Why Berkeley's epistemology fails ingeniously

July 6, 2025

Berkeley expressed the same view of Protagoras, namely, that to be is to be perceived. I respect Berkeley's deductive abilities immensely, and so his philosophy should be studied thoroughy by the seeker of knowledge. Yet he fails because he does not properly anatomize the act of knowing and so proceeds with false principles. In this article I will summarize his argument, show why it fails, and yet what remarkable insights can be reconstituted into a better philosophy.