If there is a parallel staircase where the steps start at 1 and increase as you go up, then there must be a point where the step numbers on both staircases align. What would that step number be? — keystone

Presumable it would be at (the number of steps in the first staircase divided by 2). So? — Ludwig V

Actually, I've bethought myself and realized that the step numbers will only align if the number of steps is odd. If it is even, they won't be such a point. I still don't see that anything of interest follows.

If you'll allow me one more post.

This made me realize that if you can define the staircase down, you have defined the stair-case up. There is an intricacy about defining exactly what a step is, but let's leave that aside. Suppose we define a staircase down with 10 steps (floor level is 0). When I take the first step, there are 9 steps (10 - 1) left 2nd step (10-2)...9th (10-9) and 10th step (0) (floor level). Mutatis mutandis, that is the same in reverse 1st step up leave (10 - 1) and so on. So the staircase down defines the staircase up. No need for two staircases.

I could be wrong here, but I think that for a staircase of N steps, 1st step leaves (N-1) and so on.

If there is a parallel staircase where the steps start at 1 and increase as you go up, then there must be a point where the step numbers on both staircases align. What would that step number be? — keystone

Presumable it would be at (the number of steps in the first staircase divided by 2). So?

Mathematically it has some meaning, but it never has physical meaning, as several have pointed out. — noAxioms

Yes. With a real staircase would exist in both contexts and independently of both of them. Then the first step down is the last step up and the last step down is the first step up. But the last step down is not defined, which means it can't be reached. That's why the game is fascinating and frustrating at the same time, even though it is what I would call, arbitrary.

It is only when the philosophers rule and take on the business of the city that the city stays out of his business. — Fooloso4

Plato was well aware that the politics of the soul and the politics of the city are not the same in all respects. — Fooloso4

But the city has no business of its own, or rather the business of the city is the sum of everybody's business. So when the philosopher takes on the business of the city, he takes on the business of everybody. That's because each person's business is dependent on other people's business and other people's business depends on each person's business. Interdependence, not agglomeration. This applies also to individuals and their parts.
He thinks that analysing something consists entirely of taking it pieces, and doesn't realize that it is necessary to understand the relationship between them. Agglomeration is all he knows.

Had you thought what life would be like for the ordinary people in his city? It's a tyranny. From their point of view, it would be a Machiavellian society run by force and deception. It could count as a benevolent tyranny if only he could think of how things would look from the point of view of the subject citizens. But he can't do that, because he can't recognize most of them as people, because the elements of people are not people and he's stuck in his analogy. The relationship between a citizen and the city is not like the relationship between someone's appetites and them.

He seduces us by telling the story from a stand-point of someone who is not a citizen of his city and focusing on the philosopher, so we imagine his city from the point of view of the philosopher and we follow his point of view. But the people who live in the city have their own points of view and that matters more than Plato's greater good.

A consistent theme throughout the Dialogues is that the best relationship amongst these parts is the source of virtue and true happiness. The pursuit of that relationship is deemed more worthy than the expression of traditional norms. — Paine

The best people, whose opinions are more worthy of consideration.

And does Socrates/Plato know who the best people are? He doesn't even trust his own philosophers, since he expects to foist his "noble lie" (a mistranslation if ever there was one) even on them.

The oracle did not say that Socrates was the wisest, it said that no one was wiser, that is, that others might be as wise as him. — Fooloso4

True There might indeed be others as wise as him, but only if they know that they don't know. But they don't know that, so they are less wise than him. And has he spoken to everyone, to make sure that there is no-one apart from him who knows that they don't know?

The model of the good city is built from the analogy of a person living the best possible life, not the other way around. — Paine

Yes. Arguably, that was Plato's big mistake. The relationship between part and whole is quite different in the two cases. He assumed it was the same.

The resistance to the philosophers as an assault upon traditional values was expressed in many different ways by different authors at the time. — Paine

Well, it was, in many ways. But the assault did not come only from philosophy. Exactly how important other factors (such as the rise of the Persian Empire or the effects of overseas trade &c.) were is hard to determine.

Are you saying that all of those points support any particular conclusion?

What I am saying it that the trail was not
...the result of a long persecution
— Ludwig V — Fooloso4

In a sense, you are right, and Socrates doesn't explicitly say that it is. He does say that his hardest task is not to refute that actual accusations, but hard to remove the effects of what people have been saying about him for a long time. Sorry, I wasn't careful enough in what I said.

Malign or align? — Fooloso4

Both, I would say, depending on your point of view. Of course the real situation - even what little we know about it - is more complicated than that. But Socrates' description is in a specific situation focusing on the effects on the jury and his task defending himself.

I like to imagine that Socrates enjoyed the play. Recognizing it as both a serious challenge and appreciating the playful humor. — Fooloso4

I don't rule out Socrates enjoying it - as a caricature. But a caricature is not necessarily harmless.

I'm flattered that you replied. It was just a bit of fun and I expected to be totally ignored or possibly reprimanded. But since you have replied.....

Focus first step up, not last step down- Unfortunately, the stairs are numbered in ascending order from the top down, so the first step up wouldn't be numbered 1. — keystone

That's a complicated remark, because the numbers assigned are assigned in a specific context. If the staircase existed in the way that a physical staircase exists, the steps can easily be re-numbered in the new context (wanting to go up, rather than down). In that context, the first step up is numbered, even though it would not be numbered 1 in the context of going down. I think I recognized the problem when I said:-

But it would be a bad idea for him to ask whether the stairs up were the same stairs as the stairs down, or whether the staircase exists. — Ludwig V

My conclusion in the light of what you say is that the staircase up is not the same as the staircase down.

What I was wrong about was how the staircase is "created". The person going down does not create the staircase. We (the readers) (or, if you prefer, you, the writer) create the staircase. But if a staircase down can be created by our, or your, say-so, another one, going up, can be created in the same way. So my advice should not be given to the person going down but to you and your readers.

but they have not shown clearly that he had now come to the conclusion that for him death was more to be desired than life; and hence his lofty utterance appears rather ill-considered.

Yes, that's right. Plato's Socrates says that he doesn't fear death because nothing can harm a good person. I understand the argument, but I don't put any stock in it.

If so, then at what age does it become an issue? — Fooloso4

There are two possibilities. It becomes an issue when others use one's age to marginalize one's opinion. It also becomes an issue, but rather later, when one's decline actually sets in. No fixed age.

Socrates is referring to Aristophanes comic play "The Clouds". There is not indication that at the time it amounted to more than a few good laughs. — Fooloso4

Yes, but the laughs are at the expense of the sophists and Socrates is made out to be one. Doctrines which he did not hold are put into his mouth and mocked. Are you saying that Socrates was not maligned?

It seems to me that the acknowledgement of not being able to explain the peculiar alchemy that brings a benefit (both publicly and privately) to children speaks to an awareness counted by Midgley to be a terra incognita for bachelors like Plato. — Paine

Perhaps so. At least it seems that he is acknowledging that such alchemy exists. Though quite a lot of his argument here is prudential rather than principled.

