Three Dialogues Between Hylas And Philonous Analysis

In Berkley’s book, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, Berkley presents this idea as his two characters Hylas and Philonous have a debate over the existence of physical matter. Berkley challenged the popular idea that the world around us was made up of physical matter and presented the question, can the objects we perceive exist independently of our perception of them? Philonous through a series of proofs provides the necessary evidence to disprove the existence of objects.
The idea of objects is unfathomable and erroneous. Philonous begins his argument by stating that anything that is perceived is perceived immediately. Philonous and Hylas agree that sensible things are only things that are immediately perceived by sense. Philonous has proven that …show more content…
Philonous agrees to this and says that everything exists because God is thinking about them. Hylas upon hearing this poses the idea that there is an interposed thing that is causing God to think about such objects. Philonous quickly helps Hylas see that there can’t be any cause that interferes with God because such things would contradict the very existence of God. Furthermore, Philonous states that God must allow humans to be able to perceive his ideas from time to time. Philonous then states that he does not have an idea of himself or God but he know they both exists because he is able to perceive them. Hylas then questions how Philonous can accept spiritual substance, but not material substance, when he just admitted that he had no idea of it. Philonous asserts that we cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or feel material objects. Furthermore, our ideas do not represent material objects either. Therefore, Philonous claims that he does not deny matter because he has no idea of it, rather that he denies matter because the definition of it is