Taking Berkeley Seriously By

IDEAS AND MATERIAL SUBSTANCE While there are many arguments on various topics to be found in Berkeley's published works, the two issues which have received the most attention from philosophers are: (1) Berkeley's rejection of Abstract Ideas; and, (2) Berkeley's rejection of Material Substance, which is commonly referred to as Berkeley's "immaterialism." These two issues were first addressed by Berkeley in the Introduction and Part I of his 1710 Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. However, as also stated above, this was not Berkeley's first major publication. In fact, his 1709 Essay on vision was his first major work, and the precise relation between these two publications has been a subject of some debate amongst Berkeley scholars. This debate revolves around the questions of which work had greater influence on the other (since it is an open question which publication was drafted before the other), and whether or not Berkeley, when drafting the 1709 Essay on vision, had fully embraced the immaterialism that he would argue for in Part I of the Principles. The main reason for this debate is that Berkeley treated tangible bodies as existing independent of perception in the 1709 Essay on vision, but then treated all sensations (whether visual or tactile) as existing "only in the mind" in the 1710 Part I of the Principles. So, the issue that has been debated is whether Berkeley was only a partial idealist when he drafted the 1709 Essay on vision. While there are legitimate historical reasons for engaging in this debate, Berkeley explained why he treated tangible bodies as existing independent of perception in his earlier work, in §44 of Part I of the Principles: That the proper objects of sight neither exist without the mind, nor are the images of external things, was shewn even in that treatise [i.e., in the 1709 Essay on vision]. Though throughout the same, the contrary be supposed true of tangible objects: not that to suppose that vulgar error, was necessary for establishing the notion therein laid down; but because it was beside my purpose to examine and refute it in a discourse concerning vision. [Berkeley's emphasis]. 34 See e.g., Thomas M. Lennon, "The Historical Consistency of Berkeley's Idealism", British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 16(1), 2008, pp. 101-124. See also C.M. Turbayne, "The Influence of Berkeley's Science on His Metaphysics", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, V.16, No. 4 (June 1956), pp. 476-487. 35 Since the debate concerning the precise relationship between the 1709 Essay and the 1710 Introduction & Part I of the Principles is not terribly relevant to this dissertation, Berkeley's stated explanation will have to suffice.