley’s theory was a
reaction against the attempts by certain philosophers, notably René Descartes, who were
asserting that it was possible to be certain that an external world did in fact exist,
which would therefore enable humanity to systematically build up an edifice of knowledge
concerning the nature of this external world. Interestingly
the famous assertion by René Descartes that it was beyond all doubt that he “thinks”
and therefore he must exist is hardly a substantial proof that the external world is
composed of some physical material. The most
that can be said is that he certainly thinks that the external world is material which
does not weaken the arguments of Pyrrho of Elis in the slightest, indeed if anything, it
enhances the case for skepticism.
Be that as it may, Descartes was asserting that he was certain that
he exists because he is certain that he thinks, and this was sufficient to give validity
to the body of knowledge that was beginning to accumulate about the external world. Other notable philosophers such as Pierre Gassendi
(1592-1655) and John Locke (1632-1704), although conceding the fact that ultimately in our
knowledge about the external world we were only dealing with appearances, our beliefs
about those appearances were sufficiently certain to enable us to build up a body of
knowledge that will work for all practical purposes. Our
knowledge about an external world appears to be correct, so to argue that it is not
absolute proof that the external world is material is merely splitting hairs.
Enter George Berkeley into the debate, who was determined to do away
with this “forlorn skepticism” once and for all, because he saw it as
potentially undermining Christianity, a religion that he devoutly believed in all his
life. He actually genuinely believed if he
could irrefutably establish that the external world was of a spiritual, immaterial nature
then he would be delivering a fatal blow to the atheists and skeptics who were calling
into question Christian dogma. In point of
fact Christian dogma is only understandable on the basis that there is a real, physical
Universe and a spiritual, immaterial God somewhere else external to it, but George
Berkeley didn’t seem to realize this, or if he did, he evidently didn’t consider
it a fundamental premise for Christianity.
With great gusto Berkeley set about to argue that external objects
have to be perceived by a mind in order to exist, which meant that he then had to deal
with the problem with what happened to these objects when they were not being observed. Did they simply cease to exist? Are they no longer real? How can any rational person be asserting that
objects can simply appear, disappear and then re-appear?
There were many who called his sanity into question. According to Berkeley “bodies are annihilated
and created every moment, or exist not at all during the intervals between our perception
of them.”(2) Bearing in mind that he is
actually talking about mountains and rivers and the like, one minute they are there and
the next they cease to exist. A limerick by
Monsignor Ronald Knox (1888-1957) very wittily captures Berkeley’s quandary.(3)
There once was a
man who said, ‘God
Must find it
exceedingly odd
If he finds that
this tree
Continues to be
When there’s
no one about in the Quad.
This is where Berkeley’s religious faith comes into play, and it
is precisely in this area that he saw himself negating the arguments of the skeptics and
atheists. When “all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world”
are not being observed “they must have no existence at all, or else subsist in the
mind of some eternal spirit.”(4) But for Berkeley it was an “absurdity of
abstraction to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a spirit.”(5)
From which he concludes as a matter of simple logic that “there is not any other
substance other than spirit, or that which
perceives.”(6) There are many no doubt who would conclude at this point that Berkeley
has taken leave of his senses, but the meaning of his statements are crystal clear. The Universe in its entirety is in the nature of
spirit. Or in limerick form:(7)
Dear Sir, Your
astonishment’s odd;
I am always
about in the Quad.
And that’s
why the tree
Will continue to
be,
Since observed
by yours faithfully, God.
Some have argued that Berkeley is saying that the existence of
material objects in God’s mind means that God is literally continuing to perceive
them, or that the objects are just held in suspense, in limbo, in God’s mind and are
reproduced on call for the benefit of an observing or perceiving mind. In order for this
distinction to have any substance it would be necessary to have some clear idea of what
God or spirit is which is, to say the least, problematical.
Berkeley never attempted to answer that question. For him it was a forgone conclusion that God was
the Trinity of orthodox Christianity. But for
most people, these days, this explanation is far from satisfactory.
For Berkeley, God was directly communicating our visual experience to
us like a language. The French philosopher,
Malebranche, whom Berkeley had studied as a student, had argued that there was an external
material reality that was independent of mind and yet we were also “seeing all things
in God.”(8) Berkeley’s argument seems to echo the “seeing all things in God”
aspect while fervently denying the mind-independent reality aspect. From which we can conclude that it is Berkeley, and
not Malebranche, who is being strictly logical. To
have a mind-independent reality and yet at the same time to be “seeing all things in
God” is patently absurd. Berkeley’s
own view that there “is not any other substance other than spirit” is logically
acceptable if we are to be “seeing all things in God.” His logic falls down only at the next stage, for
his Christian notion of God is not acceptable to clarify his meaning. There is absolutely nothing in Christianity to
suggest how God could be communicating to us our visual experience like a language.
Orthodox Christianity would have us believe that there is a distance
between ourselves and the Deity that created us, whereas Berkeley’s Immaterialism
relies upon the “immediate presence of the Deity.”(9) Somehow the Deity is
actually responsible for causation, it is the Deity that is responsible for producing
ideas in us, it is the Deity that is responsible for our perceptions, and it is by means
of these perceptions that the appearance of an external material world is created. Berkeley does not specifically say it but it is
quite clear that he is arguing that the Deity is responsible for our intelligence and our
consciousness. Quite clearly he has now
considerably removed himself from orthodox Christian dogma.
