ABSTRACT
This chapter describes certain points about Berkeley’s famous attack on the doctrine of abstract ideas in the Introduction to The Principles of Human Knowledge. It is concerned with §§7-13 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.” It is as if Berkeley thought that the distinction he was considering, whatever that may have been, and ran parallel to the simple, complex distinction of Locke. But this is not true of the distinction between properties and objects. An image of something having a certain determinable characteristic, Berkeley is apparently saying, must be an image of something having a particular determinate of that determinable. The chapter discusses the more historically oriented one of trying to draw attention to the complications latent in a certain passage from Berkeley.