The personal dynamic seen in Phaedrus and Symposium is absent in Laws except as horizons. — Paine

I wouldn't have objected to that difference, since they are clearly focusing on one or the other. I know very little about the details of the Laws. More or less by accident, I do know that his treatment of atheists does not suggest any respect for individuals. Neither does the Republic. I have a feeling that he didn't recognize that society is for the benefit of the individuals comprising it, not the other way about and I mind a great deal about that.

Observing this tension caused me to recommend The Care of the Self to the discussion. As a "history of philosophy", Foucault directly addresses how ideas about marriage changes through different articulations. It is a condition with a history and future challenges. — Paine

Yes, that is important. Arguably, we should never talk about marriage simpliciter, but always marriage in its social context - and even then should generalize cautiously.

It also points to the threshold separating the public and private aspects of marriage addressed by the OP. — Paine

AN interesting quote. It does indeed point to the threshold between public and private aspects, or at least between what should be prescribed and what left up to the parties. (I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the reference to the OP.)

However, Plato also sticks to one of his fundamental principles here:-

And there should be one rule for all marriages: each person is to seek a marriage that is beneficial to the city, not the one that pleases himself. — ibid. 772E

It's one thing to recommend marrying prudently or at least taking prudence into account. But it's quite another to prioritize the "city" in making the decision.

Hmm. I wonder if this is more about Plato than Socrates? — Banno

I'm not sure that you mean by "this". For me, what is most interesting is the difference between two representations of the same event. Assuming that neither side is lying, but that both are selecting, we might expect to get a more balanced view of what actually happened.

This strikes me as cowardly. Elsewhere he talks about Socrates courage. — Fooloso4

This takes us to the heart of the euthanasia issue. I'm with Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations. I hope I will have the courage to recognize when my time is up; I would welcome the opportunity to choose to make a dignified exit. There is something cowardly about clinging desperately on to the last shreds of life, though I admit that from another perspective all we can ever do is postpone death. But this may only be the result of my life experience.

Given that Socrates was actually in good health, you may be right. But what were the real likely outcomes of the trial?

Socrates gives something of an answer in the Crito, but frames it in the context of his violation of his (implicit) contract with the Laws. But I think it was unrealistic to think that this accusation and this trial could possibly be the end of the matter. The trial was the result of a long persecution, as Socrates tells us in the Apology; that would not have ended. Exile would not have resolved the issue, especially when he started practising his philosophy in the place he was exiled from or even when his reputation followed him. (He talks about having to constantly move on from one city to another.)
Socrates frames his questioning process as a collaborative exploration in which each participant helps the other(s). But it is not difficult to see that they might see the process as entirely combative and even dishonest (for goodness sake, we all know what piety or courage is, even if we can't define it!). That's the heart of the problem.

With regard to the scene in Plato's Phaedo, it may be that Socrates no longer wanted her present simply because she had become distraught. — Fooloso4

Perhaps. I think it is more complicated than that. Plato wants to present an inspiring scene (or version of the scene). The philosopher meets his end with calm and courage. Xanthippe disrupts that, but, in the presentation, reminds us that this is the scene of a disaster. By being escorted away, she is prevented from disrupting the project. Whether we see that as a rather brutal exclusion of his wife or a protection of Socrates is another matter.

It may be that her reputation for being difficult is due entirely to Xenophon. — Fooloso4

Yes. It seems to me that there is a great deal to be said for Xanthippe's bad temper. He irritated everyone else, why would he not irritate his wife? All that time spent in futile debate with strangers, when he could be earning a living. For Xanthippe, that would not have been a marginal issue. How did Socrates pay the bills? Though if there were two women in his life (Myrto), perhaps her issue with him was simpler than that. We'll never really know.

Don't get me wrong. Plato succeeded in creating a story which has turned out to be the founding myth of philosophy. It was the first philosophical text I ever read, and still works well with beginning students. It's just that it would not be philosophical to refrain from exploring what a less sympathetic stance would look like.

Both Plato's and Xenophon's Socrates look forward to his death. — Fooloso4

That's perfectly true. What's interesting is the different take on the trial.

I sympathize with him. Seventy was a great age in those days. It is still well over the hill, and for most, in sight of the end. One does get more concerned and pessimistic about one's health as the years tick by.

Plato's Socrates is the founding myth of philosophy. Naturally, Plato smoothed out, - tidied up - the story and, equally naturally, I like anything that gives me a sense of something more real. Xenophon gives me that sense. So does the scene with Xanthippe at the trial.

As I said before, it's perfectly possible - even likely - that Socrates did what he did for both reasons. After all, given that they were very likely to impose impossible conditions on him even if they didn't kill him, it was win/win. It was a great opportunity to send his message to the city, and even to posterity and he wasn't that bothered about staying alive.

PS. As an example of Plato's editing of the story, why don't you read the end of the Phaedo and then look up the symptoms of hemlock poisoning?

I don't understand the rules of this game.

However, I recommend that Icarus stops looking for the last step down and starts looking for the first step up. He should find that as easily as he found the first step down.

But it would be a bad idea for him to ask whether the stairs up were the same stairs as the stairs down, or whether the staircase exists. At best, those questions would scramble his mind, possibly to the point where he might get so distracted as to forget to keep moving. At worst, the staircase might disappear beneath his feet.

He should allow at least twice as long to climb up as he took to get down. But he can expect to complete his climb in the same amount of time as he took to descend.

For what it's worth, I believe you'll find it in Bk 6 of Nichomachean Ethics. A lot of any such argument is a sort of stipulation of intuitive principles, so of course the premises are debatable. I think the general idea is that contemplation produces the most universal, principles of theory, and these are required to ground practical principles, and practical principles are required for moral actions. Therefore contemplation produces the highest principles because these are a requirement for all the other virtues. So contemplation is the highest virtue. Then, he moves to show how contemplation is consistent with "happiness" at the end of Bk 10. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thanks for the references. I knew it was in the NE but had forgotten which book(s).

My suggestion is he does not answer because he cannot educate her. If they, horses and wives, are not first broken they cannot be educated. — Fooloso4

Well, it is certainly possible that this is a Taming of the Shrew scenario. I don't know the texts well enough to argue with you.

My most recent encounter with him was reading his Apology of Socrates and finding that Socrates, in that text, says that he was feeling his age and preferred to be executed by the Athenians rather than endure the long, horrible process of dying of old age. Very different from the flim-flam that Plato treats us to. Of course, the two explanations are not totally incompatible. But the down-to-earth attitude of Xenophon's account seems to me to fit well with the Anabasis - just as the high-falutin attitude of Plato's is entirely typical of his writing. Not enough to contradict you, but enough to explain why I'm sceptical.

it remains that Xanthippes' presence was undoubted. — Banno

Do you mean that there is no doubt that Xanthippe existed? I don't know what the evidence is, I'm afraid. It is true that no-one questions it. But if it just rests on Xenophon's account, some scepticism is not unjustified.

