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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
That the legacy of Berkeley's philosophy has been a largely sceptical one is perhaps rather surprising. For he himself took it as one of his objectives to undermine scepticism. He roundly denied that there were ‘any principles more opposite to Scepticism than those we have laid down’ (PHK, 40). Yet Hume was to write of Berkeley that ‘most of the writings of that very ingenious author form the best lessons of scepticism, Bayle not excepted’. And it has become something of a commonplace to say that Berkeley's philosophy is sceptical in direction, if not in intention. He is represented as a half-hearted sceptic, applying radical empiricist principles in his treatment of matter but baulking at their implications when he came to consider spirits. Hume is credited with being the more thoroughgoing of the two. Berkeley had denied the substantiality of extended things. Hume felt obliged, by parity of reasoning, to deny the substantiality of the self. On his account of the mind there is ‘properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different’ (THN, 1 iv 6). It is commonly supposed that Berkeley, in maintaining the quite contrary view that we know ourselves to be simple, undivided beings (PHK, 27), showed a lack of rigour or consistency.
page 64 note 1 The following abbreviations are used in the text for references to the principal works cited:
DHP = Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713)Google Scholar. References are given to the page-numbers of two editions:
A Berkeley's Philosophical Writings, ed. Armstrong, D. M. (New York, Collier Books, 1965)Google Scholar.
T Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, ed. Turbayne, C. M. (New York, The Library of Liberal Arts, 1954)Google Scholar.
ECHU= An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke (1689)Google Scholar.
PC= Philosophical Commentaries (1707–1708)Google Scholar. References are to the paragraph numbers provided by A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop in Vol. I of their The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne (Edinburgh, Nelson, 1948–1957)Google Scholar. References to some of Berkeley's less accessible works are indicated as they are to be found in this edition by the abbreviation ‘L & J’, the volume number being given in small capital roman numerals, the relevant page number given in arabic numerals.
PHK = A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710)Google Scholar. References are given to the section numbers to be found in all editions. ‘(ii)’ indicates an addition included in the 2nd ed. (1734).
THN=A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume (1739–1740)Google Scholar. References to the page numbers of the O.U.P. edition of Selby-Bigge.
page 64 note 2 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section xii, Part 11, O.U.P. edition (ed. Selby-Bigge) p. 155 fn.Google Scholar
page 65 note 1 Both this and the second objection are urged by A. J. Ayer in his Language, Truth and Logic, 2nd ed. (London, Gollancz, 1946) p. 126.Google Scholar
page 66 note 1 This distinction is not always drawn very clearly by Berkeley. But it is of some importance for his philosophy. For instance, in so far as we are mere recipients of ideas their reality is guaranteed by the veracity of God. But, in so far as the mind is active, error is possible. For Berkeley, like Descartes, error depends on the will. The active/passive distinction is at one point drawn as follows: ‘Thoughts do most properly signify or are mostly taken for the interior operations of the mind, wherein the mind is active, those that obey not the acts of Volition, and in which the mind is passive are more properly called sensations’ (PC 286).
page 66 note 2 See, for instance, PHK, 6,10,22,24, 27.
page 68 note 1 For instance he wrote at one point: ‘If we look but never so little into our thoughts, we shall find it impossible to conceive a likeness except only between our ideas’ (PHK, 8).
page 68 note 2 A reason for supposing that Berkeley did not intend to say we knew our existence by ‘inward feeling’ is that he had, in the previous sentence, deleted the phrase ‘perishable passions’ in the second edition which occurs in the first. He may therefore have intended to say that some self-knowledge is by ‘inward feeling’, of, for instance, our passions.
page 69 note 1 I am indebted for this observation to a remark by S. A. Grave in his paper, ‘The Mind and its Ideas: Some Problems in the Interpretation of Berkeley’, in Australasian Journal of Philosophy XLII (1964) pp. 199–210Google Scholar. See, for instance, PHK, 7, 26, 89, 91, 135.
page 69 note 2 See PHK, 89, 91, 135; DHP, III, A 196, T 80.
