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Philosophical Review Berkeley's Attack on Abstract Ideas Author(s): E. J. Craig Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 77, No. 4 (Oct., 1968), pp. 425-437 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183009 . Accessed: 28/06/2014 10:57 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Philosophical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.213.220.163 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 10:57:30 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Berkeley's Attack on Abstract Ideas

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Page 1: Berkeley's Attack on Abstract Ideas

Philosophical Review

Berkeley's Attack on Abstract IdeasAuthor(s): E. J. CraigSource: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 77, No. 4 (Oct., 1968), pp. 425-437Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183009 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 10:57

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The Philosophical Review.

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Page 2: Berkeley's Attack on Abstract Ideas

BERKELEY'S ATTACK ON ABSTRACT IDEAS

IN THIS article I wish to make certain points about Berkeley's famous attack on the doctrine of abstract ideas in the Intro-

duction to The Principles of Human Knowledge. Straightforward though these points may seem, they are nonetheless the subject of some unclarity in many of the best-known commentaries.' So it seemed to me that someone should set them down, even though many readers may well feel that they are matters about which they were already clear in their own minds.

I am concerned with ? ?7-I 3 of the Introduction to The Principles, the passage which contains the burden of Berkeley's presentation and criticism of "the fine and subtle net of abstract ideas." If we leave aside the question whether he did or did not do justice to Locke, and ask only what target he himself actually set up for attack, we find that there was not one of these but (at least) three. It is not clear that Berkeley distinguished adequately between them, although there are some signs that he distinguished at any rate between two. Consequently, it needs to be made plain what the three versions are, and to which each objection is an objection.

The three versions differ in the properties they are committed to ascribing to the abstract idea, and I have coined names to characterize these differences. They are as follows:

i. The Single Property View. This involves saying that it is possible for there to be an abstract idea, which is an idea of one quality only, even though that quality cannot be instantiated unless others are instantiated with it. We find this set out in ?7, thus:

I Examples, to some of which I shall refer later in the text, are: F. C. Copleston, A History of Philosophy (London, 1946-i966), V, 215-217; G. D. Hicks, Berkeley (London, 1932), pp. 88-89; A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (eds.), The Works of George Berkeley (London, 1948-1957), II, 13-14; J. F. Thomson, "Berkeley," in A Critical History of Western Philosophy, ed. by D. J. O'Connor (New York, i964), pp. 248-249; G. J. Warnock, Berkeley (Melbourne, I953),

pp. 65-67.

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For example, there is perceived by sight an object extended, coloured, and moved: this mixed or compound idea the mind resolving into its simple, constituent parts, and viewing each by it self, exclusive of the rest, does form the abstract ideas of extension, colour, and motion. Not that it is possible for colour or motion to exist without extension: but only that the mind can frame to it self by abstraction the idea of colour exclusive of extension, and of motion exclusive of both colour and extension.

Such ideas, in which certain properties are represented while others necessarily co-extensive with them are not, I call "abstract ideas of Type i." The single property view, whatever else it may be, is committed to their existence.2

2. The Common Properties View. In this the abstract idea is compounded of ideas which are instantiated by every instance of the concept in question. Consider it as it appears in ?9, where we have:

For example, the mind having observed that Peter, James, and John, resemble each other, in certain common agreements of shape and other qualities, leaves out of the complex or compounded idea it has of Peter, James, and any other particular man, that which is peculiar to each, retaining only what is common to all; and so makes an abstract idea wherein all the particulars equally partake, abstracting entirely from and cutting off all those circumstances and differences, which might determine it to any particular existence.

It is, I think, clear that a person who holds this view is not thereby committed to holding that there are any abstract ideas of Type i. For let us suppose that there is a property A, such that possession of A entails possession of some other property B. Then any objects which have A in common will also have B in common. Consequently, in abstracting common properties, it is open to us to abstract B as well as A, and nothing about (2) as

2 It will not be part of my case to claim that every idea which was an idea of one property only would involve the suppression of necessary concomitants. This may or may not be true. The essential point is that Berkeley is here presenting a theory which commits one to some ideas of this kind, in which properties are represented while necessary concomitants of them are not. It is just these ideas which I call "abstract ideas of Type i."

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stated commits one to saying that it is possible to abstract A alone, without the necessarily co-extensive B. (2), of course, does not require that an abstract idea should include ideas of every property common to all the instances. But it does not forbid this; a fortiori, it never forbids the inclusion (with the idea of A) of ideas of any other properties which necessarily accompany A. The common properties view does not commit one to the existence of any Type i abstract ideas. It is important to realize this, since one might otherwise think that Berkeley's objection to (i) also constitutes an objection to (2).

