Berkeley’s Doctrine of Notions and Theory of Meaning *

It seems something of a scandal that, until recently, Berkeley’s doctrine of notions has been treated as something of a scandal, and has been either passed over lightly (e.g., Warnock’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 of Belief, p. 262), he is liable to get slapped down by somebody else 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