Foucault, who speaks of the "art of partnership" in his Care of the Self. Foucault traces the changing ideas about marriage from the Classical writers to contemporary thinkers. One theme he develops is how the reciprocal nature of companionship leads to its own recognition of the "solitary" as a matter for care. Respect for the other strengthens the union in the business of the world as well as personally improving the life of the mate. — Paine

I like the idea of an art of partnership. But the themes you mention seem to me to be more about what partnership should be than what it is. Would that be unfair?

In terms of being a bachelor, Foucault depicts them as being less restrained than married men but still living in the fabric of the social reality continued through marital life. — Paine

Yes, if I've understood this right, the life of the unmarried (in the traditional view) does seem to be going on in the context of the family, hence the married life of others; it is also regarded as a stage of life, with the expectation that marriage will supervene at some point in the not-too-distant future. No doubt that was the reality for many, but one wonders whether it was for all. But then, if those who didn't fit the pattern were marginalized and forgotten, it would simply demonstrate how powerful the orthodox pattern was.

Xenophon is making a little joke. — Fooloso4

You could be right. If the name Xanthippe was just dreamed up by Xenophon that the idea that there's something else going on here would have some legs. As it is, I think you are reading too much into this.
What I know of Xenophon doesn't suggest a man likely to make jokes of this kind.

Mankind at large [and not Xanthippe] is what I wish to deal and associate with

I think that this refers to mankind in the sense that Xanthippe is also part of mankind. All he wants to achieve is

I shall have no difficulty in my relations with all the rest of human kind.

That doesn't sound like he's thinking of training horses.

Yes. Introduce a little doubt into there their doubtful thinking, that is, into what is doubtful about their doubting. — Fooloso4

Well, Descartes does say that he wants to doubt everything that can be doubted. So I don't doubt that I'm justified in disrupting their doubt.

Perhaps the philosopher can only teach those who have been made ready. — Fooloso4

Ah, now, that's pretty much true. You can take a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink.

While you and I might know better, Cartesian scepticism is unfortunately not uncommon. — Banno

I agree, but it is one battle I usually choose not to fight. — Fooloso4

I also agree, though sometimes my conscience pricks me. Someone should, at least from time to time, try to introduce a little doubt into their thinking.

Now, Aristotle shows how contemplation is the highest virtue. So can we conclude that philosophy provides us with the very best ideas? — Metaphysician Undercover

It looks like a simple question, but it isn't. I wouldn't want to reply without looking up his argument for a start. One reply might start from the argument here, that solitary thinking (which may or may not be what he is talking about) doesn't produce the best ideas on its own. The answer from that stand-point would be, no. But that might mean rejecting his argument about "contemplation". That is thinkable. I'm not a fan of his hierarchical argument for the Supreme Good.

A curiously accurate characterisation of marriage. It acknowledges the difference between a flatmate and a partner. There is a very different commitment, the willingness to work together while accepting those aspects of one's partner that are not within in one's control. More than a recognition of the other, marriage seeks the likes of Joy in the presence of the other. — Banno

I also like it a lot. But commitment is tricky. I don’t think one can do it in advance. No matter what ceremony is supposed to establish the commitment, it needs to be maintained, or perhaps performed from day to day and even from hour to hour. If and when circumstances change, it may need to be renewed – life throws things you did not sign up for at you.

Yes, it is like that in some cases. In others it is transactional or a battlefield. — Fooloso4

Quite so. We should not say that marriage is like this, or like that, only that it can be like this or like that – even swopping from one to another in the course of a day. What it will be turn out to be may not be what you expect. It is very much down to the complicated interaction between the parties.
Anything is possible when it comes to love. I can’t resist quoting what is probably Catullus’ only philosophical observation:- “I hate, yet love. Perhaps you ask why that is so. I do not know, and I’m in torment.”

And then we might consider the various other kinds of partnership that exist in human life - all different and all important. Friendship, for example, can be a swallow in summer and a life-long relationship. In the latter case, the commitment turns out to be the case, rather than being made in advance, but nonetheless can be as deep as marriage can be. There’s a galaxy of others. We form these relationships, we don’t deduce them, or even sign up for them.

From "Rings & Books" --

..an account of human knowledge which women’s whole experience falsifies is inadequate and partial and capricious. Philosophers have generally talked for instance as though it were obvious that one consciousness went to one body, as though each person were a closed system which could only signal to another by external behaviour, and that behaviour had to be interpreted from previous experience. I wonder whether they would have said the same if they had been frequently pregnant and suckling, if they had been constantly faced with questions like, “What have you been eating to make him ill?”, constantly experiencing that strange physical sympathy between child and parent, between husband and wife, which reveals the presence of an ailment and often its nature when experience is silent; constantly lending eyes and hands to the child that requires them, if in a word they had got used to the idea that their bodies were by no means exclusively their own? That, I suggest, is typical human experience.

So her argument is that traditional philosophy privileges one kind of human experience, typified by Descartes' solitary thinker (and, perhaps Rodin's statue, which also suggests the thinking is a solitary occupation) or Virginia Woolf’s desire for a room of her own. But still, she should have concluded with "That, I suggest, is a typical and equally valid human experience." Her attempts to give a balanced view, acknowledging that solitary thinking has achieved some good results, lead me to think that this is what she was aiming for.

The surprising depth of what is going on here is like Stanley Cavell's project of accepting philosophical scepticism as part of human life and trying to look behind Wittgenstein's gestures towards human practices and human life, to understand what it is about human life that gives rise to scepticism. His work shows that one gets into really messy territory if one pursues that. (Where “messy” is not derogatory, but more like Wittgenstein’s rough ground.) So, in a smaller way, does this piece.

Perhaps, but: 1) We are not that audience. We could read it as a quaint period piece, but if we are to evaluate it on its philosophical merits we might ask if it stands the test of time. — Fooloso4

I think that's a false opposition and that the test of time is not so much whether the text is right or wrong, whether on its own terms or ours. It is whether it helps us to understand ideas about philosophical problems that may not take for granted what we take for granted.

2) If her intention was to persuade young men to marry it is revisionist history. — Fooloso4

I don't see any such intention here. Though I agree that the claim that marriage is normal and even mature might lead young men astray (but not, of course, mature people like ourselves).

Philosophers did not want the human soul to be mixed up in the world of objects, as it must be to make knowledge possible.
As I read it she is claiming a concern to avoid contamination by the world of objects. — Fooloso4

Yes, and that is puzzling. It could be a rhetorical gesture towards the detailed argument about dualism. After all, such ideas are present, if only as unacknowledged background. For Plato, for example, it is clearly not an inappropriate description of his story of the ascent of the soul to heaven. For Berkeley, it is very clear, since he says, loudly, that the concept of matter is an excuse for scepticism and atheism and he is motivated by the desire to put paid to it. However, I prefer to think, in this context, that she uses the word to surprise her audience into thinking of a familiar model in a different way. This isn't a scholarly philosophical text.

No. There are various reasons why someone does not marry. It was in response to Midgley's sweeping claims about immaturity and forming attachments. — Fooloso4

Yes, and I agree that those claims are problematic. I just think that there's a baby in the bathwater.

