Podcast appearances and mentions of bishop berkeley

If both clocks were correct, one would be redundant.Topics in this episode include the Ballast Office, the timeball, stellar parallax, ships' navigators and chronometers, the whereabouts of the timeball, the political controversy of Greenwich Mean Time, Dunsink time, Sir Robert Ball and The Story of the Heavens, what the heck parallax actually means, how James Joyce uses the term parallax in Ulysses, being your own solar eclipse, how to make friends and influence astronomers at the Dunsink Observatory, Robert Anton Wilson, Clyde Tombaugh, the epiphanies to be found in common street furniture, Bishop Berkeley's thoughts on stereoscopic vision, Dedalus and Bloom as a binary star system, the hypostasis of urination, and crossing the streams.Support us on Patreon to access episodes early, bonus content, and a video version of our podcast.On the Blog:ParallaxBlooms & Barnacles Social Media:Facebook | Twitter | InstagramSubscribe to Blooms & Barnacles:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

Today we talk about invisible architecture, how buildings can define time, and holding ideas loosely. I wrote these notes while scrubbing my floor on my hands and knees. It was a satisfying experience. As I write this, my son is banging on the glass of the fireplace. I told him to stop. He doesn't look happy about that. Notes: Slapstick double helix, old school skater style, aesthetics as a manifestation of harmony, defining "woke," Hostile Witness, embracing the edge, needing a reminder, weapon salve as longitudinal measurement, Max Ernst's father's tree, building invisible cathedrals, invisible force data, the hospital as iconic form of architecture, the way that hospitals are decorated, Kris tells hospital stories, morgue pranks, remembering labor times, verbing nouns, post partum, butterfly messages, taking wounds with you, Infinite Jest's big metaphor, circling back to your own footprints, a dragon story, Hindu shadow puppets healing children with deformities, things only existing because they are remembered, Bishop Berkeley, pine needle tea, intellect of the first water, the joy of being wrong, cyberpunk dreams, listening to Chinese, "Through the Looking Glass," and dream causality.

Galileo vs the church - whose side are you on? Today we discuss Chapter 3 of Conjectures and Refutations, Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge. This is a juicy one, as Popper manages to simultaneously attack both philosophers and physicists, as he takes on instrumentalism and essentialism, two alternatives to his 'conjecture and refutation' approach to knowledge. We discuss: The conflict between Galileo and the church What is instrumentalism, and how did it become popular? How instrumentalism is still in vogue in many physics departments The Problem of Universals The essentialist approach to science Stars, air, cells, and lightning "What is" vs "How does" questions The relationship between essentialism and language, and its influence on politics. Viewing words as instruments See More: - Instrumentalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism - Essentialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism - The problem of universals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problemofuniversals Quotes: Few if any of the physicists who have now accepted the instrumentalist view of Cardinal Bellarmino and Bishop Berkeley realize that they have accepted a philosophical theory. Nor do they realize that they have broken with the Galilean tradition. On the contrary, most of them think that they have kept clear of philosophy; and most of them no longer care anyway. What they now care about, as physicists, is (a) mastery of the mathematical formalism, i.e. of the instrument, and (b) its applications; and they care for nothing else. -- C&R, Page 134 Thus my criticism of essentialism does not aim at establishing the non-existence of essences; it merely aims at showing the obscurantist character of the role played by the idea of essences in the Galilean philosophy of science (down to Maxwell, who was inclined to believe in them but whose work destroyed this belief). In other words my criticism tries to show that, whether essences exist or not, the belief in them does not help us in any way and indeed is likely to hamper us; so that there is no reason why the scientist should assume their existence. -- C&R, Page 141. But they are more than this, as can be seen from the fact that we submit them to severe tests by trying to deduce from them some of the regularities of the known world of common experience i.e. by trying to explain these regularities. And these attempts to explain the known by the unknown (as I have described them elsewhere) have immeasurably extended the realm of the known. They have added to the facts of our everyday world the invisible air, the antipodes, the circulation of the blood, the worlds of the telescope and the microscope, of electricity, and of tracer atoms showing us in detail the movements of matter within living bodies. All these things are far from being mere instruments: they are witness to the intellectual conquest of our world by our minds. But there is another way of looking at these matters. For some, science is still nothing but glorified plumbing, glorified gadgetmaking—‘mechanics'; very useful, but a danger to true culture, threatening us with the domination of the near-illiterate (of Shakespeare's ‘mechanicals'). It should never be mentioned in the same breath as literature or the arts or philosophy. Its professed discoveries are mere mechanical inventions, its theories are instruments—gadgets again, or perhaps super-gadgets. It cannot and does not reveal to us new worlds behind our everyday world of appearance; for the physical world is just surface: it has no depth. The world is just what it appears to be. Only the scientific theories are not what they appear to be. A scientific theory neither explains nor describes the world; it is nothing but an instrument. -- C&R, Page 137-8. What's the essential nature of this podcast? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

