Rejection of the Rejection of Materialism

      What is perception exactly? Is it the awareness of external and physical things, or rather could it be from immaterial things instead? This is a hotly debated topic to this very day and has also been in the past with the likes of Locke and Berkeley leading the charge. I tend to find myself agreeing with Locke and his theory of a causal theory of perception.

      Locke's theory of perception rests on the idea of materialism. In this theory, things are given primary, secondary, and even tertiary qualities. Primary qualities are those such as number, movement, extension, and solidity - things that can be seen directly by us. Those qualities we as humans mainly deal with such as color, texture, smell, and sound are the secondary qualities. Scientifically speaking, we do not directly perceive these things. Take for example color. Objects do not directly have a light color emitting from within themselves that is white. Rather, light from the sun or other objects hit an object and reflect the light into the rods and cones withing our eyes causing the objects to appear white. It is in this indirect way that materialism  exists. There are some experiences such as this appearance of color that we cannot unsee. We can't help but experience these things.

      However, Berkeley argued against materialism and for immaterialism. The main argument for this theory is that the experiences materialists do rely upon these experiences to characterize things and all the expereiences are mental. He then argues that that which is mental is not material and thus material things are mind-dependent. 

       However, I would argue that Berkeley's ideas that are supposed to be completely mental are not all that way. Take for example again the experience of smelling a rose. I cannot unsmell a rose, and imagine that I am smelling one for the very first time. Berkeley would state that is experience is completely mental, however there is something very material indeed in the sensing process. Very specific molecules bind to receptors in the olfactory sensors of our nose in the body which then relay a message of this smell to us. Without these exact molecules binding, however, the experience would never occur. Regardless of it being a mental association, these physical entities are responsible for the perception.