That is something I would judge from the fruits it bears. It would have to go further than just marital status, however. — Fooloso4

I'm very much in favour of judging from the fruits that it bears, though maybe the intentions should also be taken into account - not necessarily as an excuse.

My course is similar. Mankind at large is what I wish to deal and associate with; and so I have got her, well assured that if I can endure her, I shall have no difficulty in my relations with all the rest of human kind.

His course in marrying Xanthippe is similar to that of a horse-trainer breaking a willful horse. — Fooloso4

Socrates doesn't speak of taming Xanthippe, more of getting along with her. Your comment takes us to yet another model - the courtship of Petruchio and Katherina in "The Taming of the Shrew". That is indeed a story of oppression. But it is true that Socrates sounds far too cold-blooded for our expectations. But then, arranged marriages disappoint us Westerners. Yet one can't arbitrarily say that they aren't marriages or even that they exclude the possibility of love.

Well, she does not make the distinction, which is part of the problem with her misrepresentation of the history of philosophy. — Fooloso4

True. But this is short talk for the BBC, not a scholarly disquisition. So the assumption that her audience would assume that she was talking about marriage as popularly conceived in the mid-20th century is not unreasonable.

No distinction was made between philosophy and science. Science is from the Latin word for knowledge. — Fooloso4

Yes, of course that's true. The sciences did not spin off from philosophy until much, much later. But how does that show that Plato and Descartes, in their different ways, did not both regard the human soul as radically distinct from physical objects? Or, as MIdgley summarizes their philosophies and her objection to them:-

Philosophers did not want the human soul to be mixed up in the world of objects, as it must be to make knowledge possible.

Rather than a deliberate and immature choice to not develop attachments, his attachments were severed from him — Fooloso4

Fair point. You seem to be suggesting that this is an alternative explanation for someone having difficulty with interpersonal relations. So the most you can say is that Midgley does not consider that a philosopher might have difficulty with interpersonal relationships for more reasons than one, or even that not being married and liking solitude might not be related as cause and effect, but both have a common cause.
I think it would be reasonable to argue that this is not really a philosophical question, but a psychological question (in our terminology). But that allows that it is, or could be, a question.

Context has more to do with their historical and cultural situatedness than with their marital status. Marriage too must be put in this context, as you point out. — Fooloso4

So we agree on that. But that legitimates asking the question whether they were married or not and considering whether it may have affected their philosophy. It seems likely to me that we would not find a strong correlation between marital status and specific philosophical doctrines, but we need at least to consider the possibility, don't we?

The question stands as to whether solitude and self-sufficiency caters to philosophy. — Leontiskos

Midgley certainly thought it did.

Philosophers need above all to concentrate. They are not like poets (nearly all good poets marry, however madly). What they most need is space for thought.

Virginia Woolf (admittedly not strictly a philosopher) is making a similar point in her famous "A Room of One's Own"
On the other hand, I believe that Sartre and de Beauvoir wrote in a busy café, at least sometimes.

Is this the kind of married life Mary advocated and you imagine marks an important distinction between philosophers? — Fooloso4

It seems rather unlikely that Midgley was talking about marriage ancient-Greek-style. Wouldn't the natural assumption be that she meant marriage 20th century style?

Natural science was a part of the studies at Plato's Academy. Descartes wrote on medicine and optics. — Fooloso4

What does that tell us about their philosophy - or indeed about their science?

The history of philosophy is not the biography of philosophers and their marital status. — Fooloso4

Well, we do think it is important to read their work in its context, and sometimes details of their lives give us pause for thought. I'm sure you can think of examples.

Yes, a new start. A break with the past. Bringing clarity to what was confusion. There was a thread last year that addressed this — Fooloso4

I'm sorry I missed that. The idea that the panic about Communism that prevailed in the USA after WW2 affected philosophy is attractive. But it doesn't explain anything that Russell, for example, said before WW2 and the atmosphere was not at all the same in Europe.
They would have done better to reflect on all the new starts in the history of philosophy and formulated something a bit less radical.

I'm not sure about Heraclitus. — Leontiskos

The encyclopedias say that the sources say that he inherited the role of "king of the Ionians". Little (actually, nothing) is known of what this actually involved, but it is known that he resigned the office in favour of his younger brother. One might argue that his philosophy betrays aristocratic, rather than democratic, attitudes.
I'm reminded of the arguments about celibacy between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches about celibacy - and, no doubt, in the Protestant movement. I wonder whether that influenced her in this piece. (The Eastern traditions have views about this as well.)
It seems pretty clear that appeals to biography are not going to yield any secure results if we want an empirical, scientific hypothesis. Yet no-one believes that we do not learn from our experience (i.e. what happens in our lives) and it seems wildly implausible to think that we can sit down and set aside everything that we have learnt - even as a thought experiment.
Whether Descartes is reporting an episode in his life or not, he presents the story in the Meditations as a model. He is not reporting his conclusions, but presenting a model or paradigm of how he reached them and how he solved them and intended us to follow him.
Yet the sceptical conclusions are hard to square with the possibility of the project. I think he was aware of this, and tried to insulate the conclusions as simply a thought-experiment, not just in posing the problem, but in solving it. (One could compare the way the Pyrrhonians dealt with the same issue).
In a way, he seems to have succeeded Everyone has tried to refute scepticism since then. In another way, then, he failed, because so many people since then have not adopted his solution, but tried to work out a better one. One thinks of Berkeley, Hume and Kant - though were they responding to Descartes? I'm not sure about that.

The Stoics and Epicureans did not disregard daily life or human attachments either. — Fooloso4

True. But perhaps their attachment to ataraxia or apatheia shows their attitude to it.

They were too sensitive about its dignity. — Banno

Yes. But I think that putting her point in this rather abbreviated way is a hostage to fortune, given that not all her readers will be sympathetic

A disregard for the history of philosophy at its root. — Fooloso4

They thought they were revolutionizing philosophy - making a new start. So they were aware they had a history. As Russell shows, they read their history entirely in their own terms, which is a sure way to misunderstand it. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that they misinterpreted it, rather than disregarded it?

Making a clown of herself in a field she claims to be a scholar of is far from "succeeding". — Lionino

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

It will be clear that I have not, just now, taken up the topic of philosophic celibacy to point out its glories. Justice, I think, has been done to them." — Rings and Books

Midgley does try to give a balanced view. The difficulty is that it is quite hard to see her diagnosis as less than sweeping.

The great philosophers did not return (sc from the withdrawal of adolescence). Their thoughts, unlike yours and mine, had powers enough to keep them gazing into the pool of solitude. — Rings and Books

What isn't recognized here is that specialization can always be seen as a distortion, and implying that the distortion is any kind of immaturity, rather than just part of the all sorts that it takes to make a world, sets us off down the wrong track. I would have thought that solitary thought and dialogue and a domestic life, (which, surely, everyone has, in one form or another) are all appropriate parts of life as a philosopher. I think that other people have made the point that Descartes certainly lived in the community of his time, and must have had some kind of domestic life. The problem is his choice to present solitary meditation as the whole, or at least the heart, of philosophic life.