Before going on to the third version of the theory, we may pause to ask what Berkeley may have thought about the relation of (i)

to (2). At the end of ?io there is evidence that he was aware of some difference:

But I deny that I can abstract from one another, or conceive separately, those qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated; or that I can frame a general notion by abstracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid. Which two last are the proper acceptations of ab- straction [first italics mine].

The placing of this passage in the text strongly suggests that the two "acceptations" correspond to my (i) and (2); it follows two criticisms of the Theory of Abstract Ideas which may very plau- sibly be taken as criticisms of (2) and (i), respectively (see below, p. 43i). But I am not certain that this is the distinction which Berkeley has in mind. It is possible to read the quoted passage as simply concerned with the formation of abstract ideas of (i) properties and (ii) objects. This gains some support from ??8 and 9, where he appears to consider first properties (?8), and then objects (?9), and provides a connecting passage in which he virtually says that this is what he is doing:

And as the mind frames to itself abstract ideas of qualities or modes, so does it, by the same precision or mental separation, attain abstract ideas of the more compounded beings, which include several co-existent qualities [beginning of ?9; italics given in some editions].

But the reference to "more compounded beings, which include several co-existent qualities" is still puzzling. It is as if Berkeley thought that

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the distinction he was considering, whatever that may have been, ran parallel to the simple, complex distinction of Locke. But this is not true of the distinction between properties and objects. Nor is it true of the distinction between (i) and (2), though in this case there is some temptation to think that it might be. It might be thought that for simple ideas (2) reduced to (i), as a result of some such line of argument as the following.3 Consider some simple property A; suppose it to be the only property common to a certain group of objects. Abstracting the common properties from these objects, we will then get A, by itself. But A, being simple, is in some sense a single property. Thus the common property theory reduces to the single property theory in the case of a simple idea. But to argue like this would be to mistake the nature of my distinction between (i) and (2). For (i), the single property view, as I wish it to be understood, is any theory which is committed to ideas in which necessary concomitants are suppressed-committed, that is, to what I call "abstract ideas of Type i." No idea of this kind was formed in the preceding example. There was an idea of A, alone, but no mention of any suppression of a necessary concomitant of A. And if we alter the example so as to include the suppression of a necessary concomi- tant, the argument fails in another respect. Let B be a property necessarily co-extensive with A. Then, trivially, A cannot be the only property common to the objects: if they have A in common, they must have B in common as well. But that being so, the common properties view, as expressed in the quotation from ?9 (see above, p. 426), does not commit one to saying that A can be abstracted by itself without its necessary concomitant B. Hence we must not think that an objection to abstract ideas of Type i is ipso facto an objection to the common properties view, on the grounds that the latter is committed to them as a special case. It is not.

The upshot is that I cannot say with any confidence what

3 For the purposes of this argument I must ask the reader to assume that the simple, complex distinction is one that really can be drawn, which is open to doubt. The argument is of course not supposed to be valid; I simply offer it (very tentatively) as a line of thought which might possibly have influenced Berkeley.

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Berkeley thought about the relation of (i) to (2), nor am I certain that he ever even considered it. But it should be mentioned that there is some excuse for treating them concurrently. For although there is no logical compulsion to pass from (2) to (I),

this is of course not the only question which may be asked about their relationship. One might ask, for instance, after the reasons which could bring a philosopher to hold (2), and it might well appear that these were equally reasons for holding (i). In fact, this issue takes one into complications which are not discussed in this paper.

3. The Full Representation View. This comes in ? I3, where Berkeley quotes the celebrated passage from Locke's Essay, IV, vii, 9. The abstract idea contains, it seems, ideas of all the prop- erties of all the instances of the general term in question:

the description that is here given of the general idea of a triangle, which is, neither oblique, nor rectangle, equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once [original italics; ? I 3, end].

There are triangles which are rectangular (and hence not equi- lateral) and there are triangles which are equilateral (and hence not rectangular); consequently, the general idea must be an idea of a triangle which is both rectangular and not rectangular, equilateral and not equilateral, and so on.

It is obvious that (3) differs sharply from (i) and (2), but this does not emerge from Berkeley's presentation. He prefaces his quotation from Locke with the words:

To give the reader a yet clearer view of the nature of abstract ideas . I shall add one more passage from the Essay on Human Under- standing, ....

