Sense without matter;: Or, Direct perception, by A.A. Luce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A Hidden Gem

This is a reinterpretation of the “immaterialist” philosophy of the 18th century Irish bishop, George Berkeley. Although published in 1954, the book has the style and vocabulary of 50 years earlier when theologians (of whom, Luce) and philosophers still had conversations in print. So the almost complete break between the two disciplines that occurred after the First World War has marooned Luce’s thought in a kind of intellectual Never Never Land, missing both the ‘linguistic turn’ in mid-century philosophy as well as the growing focus on consciousness as a central philosophical issue.

It is in this more recent discussion of consciousness that Luce’s ideas, and Berkeley’s, take on renewed relevance. Thinkers like Ian McGilchrist, Daniel Dennett, Bernardo Kastrop, and Donald Hoffmann point to consciousness as the progenitor of reality. Although they would use different terms, these philosophers and scientists would likely agree with Luce’s claim that “[T]here is no matter other than the sensible, and that by a frank, fearless, but accurate, acceptance of that position, speculative problems are simplified, mental efficiency is enhanced, and a long step towards truth is taken.”

It is easy to parody this old-fashioned claim of strict idealism. It is much more difficult to dismiss either the latest findings in neuro-science and evolutionary biology which confirm it. To say, as Luce does that “The geometry of the real world and the physics of the real world must clearly be the geometry and physics of the real world perceived.” is only a small step from the observation that the observed neural complexity of the brain is what consciousness itself creates.

Having no apparent familiarity with the work of Heidegger, Luce seems to channel his thought when he says, “For more positive and more definite teaching on matter we must leave the theory of being, and come to the theory of knowing” He is referring here not to the limited (and unsuccessful) epistemology of Kant that involves matching words to things, but a radical epistemology that starts with the primacy of consciousness as the source of even the Kantian categories of space and time.

So despite his relative obscurity in both philosophical and theological circles, Luce is an important intellectual link in the historical chain of both

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