In this frame of mind, philosophers since Descartes have spent their profoundest thoughts on the Problem of Knowledge in the strict sense—not just problems connected with knowledge but the problem, how it is possible for us to know what we undoubtedly do know. Now nobody wants to deny that this enquiry has born magnificent fruit. — Rings and Books

I suppose this means that the Problem of Knowledge is a magnificent failure. I do believe that it is well worth while to be wrong in interesting ways, but this doesn't help me to see what Midgley thinks is interesting about the failure. On the contrary, I get the impression that, for her, it is just a failure.

All I am saying is, that the results have been delayed, and much of the lesser work entirely vitiated, by a want of good faith in approaching the question. Philosophers did not want the human soul to be mixed up in the world of objects, as it must be to make knowledge possible. — Rings and Books

I find it very hard to understand what this diagnosis means. On the face of it, philosophers really believed that "the human soul was not mixed up in the world of objects". One can say that they were wrong without questioning their "good faith".

There is more, most of it produced much later in her life. Her work is somewhat aggravating, determinedly, wilfully not dispassionate. — Banno

Yes, I have even read some of the more, but long, long ago. As a result of this thread, I'm inclined to look at it again.
She certainly succeeded in annoying Dawkins. But then, he is annoying as well.
But sometimes I think that it is the annoying texts that make me work hardest. I admit that it can be quite difficult not to indulge the feelings.

I've always been curious about philosophers in particular and academics in general. They make great play with the idea that dispassionate evaluation of ideas and civilized open debate about them is core to their way of life, and crucially important to the project of understanding the world. Yet academia in general and philosophy in particular are riven with highly emotional debates. There seems to be a dissonance between the presentation and the practice. What is that about?

Midgley's piece has faults and it isn't an an immortal contribution to philosophy. It seems to aim at contributing to the project of the Quartet, as Bakhurst outlines it above . But it fails to do so, or misinterprets what the project might be about. Understanding those mistakes would be worth something and these exchanges just get in the way of that.

Could we get back to reading the text carefully and analyzing thoroughly? It may be less exciting, but it would surely be more illuminating.

To "exist" is not well defined, and we tend to use it in whatever way we find suitable for the occasion. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, quite so. What makes a particular use suitable for the occasion? Berkeley is quite open about why he thinks his criterion for existence or not. It's in the title. "Matter", he thinks, gives sceptics and atheists a foundation for their pernicious ideas. We delude ourselves if we try to pretend that metaphysics is ethically neutral (in spite of Hume). Perhaps it could be, but people looking for a foundation for ethics will look for something helpful in metaphysics - and the natural sciences, which also claim to be ethically neutral.

I agree, it is likely that a thorough analysis would reveal that minds don't actually "exist" if we adhere to Berkeley's principles. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm sorry, but I think the problem lies in the question. It is a classic example of what Hume calls "augmentation" - the tendency of philosophers to extend the application of certain ideas beyond their contextualized scope.

I don't understand why you would say this. How can you conclude that the principle is false? To be, or as you state it, "esse", is to be something, and that means to have been judged as having a whatness, or "what it is". This, "what it is", is a judgement based on perception. You cannot dissociate the whatness from the judgement, to give a thing an independent whatness, or "esse", because the whatness. "what it is", is a product of the judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover

I should have explained myself. To exist is one thing, and Berkeley gives me no reason for supposing that existence of anything depends on being perceived or judged to exist. I can make some sense of the idea that anything that exists is capable of being perceived - especially if indirect perception is allowed.

Berkeley is no doubt relying on his argument against abstract objects. It supplies a way of accommodating abstract objects in his system, but is not obviously effective in the absence of his axiom. But his introduction of the notion of "notions" undermines his slogan, since he accepts the existence of my own mind and other minds, and God, even though they are not (directly) perceived. It is clear that he accepts that they are not (directly) perceived, because he introduces notions to get around the problem that my ideas do not themselves include the idea of myself. It's the same objection that was raised against the cogito.

I prefer "to be is to be the value of a variable".

How so? Subjects are invariably sentient beings are they not? Tables and chairs and billiard balls are objects, but how are they subjects of experience? Isn’t saying that a version of panpsychism? — Wayfarer

I'm sorry. A misunderstanding. I thought your reference to the subject/object relationship was to subject and object in the general, grammatical sense. But, of course, I should have remembered that logic describes this in the more general format of subject/predicate. However, tables etc can be subject - of pictures, investigations, conversations, etc. They can also, in ordinary language, do things like blocking fire exits, squashing fruit, supporting vases, etc. Equally, a human being can stand in the object-place in a sentence, being looked at, rather than looking, being pushed, rather than pushing and in general being objectified. Self-awareness seems to screw this model up, but given how this all works, I don't see why one shouldn't simply say that self-awareness involves objectifying oneself, imagining one is looking at oneself.

And whilst any of us can see and interact with material substance, the existence of ‘res cogitans’ is conjectural, and the proposed ‘interaction’ between the two ‘substances’ problematic. — Wayfarer

I thought the point of the cogito that was that is the one thing that we cannot doubt, and classical epistemology regards self-knowledge (which was always of the mind) was the only thing, apart from logic, of which we could be certain and which was therefore the foundation of epistemology.

From your original post:-

Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a science from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene. — Wayfarer

That's certainly true, but a point of view is an abstract, context-dependent concept, not at all the same as a conscious person. However, "I" is more like "a point of view" in that it has no content, being constructed in the same sort of way as a point of view.

A corollary of this is that ‘existence’ is a compound or complex idea. To think about the existence of a particular thing in polar terms — that it either exists or does not exist — is a simplistic view of what existence entails. — Wayfarer

Yes, that is quite right. But "exists" doesn't really tolerate half-way houses, so we have to talk of modes of existence or maybe categories, which gives a pluralist world, which is much more appropriate than monist, dualist or any other set number.

By ‘creating reality’, I’m referring to the way the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves. — Wayfarer

I don't believe our world-view is unified, except possibly in the world-views of philosophers. On the contrary, it is the lack of unity that enables us to distinguish reality from perception.
"Generating" a world view is much more appropriate than "creating" it. Think of a VR kit that can give you a picture of the world around you as it is or a fantasy world. "Creating" the fantasy world is perfectly appropriate, but not "creating" the real world. "generating" is much better.

What Berkeley did was ridicule the common notion of "matter", and this invited a reciprocation of the ridicule. — Metaphysician Undercover

Fair point. But I'm not comfortable with it, whoever is doing it. It is purely rhetorical and has no proper role in a supposedly rational discourse. Mind you, there's much ridicule in mid-century philosophy, which hides itself under the (not unreasonable) doctrine that analytic statements are trivial.