This way of putting it surely implies that he is telling us more about abstract ideas of the kind already described and discussed. This is mistaken. That (3) is not the same as either (i) or (2) can be seen from the simple consideration that the latter ideas have no constituents but what are common to all the relevant particulars, whereas the ideas of (3) include components possessed by only some of the instances. Copleston, however, seems to have con- flated (3) with (2). On page 2i6 of Volume V of his History of

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Philosophy he quotes a passage in which Berkeley is speaking of the common properties theory, and comments on it in terms appropriate only to the full representation theory. The whole passage from Copleston reads like this:

"The idea of a man that I frame to my self, must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described." I cannot, that is to say, frame an image of a man which both omits and includes all the particular charac- teristics of real individual men [my italics].

Jessop appears to have made the same mistake, in his Editor's Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge in Volume II of the Nelson edition of Berkeley's works. On pages I3-I4 he gives a brief analysis of the Introduction, in which he first distin- guishes quite correctly between (i) and (2):

there are abstract ideas, i.e. we can and do (a) apprehend separately qualities that cannot exist separately, e.g. space without colour; and (b) form unparticularised "ideas" of what is common to all qualities or things of the same kind, e.g. colour-in-general, and man-in-general.

But then, speaking of ?I3, he says, "Those of the second type are incoherent." I must not be too quick to accuse Jessop himself of error, however. He could quite legitimately reply that his purpose in this section was simply to give a concise statement of what is actually asserted or implied in Berkeley's text, and in no way to clarify or evaluate it.

We pass now to Berkeley's criticisms of this theory or, rather, of this cluster of theories. It should be noted at the outset that when he speaks of ideas he is thinking of them in terms of mental imagery, as the products of the operation of imagining, as is clear from the first few sentences of ?iO. I myself think that there is strong reason to understand Locke in this way, but I am not concerned to argue this here. The point is that it is an imagist theory which Berkeley is criticizing; this emerges both from his terminology and from the content of his arguments, which have no obvious force, as they stand, against a non-imagist approach

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to concepts. It should also be noted that his objections are put in empirical psychological terms, sometimes tinged with irony, as in:

Whether others have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their ideas, they best can tell: for my self I find I have indeed a faculty of im- agining, or representing to my self ... [?io; original italics].

But they are always capable of translation into the logical mode as points about the a priori impossibility of there being images of certain kinds, and it will be more profitable for us to take them in this way.

The objections I wish to deal with are three in number. The first two occur in ?io, and are well enough represented by the following quotations:

i. But I deny that I can abstract one from another, or conceive separately, those qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated; ....

2. Whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of a man that I frame to my self must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man.

The first of these points constitutes an objection to the first version of the abstract idea theory, and it is as an objection to this view that Berkeley presents it, by placing it immediately after the sentence:

To be plain, I own my self able to abstract in one sense, as when I consider some particular parts or qualities separated from others, which though they are united in some object, yet it is possible they may really exist without them.

The similarity between this and the end of ?7, where the single property theory is stated, is perfectly obvious. It is also clear, I think, that it is only as an objection to the single property version that denial of the possibility of conceiving separately what cannot exist separately can be cogent, since that version is the only one committed to the existence of Type i abstract ideas. Equally clearly, the second point is offered as an objection to the common property theory, as we see by comparing it with the passage in ?9 where that theory is stated:

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the abstract idea of man ... wherein it is true, there is included colour, because there is no man but has some colour, but then it can be neither white, nor black, nor any particular colour; ....

An image of something having a certain determinable character- istic, Berkeley is apparently saying, must be an image of something having a particular determinate of that determinable. But a "common property" image would not satisfy this requirement- at any rate, not in general; though the possibility remains open that there might be concepts whose instances resemble one another so closely as not to give rise to this difficulty. This objection strikes at (i) as well as (2), for (i) requires not just the possibility of forming the idea of motion (for example) by itself, without that of extension; it also involves the feasibility of an idea of motion which is not the idea of any particular motion.

For the third objection we have to wait until the end of ?03, when (3), the full representation view, has been expounded. It does not emerge from the text here exactly what Berkeley takes his objection to be, but it seems clear enough that he thinks that such an idea could not exist since it would infringe the Law of Non-Contradiction. If support is needed for this reading, then one might draw attention to Berkeley's italicizing of the word "inconsistent" in his long quotation from Locke earlier in the paragraph, or perhaps to the end of ?04:

Is it not a hard thing to imagine, that a couple of children cannot prate together, of their sugar-plumbs and rattles and the rest of their little trinkets, till they have first tacked together numberless inconsistencies ... ? [my italics].

