ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses at J. Locke’s views on the signification of words, then at George Berkeley’s attack on those views, and at the appeals Berkeley makes to the absurdity of abstraction when he comes to attack materialism. Berkeley develops his ‘doctrine of signs’, with special reference to the scientist’s concept of force and the theologian’s concept of grace, in the seventh dialogue of Alciphron. Berkeley does not rest his case against Locke on the claim that it is impossible to frame a general idea by omitting all characteristics peculiar to some individuals of the sort. Berkeley is being a little misleading when he suggests that the notion that sensible things can exist unperceived ‘will, perhaps, be found at bottom to depend on the doctrine of abstract ideas’. The belief in unperceived existence is, after all, prevalent, but the sophisticated if erroneous thinking Berkeley attacks in his introduction hardly reflects a widespread view.