But Newton had said that this law is really dependent on the Will of God. Bishop Berkeley merely emphasizes this point. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know about Newton's God. But there is the difference between Malebranche's occasionalism and Berkeley's, and one notices that Malebranche did not attract the same ridicule as Berkeley, so that difference must have seemed important at the time.
I had the impression that Berkeley's understanding of inertia was very different from the standard version. I think many of his arguments don't stand up if one allows that inert objects can interact, as when one billiard ball hits another.

Now, when Hume removes God, and portrays temporal continuity as something produced within human intuition, by representing sense perceptions as distinct instances, discrete impressions, instead of portraying the sense organs as providing us with continuous activity, he makes a false description. So Bishop Berkeley is ridiculed for his appeal to God to support the temporal continuity of existence, but this appeal is derived from sound principles, whereas Hume is able to remove God, but he does so by using false premises. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with you that he thinks of impressions as atoms, and I agree that is a misleading account. The whole issue of individuating ideas, impressions, sense-data has been woefully neglected.
One of Berkeley's principles is "esse" is "percipi aut percipere", which, on the face of it and in fact, is false. He seems to treat this as a axiom, so I don't know why he believed it.

I admire your patient circumspection. I admit I am a bit prone to jump to conclusions. What I may or may not be able to conceive is not necessarily an adequate guide to what is conceivable or inconceivable tout court. How do we measure conceivability? — Janus

Cutting out the dithering and getting on with it has much to be said for it. I'm quite good and patience and circumspection, I suppose, but I'm absolutely lousy at getting on with it.

Many people, including some eminent professorial philosophers, say they can conceive of things that are, to me, plainly inconceivable. One more bedrock of philosophy crumbles into dust.

"Matter" is an Aristotelian concept, and the conceptual structure is arranged so that the form of a thing is what has existence. Matter, as the potential of a thing, simply does not exist, and that's why it's so easy for Berkeley to argue this, and why it seems to make logical sense, what he argues, even though intuitively we would expect otherwise. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, that's exactly how Berkeley presents his argument - officially - and why he thinks he can maintain that he doesn't deny the existence of anything that exists. (Notice how ambiguous that is - he doesn't deny the existence of anything that exists, but then he doesn't think that matter exists.)
His book was met with widespread ridicule, as the anecdote about Dr. Johnson illustrates. Another illustration of that ridicule is the name given to his doctrine ("immaterialism"). In case you hadn't noticed, it is a pun. His text is full of references to philosophical ideas being laughed at.
I don't know whether he didn't really know what he thought or he was upset by all the ridicule, he equivocates, oscillating between presenting his immaterialism as common sense (especially in the Dialogues and as a technical dispute within philosophy and between presenting his doctrine as a revolution in thought and as requiring no significant changes at all.

I find it interesting to find out about the insights of philosophers with regard to thinking, when those philosophers didn't have the advantage of modern neuroscience in making sense of what is going on. — wonderer1

I remember when philosophers managed quite well without neuroscience, even though it was clearly beginning. It wasn't really taken on board until this century, I would say.

Yes. Language works best when there is a personal relationship as a context for it.

Yes, I did mean "doesn't".

I'm sorry I have ignored this for so long. It got swept away in all the other stuff that's going on.

Start with the 17th century:-

Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

That's all fine. I'm not sure whether they realized that they were just kicking the can down the road. Mathematics can't explain colour and sound, so we'll classify them as subjective - just like the God of the gaps. OK. The tactic worked - in spades. The problem is that colours and sounds got lumped in together with hallucinations and dreams, beauty and goodness; and no-one troubled to analyze all this and draw proper distinctions. So now we are facing a "hard problem" that appears to have no solution. The framework that establishes the problem has to go.

With which I agree. I take his main point to be a reference to the well-known 'observer problem' in quantum physics, which has undermined the whole idea of the 'mind-independent reality' of the objects of quantum physics, although I don't want to go into the whole 'interpretations of physics' tangle. — Wayfarer

Yes, it was. But there's another aspect to this. When the physicists banished colour and sound from their theories, they forgot, or chose to ignore, the fact that their experiments and observations were conducted in the ordinary world in which colours and sounds are inextricably part of what we observe (and the point that Berkeley makes, that colour and shape (space) are inextricably linked.) If colours and sounds are not objective how can the science which proves them be objective? (Sense-data/ideas won't do the job. Ordinary common sense experience of independently existing objects in the objective world is essential.)

The question becomes, how do you demonstrate or prove the existence of such a 'thinking thing'? Why, you can't! It's a specious concept. So what are we left with? The other half of Descartes' duality, namely, res extensia, extended matter, which Modern Science has proven so extraordinarily adept at analyzing and manipulating. — Wayfarer

I don't quite understand this; surely Descartes had no idea about the existence of his own mind? But there is something in what you say. We do tend to leave ourselves with no alternative but to "reduce" everything to physics (except the observer, of course). But when you define matter and mind in relation to each other, you cannot abolish mind without reviewing and reshaping matter.
(I'm resisting the temptation to chase your remark about Ryle. But I'm afraid it will prove too much for my head to contain.)

I am proposing in this OP, that this amounts to more than just a theoretical paradigm - it's also a worldview, and one which is essentially the default view of secular, scientifically-informed culture. I also claim that an implicit assumption of this worldview is the 'subject-object' relationship — Wayfarer

I think the subject-object format has deeper roots than 17th century science. It is embedded in language (or at least the languages we are familiar with) but it is more than just a grammatical quirk; it affects everything we think. What we tend to forget is that every object can also be a subject, so that there is no logical gap, or gap of any sort, between the two. Most of the time, this is not particularly problematic. But it does get confusing when self-reference creeps in. That's why things get so hard when the observer becomes the observed.
Related to this is the idea of a point of view. A point of view is not included in the field of view, but defines the scope of what can be seen. It is an abstract concept - a location in space - which can be occupied by any observer (though not by all at the same time).It has geometrical existence, but not physical existence. It can be used in all sorts of metaphorical ways, many of which are helpful.

None of this connects to the subjective/objective distinction in the pejorative sense that "there is no disputing about tastes". It may connect to conceptual developments in the 17th and 18th centuries - the concept of the individual and so forth - but it doesn't connect in any way that makes sense to me to anything I've discussed so far.

This is why the argument in the OP says that an alternative to this view is a perspectival shift, a different way of seeing, which also turns out to be a different way of being. — Wayfarer

Quite likely. But there will be continuity as well.

I find it interesting to find out about the insights of philosophers with regard to thinking, when those philosophers didn't have the advantage of modern neuroscience in making sense of what is going on. — wonderer1

It seems to me that neuroscience (and psychology) have changed the game. It has been pretty obvious for a long time (over a century, I would say) that this would happen. But now we are facing the opening up of the reality and peering anxiously into the dark. I say that because there is a widespread tendency to speak as if we know it all already or to speculate wildly on what might be revealed. Both very human traits, but still not helpful.

If, on the other hand, I were suggesting another framework, I would respectfully say your discussion above is not what I would consider another framework. Rather, it too, is within this framework. Or, from your position, probably a framework within. — ENOAH

"Framework", just like "language-game" and even "Language" and "language" and "dialect" are most at home in an approach that looks for structures. And then we rightly want to expand our view and so we want to develop an overall structure (or Structure). But all these concepts are what I think of as jelly-fish concepts - almost infinitely plastic. So I'm quite content to set up a structure in a particular context for a particular purpose, without aspiring to any totalizing Structure. That annoys almost everyone, but it works for me.