George Berkeley, a father of Empiricism, and Irish Bishop and endower of Yale University lived a fascinating life,  We look at his ideas and his legacy in this podcast. 

If reality were just a dream, how could we tell? Are tables perfect? Why bother waking up a fish? Why did a dictionary maker kick a rock?All these questions and more will be... maybe answered, or maybe just alluded to, in this episode on Bishop Berkeley's subjective idealism. We also talk about video games a bit, of course.If you're a fan of the show, I'm given to understand that feeding the algorithms by leaving ratings or reviews on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser is a super helpful thing you can do, so... go do that. Thanks!You can also:Find me on Twitter: @overthinkery1 (and The Well-Red Mage @TheWellRedMage)Discuss Philosophiraga on Reddit at The Well-Reddit PageCheck out more Magely content at TheWellRedMage.comSupport the show (http://patreon.com/thewellredmage)

Form of my form! Who watches me here?Kelly and Dermot wade into the final pages of “Proteus” to spend some time with old faves like Aristotle, Bishop Berkeley and Giordano Bruno. We dig deeper into Stephen Dedalus’ internal monologue while discussing Stephen’s concern for his future legacy, Stephen’s shadow, darkness shining in the brightness, the squid people of Procyon 5, the Delta of Cassiopeia, Roman augury, Giordano Bruno’s belief that the constellations were morally corrupt, and the written word as a Berkeleyan abstraction. Sweny's Patreon helps keep this marvelous Dublin landmark alive. Please subscribe!On the Blog:Decoding Dedalus: Signs on a White FieldForm of FormsSocial Media:Facebook|TwitterSubscribe to Blooms & Barnacles:Apple Podcasts| Google Play Music| Stitcher

The Art + Science Reading Group is now a virtual gathering of thinkers, researchers and the incurably curious. Organised by PhD candidates Amelia McConville (School of English and Institute of Neuroscience) and Autumn Brown (School of Education and Science Gallery Dublin) and supported by Science Gallery Dublin and the Trinity Long Room Hub, the series will explore the evolutionary and revolutionary kinship between two approaches to understanding the universe and our place within it. During the discussion Dr Moriarty reference images which you can view here while listening. https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/assets/documents/Mathsartandscience.pdf Last week we navigate the swerves and curves of Euclidian geometry, the language of primary colours, and some truly vicious smackdown poetry. Leading us into the deep dark world of satire and maths is philosopher extraordinaire Dr Clare Moriarty. Clare will provide an introduction to Euclid's geometry through the eyes of an Irish mathematician and rabble rouser, Oliver Byrne. Described as the 'Matisse of Mathematics', Byrne ascribed primary colours to geometry diagrams in his gorgeous edition of Euclid's Elements (link below). Byrne was a contentious fellow (firearms enthusiast trained in close hand combat) and sought to further the work of another conspicuous and disruptive mathematician, George Berkeley. Bishop Berkeley discusses the nature of a line as “breadthless length” and attempts to upend our understanding of basic geometry. We'll be examining Byrne's diagrams in contrast to the paintings of Piet Mondrian exploring the parallels between their use of primary colours, their transgressive treatment of lines and geometrical realities.

