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Tallis in Wonderland

“I refute it thus”

Raymond Tallis kicks immaterialism into touch.

Readers may be familiar with Bishop George Berkeley’s (in)famous claim that objects exist only insofar as they are perceived. From this it follows that reality consists only of minds and their ideas. Ordinary objects such as cups and saucers and tables and chairs are bundles or collections of ideas, and their being consists in their being perceived by a mind. There is no hidden, mind-independent stuff called ‘matter’. When Berkeley (1685-1753) was questioned as to how objects could continue to be when no-one was perceiving them, he claimed they were still in the mind of God.

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