ABSTRACT
The hard-line doctrine of esse est percipi equates physical objects with collections of ideas, and ideas are entities which have, in George Berkeley’s system, an ultimate existence. Now in the Principles, the role of God as a perceiver of physical objects is left as a mere possibility and one to which Berkeley seems to attach little importance. In fact, of course, there is no way in which, within the confines of the hard-line doctrine, Berkeley can achieve all that he wants. Those who argue for a causal analysis of mediated perception may object, more strongly, that Berkeley puts the physical world beyond the scope of perception altogether. Thus interpreted, Berkeley’s theory of the physical world would be a version of reductivism. Berkeley can and does retain one aspect of reductivism in his final position. But Berkeley never insists that all the ideas which form elements of the physical world exist in our minds or those of other finite created spirits.