Go Back this is the metaphysical theater go back anchor podcast go back johntvrz.com today we speak about Idealism In philosophy, Idealism is the group of metaphysical philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing. In contrast to Materialism, Idealism asserts the primacy of consciousness as the origin and prerequisite of material phenomena. According to this view consciousness exists before and is the pre-condition of material existence. Consciousness creates and determines the material and not vice versa. Idealism believes consciousness and mind to be the origin of the material world and aims to explain the existing world according to these principles. Idealism theories are mainly divided into two groups. Subjective idealism takes as its starting point the given fact of human consciousness seeing the existing world as a combination of sensation. Objective idealism posits the existence of an objective consciousness which exists before and, in some sense, independently of human ones. In a sociological sense, Idealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society. As an ontological doctrine, idealism goes further, asserting that all entities are composed of mind or spirit. Idealism thus rejects physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind. The earliest extant arguments that the world of experience is grounded in the mental derive from India and Greece. The Hindu idealists in India and the Greek Neoplatonists gave panentheistic arguments for an all-pervading consciousness as the ground or true nature of reality. In contrast, the Yogācāra school, which arose within Mahayana Buddhism in India in the 4th century based its "mind-only" idealism to a greater extent on phenomenological analyses of personal experience. This turn toward the subjective anticipated empiricists such as George Berkeley, who revived idealism in 18th-century Europe by employing skeptical arguments against materialism. Beginning with Immanuel Kant, German idealists such as G. W. F. Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Arthur Schopenhauer dominated 19th-century philosophy. This tradition, which emphasized the mental or "ideal" character of all phenomena, gave birth to idealistic and subjectivist schools ranging from British idealism to phenomenalism to existentialism. The historical influence of this branch of idealism remains central even to the schools that rejected its metaphysical assumptions, such as Marxism, pragmatism and positivism. putting the issues he faced in modern terms, and treats the Biblical account of matter and the psychology of perception and nature. Foster's The Case for Idealism argues that the physical world is the logical creation of natural, non-logical constraints on human sense-experience. Foster's latest defense of his views is in his book A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism. Paul Brunton, a British philosopher, mystic, traveler, and guru, taught a type of idealism called "mentalism", similar to that of Bishop Berkeley, proposing a master world-image, projected or manifested by a world-mind, and an infinite number of individual minds participating. A tree does not cease to exist if nobody sees it because the world-mind is projecting the idea of the tree to all minds. This tree the metaphysical theater podcast. Anchor FM

