Berkeley's Doctrine of Notions and Theory of Meaning

Berkeley's Doctrine of Notions and Theory of Meaning* A. D. WOOZLEY IT SEEMSSOMETHINGOF A SCANDALthat, until recently, Berkeley's doctrine of notions has been treated as something of a scandal, and has been either passed over lightly (e.g., Wamock's treatment in his Berkeley) or totally ignored (e.g., Acton's treatment in his article on Berkeley in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy). And, when somebody does suggest that the doctrine deserves more attention than that (e.g., Flew in Hume's Philosophy o/Belie/, p. 262), he is liable to get slapped down by somebody rise displaying an astonishing ignorance of what Berkeley actually said (e.g., Bennett in Locke, Berkeley, Hume, p. 54). It is to be hoped that the two articles by James W. Cornman, "Theoretical Terms, Berkeleian Notions and Minds" (in Turbayne, Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge [1970], pp. 161-181), and "A Reconstruction of Berkeley" (Ratio, 13 [1971], 76-87), will do something to set things right. Whatever Berkeley thought his doctrine of notions came to, he introduced it to clear up an inconsistency or to fill a lacuna which he himself found, and was dissatisfied with, in the first printed versions of the Principles, the Three Dialogues and Alciphron. The word "notion" does occur a few times in the first edition of the Principles (Introd. 6, 15, 17; 5, 34, 74), but it is clear that he was there using it not in his later sense in which notions are contrastedwith ideas, but in a sense such that the terms were partially, if not completely, synonymous. What are the things we see and feel "but so many sensations, notions, ideas or impressions on the sense" (5)? This is taken up again in "amongst all the ideas, sensations, notions, which are imprinted on our minds, either by sense or reflexion" (74). And the synonymy, or near synonymy, is clearly indicated in "all things that exist, exist only in the mind, that is, they are purely notional" (34). If Berkeley had not made some later additions, we should never have heard of, or have had reason to ask questions about, his doctrine of notions. There is an interesting parallelism here with Locke; and one is tempted to wonder whether Berekeley's terminology of notions was influenced by his familiarity with Locke's. At the beginning of the Essay Locke apologizes for his frequent use of "idea" and says that he has "used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking" (1.1.8). But when he comes to discuss mixed modes, he prefers to reserve for them the "more particular name" of "notions," and for a reason closely similar to Berkeley's, viz., that the names of mixed modes can be used intelligibly and significantly in discourse without being thought of as terms which denote (2.22.2; 3.5.12-13). Just when Berkeley began to worry about whatever he thought he had failed to do, or had done wrong, in the first edition of the Principles we do not know. But we do * I wish to thank Professor C. M. Turbayne for the help which he gave me by his comments on this paper. [427] 428 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY know that it did not worry him enough to induce him to make any changes in print until more than twenty years after the first publication (1710) of the Principles. He did make the changes in the second edition (1734), which gives us a terminus ante quem. And we also have a terminus a quo. Notions do not occur in the first two editions of the Three Dialogues (1713 and 1725), but they do occur in the third (1734). More narrowly still, they do not occur in the first two editions of Alciphron (both 1732), but they do in the third (1752). So, Berkeley's final commitment to the doctrine of notions as something required to do a job which the general theory of ideas could not do falls within the limits 1732-1734. But it may have occurred to him far earlier. In a surviving manuscript of the...