ABSTRACT
In the third of George Berkeley’s Three Dialogues, Hylas taxes Philonous with an apparent inconsistency. Berkeley claims that aware of two very different kinds of thing, spirits and ideas. These two kinds of thing are so different that can be aware of them only in very different ways. In the 1734 editions of the Principles and Three Dialogues Berkeley suggested that the word “notion” be employed instead of “idea” to express this larger sense, and that “idea” be used only in the stricter sense. David Hume’s denial of the substantiality of the self is closely related to his doctrine of the radical separability of perceptions. Hume held that each perception could conceivably exist without being perceived by a mind, without any other perception — take it, indeed, without there existing anything else at all.