Here are some links to find out even more: Our guest for this episode: Dr Clare Moriarty! * her personal webpage at KCL is here (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/dr-clare-moriarty), and you can find her on twitter @quiteclare (https://twitter.com/quiteclare). * Here's Clare's excellent piece for History Ireland which discusses A Masterclass in Trolling from an 18th Century Bishop: 'Berkeley vs. Walton' (https://www.jstor.org/stable/26853081?seq=1) For some introductory things to learn more about Berkeley's views: * here (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/) is the Stanford Encyclopedia to Philosophy's entry about Berkeley by Lisa Downing * here (https://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/Berkeley/) is David Wilkin's (TCD) page which has links to online texts and other resources, especially about the Analyst controversy We talk a bit about what it's like to on a temporary employment contract in univerisities (I think I say that I've held 2 or 3 'permanent' appointments, but I meant to say 'temporary'!), and there's widespread growing concern about the way that universities have decided to keep people on 'precarious' contracts. * The British Philosophical Assocation issued a report 'Improving Careers: Philosophers in non-permanent employment (https://bpa.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/phillips-improving-careers.pdf)' in 2010 * and an updated piece in 2018 'Improving Careers in Philosophy: Some Information and Recommendations for Heads of Departments (https://bpa.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/improving-careers-in-philosophy.pdf)' * as well as a 'Guide for Philosophers in Non-permanent employment in the UK (https://bpa.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Guide-for-Philosophers-in-Non-Permanent-Employment.pdf)' (2017) We also talk a bit about some of the challenges that go with working on a topic of research that straddles several different disciplines (history, philosophy, mathematics). Jo Wolff mentions the latter in his column for the Guardian here (https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/sep/23/universities-make-scholarship-more-confusing-exciting), including a shout-out to Berkeley's ideas about tar water! At one point in our talk we touch briefly on some examples of reviews of philosophical books (by other philosophers) which are pointedly blunt (to the point of being amusing). Here are some links: * Nina Strohminger's review (https://static1.squarespace.com/static/520cf78be4b0a5dd07f51048/t/53a029dce4b0ba2ac791103b/1403005404701/Strohminger.EmotionReview.2014.pdf) of a book about disgust. * Kerry Mckenzie's review (https://watermark.silverchair.com/fzt073.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAl8wggJbBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggJMMIICSAIBADCCAkEGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMf7eGyup-uT8S7-S-AgEQgIICErKh7Y9iH-Xq4Wli5bbua-SqU0IF7EN55_gVsq4gUwFKC0R3m5Tw9hVdVfiVoCUoq17kc_MPnLWJLsBZbdk_4CbJTIJCbr60Y82MlyM52uALI6xVtbYZ5iWhuGlXTGGtXc2VT0gd7sSnDvOmkhccMclyjFDAJQYN8LilCR9BbxOJU5tZGRRXe8UQ8_29H_6NZ7JysktBymyeqJGUc5xpgq-6u5zDTejppQz523lqRH986p8aSJuo25ul1Qvbhx_f4P7LaIy5jN4aW1vTBxB6-Rc1Ngure4KqW-VIs5u0uiilX_Xob0Dew-5aIk45PDOj23t_hEnBQf618ySfqO-1-eAvD-bDpJ2m1KXei-nlnBXKwBVNvpARMP1ISHM6GXdq209PbucZWVtci7wQEtOhGqXQsUujMKubdz0PT65auLiCKAj8xJWaXf5nkzJ1YqV3PSytY5WpiHQqg-EnmBMTH4u5MNdXu_uVftsg8EXEFd7FfLgSs3Rv7ESuzebxkJqwNhm0G9SAX_dorLHl3woHdUVNjIWtImfiYQKEnz0Pz6jTXMeIDlsh7vyFJ-hDx85vbiL0_L2All1Hbv9wP2jPGW0hubHCCvisqpObyTzTGygrltI0cpyqvCwa7M7RH2ruUl1IYBhs1DjgyIF18QCuICn5CkV5kxi3yiHeWAmv2-RjxLHTizI6As0j2wd1aIYMOvOt) of a book about metaphysics. * The now historical UCL tit-for-tat 'hachet job' reviews, summarised (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/McGinnHonderichRossJCS.html) by J Andrew Ross. In this episode I try (in the first couple of minutes) to summarise what I understand Berkeley's 'idealism' to involve, and then I try to explan why it might mean that a Berkeleian idealist has some resistance to some bits of mathematics. I don't think I did a great job of summarising it, but here's what I said, if it helps to read it: Berkeley’s famous for maintaining a position that we call ‘idealism’, which says that the only things that exist are minds and mental events – that’s all there is, minds and mental events. So, for example, physical things like coconuts or trampolines or jellyfish exist only in so far as they’re being perceived by a mind. It’s as though there aren’t really any coconuts or trampolines independently of us, instead they’re just sort of composed out of bundles of our ideas. But while this is the normal story that we tell about what Berkeley thinks about everyday objects in the external world, I really didn’t know much about Berkeley’s philosophy of mathematics before talking with Clare. I suppose one way to think about it is this: that if like Berekely you think that for something to exist it has to be perceived by a mind, then there’ll be some things that mathematicians talk about which Berkelian idealists are going to balk at. For example, mathematical work in calculus deals with infinitesimals, and one of the things that we know about infinitesimals is that they’re really hard for us humans to think about, or to imagine or conceive of. And if Berkelely’s right, and that for something to exist it has to be perceived by a mind, then since we can’t perceive infitinitesimals (even in our imaginations), I guess he’s going to want to say that they don’t exist. And the upshot would mean that Berkeley would have to say that the whole of calculus is concerned with something that doesn’t really exist. And as it happens, that’s precisely what he did say: in his book The Analyst Berkeley refers to Isaac Newton’s infinitesimal calculus as dealing with the ‘ghosts of departed quantities’. The challenge that Berkeley created for himself by being an idealist is that he then needed to be able to give mathematics, and the newly invented calculus (which was proving to be really successful!), a more secure foundation in the kinds of qualities that our minds can perceive. And as Clare mentions in the episode, one person who tried to carry out this Berkelian project is Oliver Byrne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Byrne_(mathematician)) (1810–1880), and Irish mathematician who wrote a work called The Trinal Calculus which says on its title page: "The object of the Trinal Calculus, like that of Geometry, is the investigation of the propositions of the assignable extensions, and there is no need to consider quantities, either infinitely great or indefinitely small". Byrne also made a 'coloured Euclid', a version of the first six books of Euclid's Elements "in which Coloured Diagrams and Symbols are used instead of letters for the greater ease of learners". While it sounds like the colours are there to assist people to understand the mathematics, it's clear that Byrne's ultimate goal is to show that a huge amount of mathematics can be successfully carried out without appealing to any entities (like infinitesimals) that cannot be perceived by a mind. Shortly after we recorded this episode, Clare was working in TCD's archive of historic books, and sent me some snapshots of their copy of Byrne's Trinal Calculus (in the back of which he had included his annotated copy of Berkeley's Analyst – a gift to posterity). Here they are: https://i.imgur.com/DFPb00w.jpg https://i.imgur.com/dAgJM7h.jpg and here the text says "the differential and integral calculus, under different forms and titles, have been based on visionary notions and false logic; these defects, which Bishop Berkeley and other writers clearly exposed, are fully remedied by The Trinal Calculus" https://i.imgur.com/PTOi9Ca.jpg and here's an example of one of Byrne's delighful illustrations: https://i.imgur.com/K4Y6bPg.jpg

