Thinking about yesterday’s class discussions in CoPhi & A&P on George Berkeley & the human proclivity to violence, respectively.
Bishop Berkeley was one odd empiricist, insisting that we “know” only our ideas and not their referents. Here’s that famous scene with Dr. Dictionary:
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it — “I refute it thus.” Boswell’s Life of Johnson
Berkeley gave his name (though not its pronunciation) to the California town and college campus where there’s lately been a revival of interest in him.
There’s a story that when George Berkeley, the future philosopher, was a student he decided to see what it was like to approach death. He hung himself, arranging to have a friend cut him down and revive him after he lost consciousness…Berkeley is now hung again, as large as life, but only in portrait form on the campus that is his namesake.
Well, the idea of him is now hung again at least.
What would Berkeley make of South Park? In A&P Jamie launched a discussion of human violence and ideology with this description of an episode I’d missed:
In the year 2546, worldwide atheism, founded by Richard Dawkins and his wife Mrs. Garrison, has eradicated religion. Atheism has in turn split into three hostile denominations at perpetual war over the so-called “Great Question”: the super-intelligent otters of the AAA (Allied Atheist Alliance), the humans of the UAA (United Atheist Alliance), and a rival human faction, the UAL (Unified Atheist League).
As the vicious sea otters of the AAA complete their planning for a sneak attack against the UAA and UAL, one elderly otter, known as ‘The Wise One’, asks whether the war is worth fighting, and implies that logic and science can be harmonized with some sort of belief in the supernatural. After pondering this for a moment, the rest of the otters brutally murder the Wise One. A massive battle between the three atheist groups begins, during which Cartman discovers the nature of the “Great Question”: the war is being fought over which denomination name is the most logical for atheists to call themselves: the AAA, the UAL, or the UAA (with the otters passionately defending the alliteration of the acronym “AAA”).
…even in a world that has 100% embraced atheism and that has logic and science as the totally dominant paradigm, we’d still find reasons to slaughter each other. Pessimistic maybe. But on our worst days, I fear it’s all too true.
Tags: George Berkeley, South Park, Steven Pinker
