PHIL 2160 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Hylas

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 2160
• Professor: Patricia Sheridan

Document Summary

For berkeley there are mind(s), ideas in mind(s) these are the kinds of things we can think about as. His ontology (what"s real) consists of minds, and the ideas in them there are perceptions(ideas) and having unique identities there are perceivers(minds) He is an empiricist all of the contents of the mind arise from experience, so the ideas must be experiential ideas from perceptions. Like the empiricism in locke, we are working with a simple account of ideas all our perceptions are singular, unitary, and specific to a single sensory perception. Matter is a fundamentally empty concept; matter has no explanatory value in how we understand the world, so berkeley is given us an anti-materialist account of perception and concept formation. He thinks his anti-materialism is consistent with common sense. He replies that he does deny the existence of material substances, but that does not make him a sceptic. We passively receive sensations berkeley agrees with this point by locke.