But his theories remain an enigma because he gives us no clear idea of what
form this Deity could take if not the Christian Trinity.
We are looking for some sort of Deity that is actually working through us to
provide us with our intelligence and our consciousness.
In 2003, German writers, Grazyna Fosar and Franz Bludorf, published a
book Vernetzte Intelligenz [Networked Intelligence](10) wherein
they argue that the DNA of all sentient beings (including plants) is linked in an
intelligence network that allows for a hypercommunication of information. By “hypercommunication” they mean
instantaneous communication – zero time lag. This hypercommunication takes place by
means of magnetic wormholes at the sub-atomic or quantum level where our macroscopic
notions of time and space no longer apply. According to this theory the DNA is actually
structured as a language, and data is not only transmitted in the DNA but it is also
stored. In this respect the DNA acts as a
‘holographic-solitonic’ computer. The
DNA emits discreet pulse-like waves that hold their shape and is therefore capable of data
transmission. This networked intelligence in
the DNA is responsible for our individual consciousness, and our group consciousness. It is likewise responsible for our intelligence. It is the networked intelligence that actually puts
the ideas into our mind.
For the rest of this article it is proposed to take some statements
by Berkeley, and make one small modification to them.
Wherever Berkeley uses the word “God” or “spirit” or
“Deity”, we shall transpose the words “networked intelligence.” Before doing so we should briefly mention the
modern doctrine of Phenomenalism that purports to offer “Berkeley without God.”(11)
Where Berkeley talks of “ideas”, phenomenalism offers “sense-data.” According to the Linguistic Phenomenalism of A.J.
Ayer “propositions which are ordinarily expressed by sentences which refer to
material things could also be expressed by sentences which referred exclusively to
sense-data.”(12)
It is a commonplace for all of us that the material objects of the
external world are converted by our senses into data that is then mapped or re-constructed
on the cortex of our brain to give us a representation of the external world. It is also a commonplace to anyone who knows
anything about computers that the nature of data is such that it brings with it the
information about its source. That is to say, if our brain is just processing data to make
maps of the external world and representations of material objects, we can no longer be
certain as to the source of that data. The
data itself is telling us that it is coming from the external world, but it could just as
easily be stored inside of us. We can never
know. So for our added amusement, let us also
see what happens when we transpose “sense-data” into Berkeley’s statements
wherever he refers to “ideas.”
Berkeley introduces his work: “What I here make public has,
after a long and scrupulous enquiry, seemed to me to be evidently true, and not unuseful
to be known, particularly to those who are tainted with skepticism, or want a
demonstration of the existence and immortality of [networked intelligence], or the natural
immortality of the soul.”(13) The networked intelligence can store and transmit data,
which means that the sense-data for every living creature is actually stored in the DNA as
volatile memory. After we are dead the DNA
retains a record of our existence. This is
what constitutes our soul in Berkeleian terms.
His general thesis: “Some
truths there are so near and obvious to the mind, that a man need open his eyes to see
them. Such I take this important one to be,
that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which
compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their
being is to be perceived or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually
perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must
either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the [networked intelligence]: it being
perfectly unintelligible and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to
any single part of them an existence independent of a [networked intelligence]. To be convinced of which, the reader need only
reflect and try to separate in his own thoughts the being of a sensible thing from its
being perceived.”(14)
The last sentence is particularly significant, for here we see Berkeley
stating the same thing that Hegel maintains in the Phenomenology of Spirit, namely
that subject and object, or being and thought are identical.
Once we know that the sense-data is stored in the networked intelligence in
the DNA, then evidently the boundary between subject and object or being and thought is
artificial, and this boundary creates the appearance within the unified networked
intelligence of a self-consciousness, the “I”, differentiated from “the
other.”
Furthermore Berkeley clearly indicates in the passage quoted above
that when the object is not being perceived by a mind, it continues to exist as sense-data
in the networked intelligence. So Berkeley
continues: “From what has been said, it
follows, there is not any other substance than [networked intelligence], or that which
perceives.”(15) This is precisely the same theory as outlined by Hegel in his Phenomenology
of Spirit. Once it is clearly understood
that subject-object or being-thought is identical then we must assume that all of life is
a “spirit monism” – the networked intelligence.
Immanuel Kant in Prolegomena distinguishes his Transcendental
Idealism from “the mystical and visionary idealism of Berkeley.” According to Kant there is an impenetrable barrier
between the object in itself and our knowledge of the object through our senses. The thing in itself is forever separated from us. Kant says: “My idealism concerns not the
existence of things (the doubting of which, however, constituted idealism in the ordinary
sense), since it never came into my head to doubt it, but it concerns the sensuous
representation of things…”(16) Kant’s transcendental idealism is flawed
logically for he doesn’t seem to realize that to have no knowledge of the thing in
itself is to know nothing, so how can he even assume that it exists.
