Definitions

Simplest Explanation

.....Even if we agree with the idealist that all we ever have access to is our own sense experiences, we might still want to know what causes these experiences and why they follow such regular patterns. Why is it that sense experiences can be arranged so easily into what we in everyday language call 'physical objects'? Surely the most straightforward answer to this is that physical objects actually exist out there in the external world, and that they cause our sense experiences of them. This is what Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784) no doubt meant when in response to Bishop Berkeley's idealism he kicked a large stone very hard and declared 'I refute it thus'.

Philosophy: The Basics. Nigel Warburton. Third edition. Page 106. (Routledge 1999).