Berkeley and Phenomenalism

Abstract

My reason for bringing up the familiar matter of phenomenalism is both critical and historical. Almost to a man those who have been interested in arguing for or against phenomenalism have assumed that Berkeley was a phenomenalist (for some of the evidence one need only read the Aristotelian Society Proceedings on phenomenalism, beginning with Stout's paper in 1938). Now if Berkeley's doctrine is appropriately named “phenomenalism,” then it is a phenomenalism of a quite different stripe from the twentieth century variety, though many who have described his doctrine as phenomenalism have not sufficiently stressed the difference.