Philosophy 210/310
Early Modern Philosophy 
Andrew Mills' 
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Study Questions for Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous

First Dialogue

  1. Why is it important to Hylas and Philonous not to be a skeptic?  What is involved in being a skeptic?  Is it bad to be a skeptic?  Why or why not?  Does their understanding of what a skeptic is match yours?
  2. What does it mean to deny the reality of sensible things?  Can you give examples of a position which denies the reality of sensible things?
  3. "I hear the car", "I hear the car's engine", "I hear a deep rumbling".  Which of these three things--the car, the car's engine, the deep rumbling--are "sensible things" according to Philonous?  What's the relevance of the distinction between mediate perception and immediate perception here?
  4. Philonous says this: "But is not the mose vehement and intense degree of heat a very great pain?" and Hylas replies, "No one can deny it." Is this right?  Can no one deny it?  Or is there a reason to deny Philonous' claim?  Later on, Philonous gives an argument for why intense heat and pain should be identified.  What is that argument?  Is it a good one?
  5. The identification of heat and cold with pain and pleasure is crucial to Philonous' argument beginning at speech. 33.  Is it right to identify heat (or cold) with pain (or pleasure)?  What do you make of Philonous' argument in favor of this identification?
  6. In what ways do the arguments that tastes, odors, sounds, and colors do not exist "outside of the mind" resemble the argument that heat and cold don't exist outside of the mind?  In what ways do the arguments differ?
  7. Explain Hylas' distinction (beginning with his response to speech 84) between sound as it is perceived by us and sound that exists independently of us.  Can you think of a parallel distinction for the other sensible qualities?
  8. How does the "microscope argument" (beginning at speech 104) help Philonous' cause?
  9. How does the animals and jaundice argument (speech 110 ff.) help Philonous' cause?  (What, by the way is the conclusion that Philonous wishes to establish by these arguments?)
  10. Compare Hylas' account of the role of light in color perception to his earlier theory of sound.  In what ways are they similar?
  11. How would the distinction between absolute extension and sensible extension help Hylas in his desire to have extension exist "outside of the mind"?
  12. The discussion of general and particular ideas beginning in speech 149 is important.  Can you form an idea of a triangle in general (i.e., an idea of a triangle, that is not the idea of an isosceles triangle, or an equliateral triangle or a scalene triangle)?  Why would having ideas of general things--extension in general, motion in general help Hylas' cause?
  13. Why is it important to Philonous' argument that sensory perception is passive and not active?
  14. Compare Hylas' "Material Substratum" to Descartes' "Real Wax" from the Second Meditation.
  15. What's the point of Hylas' idea of a tree existing by itself that no one perceives or is thinking of?  Do you think you can think of a tree that no one is thinking of?  Or is this impossible?
  16. Explain how Philonous' protestations to Hylas (speech 232 ff.) reveal Philonous (and thus Berkeley) to be an empiricist, and not a rationalist.
  17. What is the distinction between immediate and mediate perception?
  18. What are sensible objects?  What are qualities?
  19. Why do we perceive only qualities, rather than qualitied substance?
  20. How does Philonous use the heat-pain continuum (from Locke, Book IV) to argue that heat is no more in fire than pain is?
  21. Philonous offers several arguments against the claim (from Descartes and Locke, among others) that extension is a primary quality. Can you disentangle and restate them?
  22. How does Philonous argue that all so-called primary qualities actually have the status of secondary qualities?
  23. How can Philonous admit the involuntariness or receptivity of sensation and still deny what Descartes and Locke inferred from it, namely, the independence and external reality of the world?
  24. How does Philonous use the problematic character of dreams to his advantage in the argument?
  25. How does Philonous explain depth-perception and perspective without appeal to an external spatial world?
  26. Has Philonous argued that substance is never perceived or that it does not exist? Both?
  27. When these dialogues were first published, Samuel Johnson's sidekick and biographer, John Boswell, asked Johson what he thought of them. Johnson kicked a nearby tree stump and declared, "Thus do I refute Mr. Berkeley!" How strong is this "refutation"? How would Berkeley or Philonous reply?
  28. Can you begin to see how Philonous' immaterialism can be considered the non-skeptical, common-sense position, as he claims?
Second Dialogue
  1. In what sense is the brain "only in the mind" rather than vice versa? Why?
  2. What is the role in the overall argument of Philonous' poetic, multi-page appreciation of creation?
  3. Why is Philonous so sure that sensible objects continue to exist when he is not immediately sensing them? (Why are you so sure?)
  4. Why does Philonous think his argument for God's existence is stronger than the design argument?
  5. God is not sensed. Why, then, does Philonous not deny God on the same grounds that he denies substance?
  6. In what sense for Philonous are my ideas my own and in what sense are they God's?
  7. We can always hypothesize matter to explain sensation and sensible objects. But why is this hypothesis never necessary and always unintelligible?
  8. How does Philonous avoid solipsism?
Third Dialogue
  1. In what ways does materialism imply skepticism?
  2. Why is self-knowledge not privileged (as Descartes thought it was), and subject to the same contraints as knowledge of sensible objects?
  3. Why do we have no idea of God or self?
  4. How can Philonous explain the strength of his argument for God's existence if he lacks the idea of God?
  5. How does Philonous acquit God of responsibility for human evil?  Does the same explanation apply to human error?
  6. What is the relation of the mind to the body? What is the body?
  7. Does Philonous use a causal theory of the operation of the sense organs? If so, what interacts causally with the sense organs if not matter? If not, how do the sense organs work?
  8. How does Philonous answer the argument that matter must exist since it exerts the gravitational force?
  9. What reason would Philonous have for using a microscope?
  10. Why does Philonous deny the identity of objects over time or as perceived by different senses?
  11. In light of this denial, how does he explain the agreement of different people looking in the same direction at the same time?
  12. How does Philonous reconcile his immaterialism with the Book of Genesis?

    13. In the end, are you persuaded that Philonous' view (apart from its truth) is the "vulgar" or common sense position?