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of George Berkeley, an Anglican bishop who was one of the most important philosophers of the eighteenth century. Bishop Berkeley believed that objects only truly exist in the mind of somebody who perceives them - an idea he called immaterialism. His interests and writing ranged widely, from the science of optics to religion and the medicinal benefits of tar water. His work on the nature of perception was a spur to many later thinkers, including David Hume and Immanuel Kant. The clarity of Berkeley's writing, and his ability to pose a profound problem in an easily understood form, has made him one of the most admired early modern thinkers. With: Peter Millican Gilbert Ryle Fellow and Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford Tom Stoneham Professor of Philosophy at the University of York Michela Massimi Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Science at the University of Edinburgh. Producer: Thomas Morris.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of George Berkeley, an Anglican bishop who was one of the most important philosophers of the eighteenth century. Bishop Berkeley believed that objects only truly exist in the mind of somebody who perceives them - an idea he called immaterialism. His interests and writing ranged widely, from the science of optics to religion and the medicinal benefits of tar water. His work on the nature of perception was a spur to many later thinkers, including David Hume and Immanuel Kant. The clarity of Berkeley's writing, and his ability to pose a profound problem in an easily understood form, has made him one of the most admired early modern thinkers. With: Peter Millican Gilbert Ryle Fellow and Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford Tom Stoneham Professor of Philosophy at the University of York Michela Massimi Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Science at the University of Edinburgh. Producer: Thomas Morris.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of George Berkeley, an Anglican bishop who was one of the most important philosophers of the eighteenth century. Bishop Berkeley believed that objects only truly exist in the mind of somebody who perceives them - an idea he called immaterialism. His interests and writing ranged widely, from the science of optics to religion and the medicinal benefits of tar water. His work on the nature of perception was a spur to many later thinkers, including David Hume and Immanuel Kant. The clarity of Berkeley's writing, and his ability to pose a profound problem in an easily understood form, has made him one of the most admired early modern thinkers. With: Peter Millican Gilbert Ryle Fellow and Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford Tom Stoneham Professor of Philosophy at the University of York Michela Massimi Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Science at the University of Edinburgh. Producer: Thomas Morris.

In 1734 Bishop Berkeley published a witty and effective attack on the foundations of the calculus as developed by Newton and Leibniz. But it took nearly 90 years for the calculus to be given a rigorous foundation through the work of the prolific mathematician, Augustin-Louis Cauchy, who...

John Campbell explores Bishop Berkeley's puzzle about what our experience is of in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.