ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a philosophical reconstruction of George Berkeley’s doctrine of notions. It deals with the nature of notional knowledge, the ontological analysis of notions, and the relationship between notions and ideas in Berkeley’s metaphysics. The book examines the relationship between notions, ideas, and ordinary objects. It suggests that Berkeley proposed an extensional theory of meaning that included possible objects in the extension of a term, it is essential to provide an account of Berkeley’s criteria of possibility and impossibility and an account of his distinction between possible and actual objects if one is to make his positive theory of meaning intelligible. The book also examines Berkeley’s metaphysical criteria of possibility and impossibility, that is, the principles that express the distinction between those things that are possible and impossible.
