But it can’t answer actions so easily. The bishop could have said “So what? Your idea-of-a-foot interacts with your idea-of-a-stone” similarly, but his sophistry starts showing.
How so?
And when the actions are harmful to him, he has to admit he doesn’t in fact hold the theory, otherwise he’d just say “oh, a concept-of-a-stick”.
He has to admit no such thing. According to Berkeley, harmful things like the pain from being beaten with a stick (a particular pattern in experience) are sense impressions (just like color or taste). His hypothesis doesn’t deny sense impressions. On the contrary, it doesn’t postulate anything other than sense impressions and the patterns they form.
Okay, then the quote is wrong: this is in fact unfalsifiable. In fact, if you consider interactions between sense impressions, including sense impressions of reports of sense impressions in other patterns-of-impressions called humans, this is indistinguishable from good ol’ reality.
How so?
He has to admit no such thing. According to Berkeley, harmful things like the pain from being beaten with a stick (a particular pattern in experience) are sense impressions (just like color or taste). His hypothesis doesn’t deny sense impressions. On the contrary, it doesn’t postulate anything other than sense impressions and the patterns they form.
Okay, then the quote is wrong: this is in fact unfalsifiable. In fact, if you consider interactions between sense impressions, including sense impressions of reports of sense impressions in other patterns-of-impressions called humans, this is indistinguishable from good ol’ reality.