The latter being before/beyond/outside of Language, which I would now identify as the constructed world, the world within a framework of becoming, to a world of organic presence, a world of (human) being. — ENOAH

OK. So now we can add "world" to the list of jelly-fish concepts. To adopt your spatial metaphor, our problem is that Language endlessly points beyond itself, while at the same time preventing us from ever quite getting there. Perhaps then I should have said "seems to point beyond itself". My preferred tactic is to turn the problem upside-down, by reflecting that language was developed from whatever existed before it and is a product of whatever existed before it. It must therefore be useful within those worlds. It is language that needs to take its place in the world, not the other way about. What may be even more important is that we are all born without language and need to develop a great deal of understanding of the world in order to be able to learn it. (I began to work this out in another thread - "on the matter of epistemology and ontology" - I don't know if you were involved in that.)

That's why the bonding Midgley referenced is uniquely significant--family, mates, offspring--that's where you find consciousness, and you find that we are one. — ENOAH

Yes and no. For the ancient Romans "familiaris" meant "of a house, of a household, belonging to a family, household, domestic, private". On a generous interpretation of "family", I'll buy this. One reason for doing so is that, whatever our domestic arrangements, we are all born and brought up and, for me, the people involved in that are my family, and so everyone has a family of some sort. It does imply that the consciousness of creatures that don't grow up in that way becomes moot - even if they are sentient. In ethics, that might become problematic.

Are you suggesting another framework?
There's an interesting discussion to be had about translation between languages/cultures of colour-words, including which words are colour-words and which are not. The classic locus in philosophy for this is the translation of "snow" into the language(s) of people who live north of the Arctic Circle. But they are extremely limited. Few philosophers are polyglot enough to enjoy that kind of thing. Which is a great pity. (I have some access to four, but almost certainly not the depth and fluency that one would need to do it well.)

We experience our own efforts all the time. We know energy from the inside, so to speak, and the idea of an interaction that does not involve energy, energy exchange, is inconceivable. So, I start from there, physics is merely an elaboration and formalization of that understanding. Speaking of basics, have you never heard of the four fundamental forces? — Janus

Yes, I know that understanding of causation exists - I've seen it one of Hacker's books - I forget which. I am increasingly sympathetic, but have not read enough about it to be sure what I think of it. Your conclusion from that experience that an interaction that does not involve energy is inconceivable seems a bit quick to me. I have heard of the four fundamental forces, but I've forgotten what they are, I'm afraid.

I passed this over before, and I should have made the point that this is a truism that applies to all terms whatsoever. There are no terms that have determinate senses outside the contexts of their use, which makes your point seem somewhat moot. — Janus

I'm glad we are in agreement about this. But philosophers seem to have a hard time with it, as, for example, in the argument about first causes vs infinite causes. Rorty described it as Truth vs truth.

I find this to be a bit scrambled but I'll see what I can do to sort it out with my understanding of Berkeley. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was expounding, not evaluating, so I'm able to agree with your critique in many ways, though I'm not particularly wedded to Aristotelianism.

As for Aristotle's concept of matter, it is primarily defined in his physics, as you say, as what persists through change. However, since the form of the thing is what actually changes, then the matter is said to provide the potential for change. That's how matter escapes the law of excluded middle, as potential, what neither is nor is not. And this is why it is the aspect of the world which is unintelligible to us. So the supposed underlying aspect of a thing which persists through change, matter, is completely unintelligible to us. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. But, for me, the unintelligibility of matter is not a conclusion, but a problem. If you were to present this conclusion to Berkeley, he would conclude that matter didn't exist, and I would not be able to explain why he is wrong.

Berkeley allows that separate people have separate minds, and God's mind is separate from human minds. But I do not think that he adequately addresses the issue of what provides for the separation between one mind and another. So we need a concept like "matter" to provide for the separation between minds. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree. I don't think there is a coherent idea of immaterial minds.

I believe the principal difference between Hume and Berkeley is that Hume didn't believe in God. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm sure you know about the controversy about Hume's atheism. I don't think there is a determinate answer about what he "really" believed. But the Enquiry is perfectly clear. He rejects rational arguments for God's existence and Christianity, but believes in them on faith, which he acknowledges is a miracle.

How can you possibly distinguish between appearance and reality? Once you accept that there is such a distinction to be made, you plunge yourself into a quagmire because you need to provide principles by which you would distinguish between the two. — Metaphysician Undercover

I didn't express myself clearly. There are ordinary uses of "appear" and "real" that are perfectly in order. The stick in water appears to be bent, but isn't "really". The sun disappears behind the moon, but still exists. But when we posit a world of "appearances" (or "experiences") that exist independently of the entities that they are appearances of, we are seriously mistaken.

I think Midgley makes a profound point. — ENOAH

I agree with you. However, @Fooloso4's points about the way she makes her point are also important. The issue crops up all the time in reading texts from the past - and the present. Her ideas about marriage, family, maturity were pretty much conventional, though not uncontested, at the time and still exist. We need to be able to acknowledge both sides of this, though I haven't worked out how to do so properly.

Her point, I take it, to be that we do not [contra Descartes] have to infer the existence of the same consciousness in others. She was beyond Descartes, the subject, "I", and phenomenal perception. — ENOAH

Yes, quite so.

Why not bonding as a source for the truth that we are not utterly isolated in our consciousness? — ENOAH

Why not indeed? But let us not be hypnotized by a one bonding, but recognize the many different bonds there are in human lives - and how they arise in ways that we interact with, as opposed to merely observe, each other - and how we distinguish between people and non-people at the same time.

Or is philosophy not about truth, but about it within a restricted framework? — ENOAH

.. so truth within a restricted framework is not really truth?
Briefly -
For my money, "the sky is blue" is true because of the system of colours, not in spite of it. The objectivity of truths shows up in the way that a truth formulated in one system will show up in other systems. The easy example is the way that arithmetical truths show up in any number system.
In Wittgenstein's thought, this point is closely linked to colour exclusion problem (SEP). He says

225. What I hold fast to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions.

On Certainty 225.

Certainly.

You may think me lazy, but here are some extracts from the Treatise that should (I hope) explain what you're asking about.

On the cause(s) of ideas:-

26. CAUSE OF IDEAS.--We perceive a continual succession of ideas, some are anew excited, others are changed or totally disappear. There is therefore some cause of these ideas, whereon they depend, and which produces and changes them. That this cause cannot be any quality or idea or combination of ideas, is clear from the preceding section. It must therefore be a substance; but it has been shown that there is no corporeal or material substance: it remains therefore that the CAUSE OF IDEAS is an incorporeal active substance or Spirit.