page 72 note 1 For instance, he wrote that ‘though it seems that neither you nor I can form distinct simple ideas of number, we can nevertheless make very proper use of numeral names’ (Alciphron, VII 6).Google Scholar
page 72 note 2 In his Introduction to the Fontana edition of The Principles of Human Knowledge and Other Writings, p. 29.Google Scholar
page 73 note 1 This use of the term ‘notion’ seems to have been a received one. It is acknowledged, for instance, by Locke in his discussion of mixed modes (see EGHU, II xxii 2)
page 74 note 1 See his Berkeley (Pelican Books, 1953) pp. 81f.Google Scholar
page 75 note 1 An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, sect. 152.Google Scholar
page 75 note 2 From his early draft of the Introduction to the Principles, L & II 129.
page 76 note 1 See An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, sect. 109.Google Scholar
page 76 note 2 This view of substance is that taken also in the Philosophical Commentaries. ‘The substance wood’ is, Berkeley writes, ‘a collection of simple ideas’ (PC, 179). It is by combining our thoughts that we ‘make all substances’ (PC, 194).
page 79 note 1 Monroe C. Beardsley, in his paper ‘Berkeley on “Abstract Ideas”’, in Mind (1943) pp. 157ffGoogle Scholar., contends that ‘Berkeley's attack on abstract ideas is not made wholly compatible with his atomistic sensationalism’. His case for taking Berkeley to be an ‘atomistic sensationalist’, however, is far from convincing. Much of the evidence he cites consists of cases where the combination of ideas is of ideas derived from different senses, cases which, as I argue in the text, are open to another interpretation. The reference to extension, colour, and motion as ‘simple, constituent parts’ (PHK, Intr. 7) can only be interpreted in an atomistic way. But here Beardsley confuses what ‘we are told’ by such philosophers as Locke whose abstractionism Berkeley is expressly opposing in this passage with the position Berkeley himself wishes to adopt.
page 79 note 2 As Professor G. N. A. Vesey has pointed out to me, Locke seems to accept at one point a view of how ideas become general which is indistinguishable from Berkeley's. See ECHU, III iii 11.
page 79 note 3 Berkeley's language at times lends itself to such a construction, e.g. when he denies that we can form an idea of motion ‘exclusive of body’ (DHP, 1, A 157, T 34) or ‘colour exclusive of extension’ (PHK, Intr. 7). But only an abstractionist could maintain the necessary view of concepts in which such analytic connection could be stated.
page 80 note 1 For instance, D. M. Armstrong, in his Introduction to Berkeley's Philosophical Writings (New York, Collier Books, 1965), pp. 13f.Google Scholar
page 80 note 2 I accept the distinction drawn by Jonathan Bennett in his paper ‘Berkeley and God’, in Philosophy (1965) pp. 207ffGoogle Scholar., between ‘ownership’ and ‘causal’ uses of the term ‘depend’ in Berkeley's writings. Since it alone is connected with a many-one relation, it is with the former use that I am here concerned. But the importance of the other use is undeniable.
page 81 note 1 One can, for instance, also ‘consider’ or treat of qualities in an abstract way in the context of general reasoning (DHP, 1, A 157, T 34; cf. PHK (ii) Intr. 16; PC, 330).
page 82 note 1 Including PHK, 1,37: DHP, III, A 211, T 97; New Theory of Vision, 46.Google Scholar
page 84 note 1 When Berkeley writes that the existence of a spirit ‘consists … in perceiving ideas and thinking’ (PHK, 139) this seems to be his point.
page 85 note 1 In his The Development of Berkeley's Philosophy (London, 1933) p. 201.Google Scholar
page 86 note 1 Berkeley appears to have misunderstood Descartes at this For, in his reply to the second objection of Hobbes (The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Haldane and Ross, vol. II, C.U.P., p. 64Google Scholar) Descartes seems to be making the point that we know the mind to be a distinct kind of substance because of the kind of activities of which it is the subject. Berkeley attributes to him the view that the mind is known ‘by this alone, that it is the subject of several acts’ (PC, 795). But that a one-many relation is involved is incidental to Descartes's thinking in a way it is not to that of Berkeley.
page 87 note 1 Critique of Pure Reason, A 363 & n.