Berkeley’s Immaterialism (nothing exists unless it is perceived
by a conscious mind) is therefore more logical than Kant’s theory. Berkeley, like Hegel, was forced to argue that
objects continue to exist in the mind of a universal spirit (God), but once we understand
that when objects are not being perceived by humans they continue to exist as sense-data
in the networked intelligence, then the Idealism of Berkeley as well as Hegel presents a
perfectly rational theory about the nature of life. It
is actually Kant’s Transcendental Idealism that fails for want of a logical basis. Berkeley specifically says: “In short, if
there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come to know it…”(17)
which effectively destroys Kant’s Transcendental Idealism in just one sentence. Kant actually admits that he knows nothing about
the thing in itself, indeed to theorize about it is meaningless. To all intents and purposes it does not exist in
his theory.
In explaining our perceptions of a real world, Berkeley says: “We
perceive a continual succession of [sense-data], some are anew excited, some are changed
or totally disappear. There is therefore some
cause of these [sense-data] whereon they depend, and which produces and changes them. That this cause cannot be any quality or idea or
combination of ideas, is clear from the preceding section.
It must therefore be a substance; but it has been shown that there is no
corporeal or material substance: it remains therefore that the cause of [sense-data] is an
incorporeal active substance or [networked intelligence].”(18) Berkeley goes on to
describe this networked intelligence as “one simple, undivided, active being: as it
perceives [sense-data] it is called understanding.” We can see that Berkeley actually attributes the
perception of the sense-data to this unified active spirit.
Once we know that we are dealing with a networked intelligence in the DNA,
we can interpret Berkeley’s intuition that the sense-data is processed in the brain
to give us self-consciousness, perception and understanding.
There appears to be diversity in the world, but the networked intelligence
is the “simple, undivided, active being” that Berkeley is talking about.
So what does Berkeley have to say about reality. “If any man thinks this detracts from the
existence or reality of things, he is very far from understanding what has been premised
in the plainest terms I could think of. Take
here an abstract of what has been said. There
are spiritual substances, minds or human souls, which will or excite ideas in themselves
at pleasure: but these are faint, weak, and unsteady in respect of others they perceive by
sense, which being impressed upon them according to certain rules or laws of nature, speak
themselves the effects of a [networked intelligence] more powerful and wise than human
spirits. These latter are said to have more reality
in them than the former: by which is meant that they are more affecting, orderly, and
distinct, and that they are not fictions of the mind perceiving them. And in this sense, the sun that I see by day is the
real sun, and that which I imagine by night is the idea of the former. In the sense here given of reality, it is
evident that every vegetable, star, mineral, and in general each part of the mundane
system, is as much a real being by our principles as by any other. Whether others mean anything by the term reality
different from what I do, I ask them to look into their own thoughts and see.”(19)
Evidently Berkeley does not doubt for one moment that he is real, nor
does he doubt for one moment that external objects are real. Note that Berkeley emphasizes
that what we normally think of as inanimate objects, such as vegetables, stars, minerals,
are real beings in his system. However this is not a physical reality, but a virtual
reality. Indeed Berkeley actually foreshadows what we now refer to as virtual reality:
“…it is granted on all hands (and what happens in dreams, phrensies, and the
like puts it beyond dispute) that it is possible we might be affected with all the ideas
we have now, though no bodies existed without, resembling them… In short, if there
were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come to know it; and if there were
not, we might have the very same reasons to think there were that we have now. Suppose, what no one can deny possible, an
intelligence without the help of external bodies to be affected with the same train of
[sense-data] that you have, imprinted in the same order and with like vividness in his
mind. I ask whether that intelligence hath not
all the reason to believe the existence of corporeal substances, represented by his
[sense-data], and exciting them in his mind, that you can possible have for believing the
same thing?...”(20)
It is one thing to say that the world is an illusion (the Hindus have
been saying that since time immemorial), the essential question to be answered is how is
the illusion created. No one is doubting that
something is happening here – there appears to be a Universe and a great diversity of
individuals appear to live in it. What we need
is a rational interpretation for these appearances. The
answer is that the world we perceive is actually sense-data in the DNA. The data is real.
The processing of the data creates a virtual reality. The world is a manifestation of the networked
intelligence.
NOTES
- Quoted in
Introduction to G. Berkeley, Principles of Human
Knowledge and Three Dialogues (London: Penguin, 1988), 1
- G. Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues
(London: Penguin, 1988), 48
- Op. cit. note 1,
16
- Op. cit. note 1,
16
- Op. cit. note 2,
55
- Op. cit. note 2,
55
- Op. cit. note 1,
16
- Op. cit. note 1,
16
- Op. cit. note 1,
22
- G. Fosar and F.
Bludorf, Vernetzte Intelligenz (Aachen: Omega,
2003)
- Op. cit. note 1,
28
- Op. cit. note 1,
28
- Op. cit. note 2,
35
- Op. cit. note 2,
55
- Op. cit. note 2,
55
- I. Kant, Prolegomena (Illinois: Open Court, 1902), 49
- Op. cit. note 2,
60
- Op. cit. note 2,
62
- Op. cit. note 2,
19
- Op. cit. note 2,
59-60