To be is to be perceived.

Quote of the Week 25

“To be is to be perceived (or to perceive).”

― George Berkeley

 

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes:

 

A mind-independent thing is something whose existence is not dependent on thinking/perceiving things, and thus would exist whether or not any thinking things (minds) existed. Berkeley holds that there are no such mind-independent things, that, in the famous phrase, esse est percipi (aut percipere) — to be is to be perceived (or to perceive).

 

 

Triggered by the following question in the book "Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch:

  

 

Note:
In 1935 Erwin Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment concerning quantum superposition known as "Schrödinger's Cat" that asks whether reality itself exists in a definite state before we look.

According to Schrödinger’s Cat: The Paradox That Redefined Reality, Schrödinger’s point was not that he believed cats could be both alive and dead—but that the quantum description, when applied to everyday objects, led to nonsense. He used this hypothetical scenario to highlight what he saw as a flaw in interpreting quantum theory too literally.