Berkeley's Theory of Signification

Berkeley's Theory of Signification ROBERT L. ARMSTRONG THE PURPOSE OF "THISPAPER is to examine Berkeley's theory of signification and the application of it in his metaphysics. It is my hope that attention to the theory of signification will afford a fresh view of his immaterialist philosophy and make some of his more puzzling arguments easier to understand. The discussion of abstract ideas in the introductory chapter of the Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge I will serve to introduce the theory of signification. Berkeley maintains that the belief in abstract ideas is the chief cause of our difficulties in the area of "metaphysical knowledge" and accordingly devotes his first chapter to an attack on this belief. He begins by denying that the human faculties are designed by nature only "'for the support and comfort of life, and not to penetrate into the inward essence and constitution of things" (Intro., par. 2). Man's mind is finite, and thereby, he admits, it becomes confused when trying to consider infinite matters. But he insists that the fault is not with the faculties themselves but with "the wrong use we make of them" (par. 3). If we have an appetite for metaphysical knowledge, he suggests, then God must have furnished us with the means of satisfying it- The difficulties that have "blocked up the way to knowledge" are "entirely owing to ourselves.... we have raised a dust and then complain we cannot see" (par. 3). The chief cause of these difficulties is the belief that the mind hath a power of framing abstract ideas or notions of things .... These are in a more especial manner thought to be the object of those sciences which go by the name of logic and metaphysics, and of all that which passes under the notion of the most abstracted and sublime learning, in all which one shall scarce find any question handled in such a manner as does not suppose their existence in the mind, and that it is well acquainted with them. (par. 6) The source of the trouble, Berkeley argues, is the mistaken notion that the mind has a power to form abstract ideas which go beyond particular sense images and yet are supposed to be true to the nature of external things. For example, we see The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop o] Cloyne, eds. A. A. Luce and T. E. Icssop, 9 vols. (London and Edinburgh: Nelson, 1949), II, 19-113. 164 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY objects extended and colored and, observing what is common to them all, frame the abstract ideas of color and extension. We then procede to consider or think about color and extension entirely apart from particular objects. Or, to take a more concrete example, the mind having observed "Peter, James and John resemble each other in certain common agreements of shape; and other quahties" it leaves out the details wherein they differ and forms an abstract idea of mankind (par. 9). But Berkeley insists that he "cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described" (par. 10). He claims that he can abstract in the sense of imagining particular qualities separated from others, but only if it is possible that they may actually exist separated from the others. Thus he can imagine a hand without a body, but he cannot imagine a hand without shape or color. So he denies that he can abstract from one another "those qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated; or that I can frame a general notion by abstracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid" (par. 10). Berkeley is arguing against Locke who held that most of our knowledge of things (if not all of it) is in the form of complex abstract ideas which constitute nominal essences. The mind is supposed to abstract a common property from the ideas of sense and produce an abstract general idea of that property. This theory is supported by common sense introspection and is similar to scholastic epistemological theory, though Locke disregards the scholastic terminology. Innocuous as this theory seems, Berkeley is determined to discredit it and establish an alternative theory based on signification. He will allow only...