The argument, in this form, cannot touch either of the first two versions. As I understand him, Berkeley is not just objecting that it is logically impossible for there to be images of the sort which (3) demands. He is also giving a reason for the impossibility, namely that the images claimed to exist by (3) would actually have to be made up of pairs of mutually contradictory elements. This cannot be said of (i) and (2), for these ideas, as already mentioned, contain no elements but what are common to all the instances, and cannot therefore include any pairs (0, -'O), since then the instances would have to be themselves self-contradictory.

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One can of course hold that the images of (i) and (2) are logically impossible, but then this logical impossibility will have to be made out by an argument at any rate slightly more complicated than that which Berkeley brings against (3).

These, then, are the various theses to be considered, and Berkeley's criticisms of them. The position is that we have two objections to (i), and one each to (2) and (3). In evaluating the contribution made to the problem of generality in this passage we must not be content to ask simply whether each attack destroys its individual target. We will also wish to know which targets are important ones and which are not; which Locke might happily have discarded, and which are essential to his understanding of the matter.

The principal purpose of the theory was to explain the ability to apply and reapply general terms. Abstract ideas, Locke tells us (and Berkeley draws our attention to it in ?i8), are made "in order to naming"; a person who has such an idea can recognize whether or not a given object is an instance of the concept in question, which he achieves by inspecting the object to see if it "agrees" with his abstract idea. It is important to remember that the theory Berkeley attacked was supposed to have this explana- tory force. For in evaluating the criticisms he brought against it one will have to discuss such questions as: "Is it possible for the same image to be both an image of an X and an image of a T? For this, it will be crucial to decide what interpretation is to be given to "this image is an image of an X," and the point just mentioned clearly limits the interpretations which it will be pertinent to consider. Thus someone might conceivably under- stand by "an image of an X" any image which habitually came into a person's mind when he was thinking of X's, or which he claimed to be a help to him in thinking about X's, or to be intended to represent an X, or something of this sort. But just to have an image of an X in any of these senses would not provide anything like a plausible explanation of the capacity to tell X's from non-X's. If images are to be able to perform the function which the theory requires of them, or even to look, prima facie, as if they might be able to perform it, then it would appear that "having an image of an X" must be thought of as being at least

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rather like having the experience of perceiving an X. Berkeley did think of it in this way, and so did Locke before him.

We need only bear this point in mind to see the justice of Berkeley's criticism of (i), the single property version. It does seem that an image which sufficiently resembles the perception of something colored, for example, must also sufficiently resemble the perception of something extended. This could be denied, so far as I can see, only by someone who was prepared to interpret "sufficiently resemble" so loosely that it could no longer be pretended that the hypothesis of these images had any of the essential explanatory power. For suppose an image, to have which is so far removed from the experience of seeing something extended as to render incomprehensible the suggestion that a person classifies things as extended and nonextended by comparing perceiving them with having this image. Could it nevertheless be comprehensible to say that he classifies things as colored and noncolored by comparison with this image? I cannot see that it could, though I have at present no satisfactory argument with which to back this up should it be questioned. (i), it seems to me, will be false however tenuous a resemblance we are prepared to count as adequate. But when we consider (3), the full represen- tation view, the vagueness inherent in the notion of sufficient resemblance becomes crucial. Here we find ourselves asking whether having a certain image could sufficiently resemble the experience of seeing an equilateral triangle and at the same time sufficiently resemble the experience of seeing a nonequilateral triangle, and to answer this we really must have an answer to the question: "How much is 'sufficiently' ?"

The purposes of the theory of abstract ideas, unfortunately, do not determine any precise answer to this question. They do no more, in fact, than provide us with the following definition of "sufficient likeness":

A is sufficiently like B _ If a person can recognize an object B as being of the type 0, then it constitutes a compre- hensible explanation of his ability to do this to say that he does it by comparing B with A.

It is easy enough to see that this does not offer us any criterion

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for determining the exact degree of similarity needed, does not make the question about the possibility of Type 3 ideas any the more decidable. But there is an interpretation, albeit a philo- sophically dubious one, of "I is an image of an X," which trans- forms (3) into something clearly false. This is the interpretation according to which to be an image of a red thing is to be an image which is actually red, to be an image of a triangular thing is to be an image which is actually triangular.4 Now if we take this very strong line about what it is for an image to be an image of an X, it is obvious that the Berkeleian attack on (3) goes through. For then anything which was at once an image of an equilateral and a scalene triangle would have to be itself both equilateral and scalene, and this is of course every bit as self- contradictory when asserted of an image as when asserted of anything else. Likewise, the attack on (i) would become even more compelling, for that view would then require there to be things which were, for example, colored but not extended.

