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Explain Berkeley's argument against abstract ideas. What are the implications for the
primary/secondary
distinction that Locke made?

User Stu Stein
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Answer:

Berkeley's argument against abstract ideas is based on his belief that all knowledge comes through sensory experience. He argues that since abstract ideas do not have any corresponding sensory experience, they cannot be real. In other words, according to Berkeley, we can only know what we perceive through our senses, and anything that is not directly perceived does not exist.

Berkeley believes that abstract ideas are merely mental constructions that we create by combining and abstracting from our sensory experiences. He argues that concepts such as "redness" or "justice" are not real things that exist independently in the world, but rather they are mental abstractions that we create by combining and abstracting from our sensory experiences of particular instances of red objects or just actions.

This argument has important implications for the primary/secondary distinction that Locke made. According to Locke, primary qualities such as size, shape, and motion are objective qualities that exist independently in the external world and are perceived directly by our senses. In contrast, secondary qualities such as color, taste, and smell are subjective qualities that exist only in the mind and are caused by the interaction between primary qualities and our sensory organs.

However, Berkeley's argument against abstract ideas undermines the primary/secondary distinction because it denies the existence of objective qualities that can be perceived independently of our sensory experiences. For Berkeley, all qualities are subjective and exist only in the mind as mental constructions created by our sensory experiences. Therefore, there is no objective reality that exists independently of our perceptions.

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User MitchEff
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