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Berkeley, The Sun that I see by Day, and that which I imagine by Night

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Roger Woolhouse
Roger Woolhouse
Affiliation:
University College, Cardiff.
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Extract

On A number of occasions in the Principles, Berkeley defends himself against the possible objection that

‘by the foregoing principles, all that is real and substantial in nature is banished out of the world; and instead thereof a chimerical scheme of ideas takes place. All things that exist, exist only in the mind.… What therefore becomes of the sun, moon, and stars? … Are all these but so many chimeras and illusions on the fancy ?’

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 43 , Issue 164 , April 1968 , pp. 152 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1968

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References

1 Everyman edition of the Principles, section 34. All other references are to this edition.

2 Other ways of putting this are as a distinction between realities, or real things, and chimeras or illusions on the fancy (34)Google Scholar, between real things and images of things (33)Google Scholar, or between, for example, imagining oneself burnt and actually being so (41).Google Scholar

3 Hicks, G. Dawes, pp. 109 if., Berkeley (London: 1932).Google ScholarLuce, A. A., pp. 103 ff., Berkeley's Immaterialism (London: 1945).Google ScholarWarnock, G. J., pp. 113–114, Berkeley (London: 1953).Google ScholarThompson, J. F., pp. 247d–248bGoogle Scholar, article on Berkeley, in A Critical History of Western Philosophy, edited by O'Connor, D. J. (New York: 1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Furlong, E. J., pp. 29–30, Imagination (London: 1961).Google Scholar See also Urmson, J. O., ‘Memory and Imagination’, Mind, vol. 76, No. 301, 01, 1967.Google Scholar

5 I suspect that Furlong confuses cases like (a) and (b) with those like (e) and (f). He discusses what he calls ‘false supposal’ (p. 21, pp. 29–30, pp. 53–55Google Scholar, ‘Imagination’; p. 360, ‘Playing Bears’, Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 17, No. 29, 10: 1957)Google Scholar, and although, it is true, all of his examples save one (Peter and the power failure, p. 21. ‘Imagination’) are of the sort of (e) and (f) rather than of (a) and (b), he says (p. 365, ‘Playing Bears’) that Mrs Flew has ‘accounted for’ this ‘false supposal’. He is referring to her ‘(perhaps mistaken) thinking’ sense of ‘imagine’ (Flew, A., ‘Images, Supposing, and Imagining’, Philosophy, vol. 28, No. 106, 01: 1953, p. 247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Flew, A. G. N., p. 53, Hume's Philosophy of Belief, London: 1961)Google Scholar which applies only in cases like (a) and (b). She, like Professor Flew, does not discuss or mention cases like (e) and (f), but she recognises (p. 247) that she has not exhausted the field of sense of ‘imagine’.

6 An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book 4, chapter 2, section 14 (A, C. Fraser's edition). See also 4.11.5, and Hume's Treatise, 1.1.3.

7 Similar remarks go for the other two sets of differentiating notions.

8 Kantians might claim that the connection between the two is even closer than I have allowed.