The position, then, seems to be this: according to our reading of "I is an image of an X" we get two versions of each of our three theories. By so understanding this that it implies that the image actually has the defining properties of X's we get what we might call the strong versions, and by so understanding it that it requires only that the having of I be rather like the experiencing of an X we get what we may call the weak versions. Thus the strong versions all include the dubious claim about what sorts of predicates can be applied to images, while the weaker do not.

My own view is that Berkeley took his target to lie on the strong side of this bifurcation. But we should examine the effects of his arguments on the weaker theses as well as on the stronger, for the former constitute a position (or group of positions) to which an advocate of the latter might retreat without thereby

4 It is no part of my purpose to insist that if having a certain image is "sufficiently similar" to the experience of seeing a i, it follows that it is correct to call it an image of a b or vice versa. The point is only that an image which was rather like this experience could serve the Lockean purpose; whether it would be correct to call it an image of an X is of no consequence. When I speak of this interpretation as philosophically dubious it is not this point which I have in mind, but the question whether such predicates as "red," "extended," "triangular" can be applied to images at all.

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abandoning the attempt to give an explanation of our ability to classify. Our findings with regard to (i) and (3) are that Berkeley's arguments suffice to refute both the strong and the weak version of (i) and also the strong version of (3), but that the weak version of (3) still stands.

Is the tenability of (i) and (3) really a matter of the first importance for the Theory of Abstract Ideas? What is required of an abstract idea is that it should enable its possessor to sort out instances of the universal in question from noninstances, and it would appear that this purpose is perfectly well served by (2), the common properties theory, whereby the abstract idea "exhibits" just properties which are common to all the instances, and only to the instances. There seems to be no reason for demanding an idea with less in it than this-for example, (i)-or for demanding one with more in it-for example, (3). Not only is it misleading to make it sound quite obvious that Berkeley refuted (3) in ??7-I3 of The Principles of Human Knowledge; it is also incorrect to suggest that anyone who refutes (3) has thereby refuted the Theory of Abstract Ideas. Yet each of these is done in certain of the com- mentaries. Copleston provides an example of the first when he writes, of Berkeley's criticisms of Type 3 images:

it is easy for him to show that there are no such things. True, he seems to suppose that composite images must be clearer than they are, but this does not alter the fact that there cannot be, for instance, an abstract general image of a triangle which fulfils all the conditions mentioned above.

And Warnock does the second, when he writes of the attack on the full representation view:

It is difficult to see how Locke could parry this "killing blow" without altering his account out of all recognition [my italics].

What happens when we turn to (2)? If it is the strong version which we are considering, then I think that Berkeley's refutation is to be accepted as valid, for it would then consist in saying that there could not be an image which was both colored and of no particular color, which seems to be correct, and not only of images. But if we take the weak version, and allow "I is an image

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of a colored thing" to mean that to have I is rather like perceiving something colored, the situation is by no means so clear. The assertion that if an image is of a determinable it must be of some particular determinate of that determinable comes to this: that if having an image is sufficiently like perceiving a colored thing, then there must be some particular color (and shade of that color) such that to have this image is more like perceiving a thing of this color (and shade) than any other. Put in this way, it is not very convincing at all, and becomes less so if we look at the case of extension, which comes out like this: if having a certain image is sufficiently like perceiving an extended thing, then it must be specially like perceiving something having a certain particular extension. Now surely this is false. There need be nothing about an image to determine, or even to suggest, the distance from which one has to perceive the object, if having the image is to resemble perceiving something of just that extension. Thus the one image might bear just the same resemblance to the experience of observing something of one extension at one distance and observing something of a quite different extension at another distance, and this alone seems to refute the determinate, determi- nable claim that supports this version of the Berkeleian argument. The question whether Berkeley disposed of (2) is therefore still perfectly discussible.

I hope no one will think that I am trying to resuscitate Locke's thought about abstract ideas, which I do not wish to support in any of its forms. There are, it need hardly be mentioned, other objections to it than those discussed here, and they are numerous and conclusive. My purpose has been the more historically oriented one of trying to draw attention to the complications latent in a certain passage from Berkeley-a passage which, I am inclined to think, has been taken too lightly.5

E. J. CRAIG

Churchill College, Cambridge University

5 I am grateful to numerous friends and colleagues in Cambridge, who read previous drafts of this article and made suggestions for its improvement. A special mention is also due to Professor Norman Kretzmann, of Cornell Uni- versity.

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