Modern Social Science Research

Living in an era dominated by mechanical causation, Berkeley clearly pointed out the limitations of this theory and sought a balance between natural philosophy and metaphysics. This paper examines Berkeley’s philosophical thought through the lens of the principle of causality. In his view, sensory experience can help us summarize the laws of natural science, but it cannot reveal the foundation of natural science, namely, the conditions under which causal necessity holds. Therefore, in order to explore the conditions for the validity of causal necessity, Berkeley demarcated the boundaries of the domain of natural science, which is based on sensory experience, and opened up the domain of metaphysics, placing causal necessity within the metaphysical realm. After clearly distinguishing between these two domains, in his later work, Berkeley proposed the philosophy of “fire” to address the issue of transition between them and to bridge the gap.

Berkeley; Principle of causality; Metaphysics; Siris