THE ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF THE CONCEPT OF IDEA IN GEORGE BERKELEY’S EPISTEMOLOGY

Résumé

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the concept of ideas in the thoughts of Berkeley. Using the critical-analytic method of data analysis, the paper found out that Berkeley's philosophical system as a whole is designed to controvert the empirical realism of Locke and the natural scientists of his day; it nevertheless derives from epistemological principles which are similar to those of Locke. Berkeley did not only espouse Locke's empiricist thesis that all knowledge is derived from experience, he also followed Locke in accepting the Cartesian view of consciousness, viz. the thesis that the immediate object of perceptual experience is itself a mental event or an item of consciousness, which Berkeley, following the prevailing fashion of the day, termed an 'idea'. For Berkeley, as for Descartes and Locke, this seemed a truth as obvious as to require no vindication. Hence, he concluded that all that we perceive are ideas and sensations. The conclusion that is reached in this paper is that, the short comings of Berkeley’s mentalism notwithstanding, the world consists of nothing but minds and ideas for Berkeley and ordinary objects are collections of ideas. Again, it must be noted that in his discourse on vision, he argued that one learns to coordinate ideas of sight and touch to judge distance, magnitude, and figure, properties which are immediately perceived only by touch.