28. I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as oft as I think fit. It is no more than willing, and straightway this or that idea arises in my fancy; and by the same power it is obliterated and makes way for another. This making and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the mind active. Thus much is certain and grounded on experience; but when we think of unthinking agents or of exciting ideas exclusive of volition, we only amuse ourselves with words.

29. IDEAS OF SENSATION DIFFER FROM THOSE OF REFLECTION OR MEMORY.--But, whatever power I may have over MY OWN thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by Sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses; the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is THEREFORE SOME OTHER WILL OR SPIRIT that PRODUCES THEM.

33. OF REAL THINGS AND IDEAS OR CHIMERAS.--The ideas imprinted on the Senses by the Author of nature are called REAL THINGS; and those excited in the imagination being less regular, vivid, and constant, are more properly termed IDEAS, or IMAGES OF THINGS, which they copy and represent. But then our sensations, be they never so vivid and distinct, are nevertheless IDEAS, that is, they exist in the mind, or are perceived by it, as truly as the ideas of its own framing. The ideas of Sense are allowed to have more reality in them, that is, to be more (1)STRONG, (2)ORDERLY, and (3)COHERENT than the creatures of the mind; but this is no argument that they exist without the mind. They are also (4)LESS DEPENDENT ON THE SPIRIT [Note: Vide sect. xxix.--Note.], or thinking substance which perceives them, in that they are excited by the will of another and more powerful spirit; yet still they are IDEAS, and certainly no IDEA, whether faint or strong, can exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it.

It would not be unfair to say that Berkeley is not very articulate about his notion of causality. He maintains that something that is "inert" cannot cause (or be affected by) anything. The only agent of change he recognizes is a mind. The passage in bold in section 28 above is more or less all he has to say about this. This section explains why (sort of):-

27. NO IDEA OF SPIRIT.--A spirit is one simple, undivided, active being--as it perceives ideas it is called the UNDERSTANDING, and as it produces or otherwise operates about them it is called the WILL. Hence there can be no idea formed of a soul or spirit; for all ideas whatever, being passive and inert (vide sect. 25), they cannot represent unto us, by way of image or LIKENESS, that which acts. A little attention will make it plain to any one, that to have an idea which shall be like that active principle of motion and change of ideas is absolutely impossible. Such is the nature of SPIRIT, or that which acts, that it cannot be of itself perceived, BUT ONLY BY THE EFFECTS WHICH IT PRODUCETH. If any man shall doubt of the truth of what is here delivered, let him but reflect and try if he can frame the idea of any power or active being, and whether he has ideas of two principal powers, marked by the names WILL and UNDERSTANDING, distinct from each other as well as from a third idea of Substance or Being in general, with a relative notion of its supporting or being the subject of the aforesaid powers--which is signified by the name SOUL or SPIRIT. This is what some hold; but, so far as I can see, the words WILL [Note: "Understanding, mind."--Edit 1710.], SOUL, SPIRIT, do not stand for different ideas, or, in truth, for any idea at all, but for something which is very different from ideas, and which, being an agent, cannot be like unto, or represented by, any idea whatsoever. Though it must be owned at the same time that we have some notion of soul, spirit, and the operations of the mind: such as willing, loving, hating--inasmuch as we know or understand the meaning of these words.

The passage in bold in section 28 above is more or less all he has to say about how a mind does what it does.

Notice, that for Berkeley "matter" is presented as a concept which would commonly be used to account for the supposed independent existence of the things (noumena). However, he shows that "matter" is really an unnecessary supposition, it is not actually required to be assumed as part of the independent thing to understand its independent existence. This implies that "matter" is actually a concept use to account for the sense appearance of things (phenomena). — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm afraid I'm not quite on board with this. It makes sense on its own terms. I thought matter was posited to account for things persisting through change, and that in any case, for Aristotle, if not others, the object of perception of things is their form (or maybe perceptible form?). But I don't recognize Berkeley here.
For Berkeley, the mind-independent existence of anything is ruled out by "esse" is "percipi". That principle is why he rules out matter as not merely unnecessary but impossible.
He is embarrassed by two problems. First, he realizes that I never perceive myself and second he recognizes that some of our ideas have a cause that is not me. So he introduces a concept of a "notion" which is just like an idea, but applies to ideas of things that we don't perceive. So he provides for my existence and then introduces the idea - sorry, notion - of God, which provides a cause of ideas that is not me. (He also slips in the existence of other minds, which creates even more confusion.) This manoeuvre also allows him to deny that he is denying the existence of anything; he makes much more of this in the Dialogues, which, of course, he wrote later and so, one suspects, he takes into account public reaction to the Treatise. I'm confused about whether the ideas produced by God exist in His Mind, my mind or both but they certainly depend on a mind. So it is clear that nothing exists that is not mind-dependent, even though some things exist independently of my mind.

He shows that if we take "matter" out of the thing, we lose nothing from our conceptions of independent things. That is because our conceptions are formal (in the Aristotelian sense of form). Nevertheless, regardless of what Berkeley shows, we find that "matter" is indispensable to the understanding of our sensations of things. This is because we sense things as active, changing, and Aristotle introduced "matter" as the means for understanding the potential for change. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not sure who "he" is here. But Berkeley certainly dispenses with matter altogether. It has no place in his world. God supplies all that is needed to explain our sensations of things, and explains change. I'm not sure whether his concept of ideas matches the idea of forms, but it certainly seems possible.

In each case, "matter" maintains its Aristotelian base as the potential for change, and the unintelligible aspect of reality. Berkeley, like Kant (with space and time) positions matter as something a priori, created within the human body or mind, as a necessary condition for sense perception, but not necessary for the independent existence of things. — Metaphysician Undercover

I suppose he would have to accept that the idea of matter can exist in a mind. But I don't think Berkeley's idea of ideas includes the potential for change. They are posited as inert and inactive, which Berkeley things rules out any causal relations between them - causal changes as we experience them are created and maintained by God. So far as I can see, he recognizes only one possibility for change - minds.

Hume turns this around and leaves matter as an a posteriori concept created by the mind in order to understand the independent existence of things which are sensed, rather than as necessary for the sense appearance of things. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure about this at all. I agree that, for Hume, relations between ideas are created (by association) in our minds. I found him curiously silent on Berkeley's issue. I have the impression that the existence of external, mind-independent objects is not explicitly ruled out. My speculation is the Hume did not want to get caught up in Berkeley.

Why reject it (sc. the distinction between phenomena and noumena) though, when it seems to be completely consistent with how I experience things? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, "reject" is perhaps too strong and too simple. How could I not recognize the difference between appearance and reality? Whether it is consistent with how I experience things is one issue.
But our senses tell us about the world we live in, so long as we are suitably critical of what they seem to be telling us. Somehow they have become a VR headset which is an obstacle to our knowing that the world is "really" like and probably feeding us nothing but lies. It's a fantasy and the granddaddy of conspiracy theories. (OK, that's a caricature. It's only meant to show the direction of travel.)

It looks to me as if you (or is it Kant?) are trying to read Berkeley without God. Berkeley's work is as much theology as philosophy, so it is rather awkward for philosophers to deal with.