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To consider just one example of how one might set about expounding and criticizing a philosophical argument, let us take a passage from a well-known text by the idealist philosopher George Berkeley – his Principles of Human Knowledge, first published in 1710. Berkeley’s aim, as is explained in the introduction to the full extract (to be found in Part II, Section 6), was to argue that nothing exists independently of a mind. Here is part of what he says:

It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question, may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For what are the forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these or any combination of them should exist unperceived?

The first task is to get behind the rather elaborate phrasing of Berkeley’s eighteenth-century English and extract the basic train of thought, which is actually quite straightforward. In the first sentence, Berkeley talks about ‘houses, mountains, rivers’, in short, the ordinary objects around us. And he refers to the widely held or prevailing opinion that they exist independently of their being perceived (‘they have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived’). Now think about this: do you share this prevailing opinion? Do you think houses and mountains have ‘real existence’, distinct from their being perceived? The obvious answer is that yes, we all do share this view: we think the houses and rivers are still there, twenty-four hours a day, as it were, whether or not we are there to look at them or think about them. Indeed, if all human beings and other sentient creatures were suddenly to vanish from the earth, the mountains would still be there, would they not?

But what is Berkeley saying about this ‘prevailing’ opinion, this ordinary common-sense view of the real independent existence of mountains, rivers and houses? He says it is a strangely prevailing opinion: widespread though it may be, it is odd (Berkeley seems to be saying) that people accept it. And he goes on to say that once we start to question it (‘whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question’), we find it is obviously absurd (it involves a ‘manifest contradiction’). Why? Because, says Berkeley, all these aforementioned objects are things we ‘perceive by sense’ (that is, by seeing, hearing, touching, and so on). And, he goes on, ‘what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations?’ He puts it as a rhetorical question, but he means to state it plainly and outright: we only perceive our own ideas or sensations.

By the time we have reached this point, we are in a position to see where Berkeley is going. Obviously, ideas and sensations depend on the mind of the perceiver. Ideas and sensations can’t exist independently, outside of a mind. So if (as Berkeley is asking us to accept) we only perceive our own ideas and sensations, then what we perceive cannot exist outside a mind. So the ‘sensible objects’ – the mountains, houses, rivers, etc., that people think of as existing independently ‘out there’ – cannot after all exist except as ideas or sensations in the mind.

I hope this gives some idea of how you might set about the first task of a philosophy essay – the task of exegesis, of unpacking an argument, teasing out the train of thought, breaking it down into its stages. A lot of philosophical writing involves this kind of analysis, which in its original Greek sense means untying, or unravelling. Unpacking a whole text in this way would take a very long time, and (as will be seen if you turn to the whole extract in Part II, section 6) Berkeley has a lot more to say than what is contained in the paragraph above. But part of your job in a philosophy essay is to be selective – to work out which particular passages to concentrate on as containing the key arguments, or as representing the crucial elements of a given position.

What about the other component of a good philosophy essay, namely criticism? Here you would need to stand back from what Berkeley is saying and ask which are the crucial premisses on which his argument depends, and whether they are plausible. Probably the most controversial element in the train of thought unpacked above is Berkeley’s claim that we only perceive our own ideas or sensations. Is this true? When you look at a mountain or a house or a river, what are you perceiving? Perhaps the obvious answer is – the mountain, the house, the river. We do not normally say that we see ideas of houses, or look at sensations of rivers; we say that we see houses and look at rivers. So is Berkeley forcing a card on us – softening us up to accept his immaterialist view of reality? It’s true of course that we couldn’t perceive any of the objects around us unless we were equipped with sense organs that respond to the relevant stimuli. So sense-perception is a causally complex process. But should this lead us in the direction of Berkeleian idealism (that only ideas and minds exist)?

These are the sorts of questions to think about. Commentaries and textbooks in the recommended reading section may help you to formulate your critical responses to the text and to make them as precise and rigorously supported as possible. The goal is to move beyond mere opinion or personal reaction and to produce a careful and well-argued case in support of your position. But remember that in philosophy there is seldom if ever a final solution to the perennial underlying questions that great writers like Berkeley are grappling with. In this particular instance, there are deep issues about our conception of reality: do we really understand what we mean when we think of material objects ‘out there’, being there anyway, independently of our own perceptions and understandings of them? If so, what are such objects like ‘in themselves’? Does this question even make sense? Once we begin to reflect on such matters, we may start to appreciate Berkeley’s disquiet about the ‘absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived’ (to use a phrase he employs later on in this text).³ If you think the mountains and rivers and trees are ‘there anyway’, whether anyone is around to perceive them or not, what does this ‘being there anyway’ really amount to?