ABSTRACT
Although Berkeley believes that he must deny that we ever perceive so-called physical objects (e.g., trees and houses) and maintains that we perceive only our own ideas, he sometimes says things that imply that we do, after all, perceive things like trees and houses. Consider this passage from the Principles:
If ‘the things I saw may…exist…in another mind,’ then those things cannot be my own ideas of sense, for my ideas cannot exist in any other mind: so by ‘the things I saw,’ here, Berkeley must mean so-called physical objects. We should not charge Berkeley with contradicting himself, however, for we can interpret him to be implying only that we mediately perceive natural objects.
