SOURCE: “The Substance of Berkeley's Philosophy,” in Berkeley's Metaphysics: Structural, Interpretive, and Critical Essays, edited by Robert G. Muehlmann, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995, pp. 89-105.

In the following essay, Muehlmann thoroughly analyzes Berkeley's central metaphysical doctrines and some of the motivations behind them and concludes that many who have read his principles have been misled.

In the Philosophical Commentaries, the “juvenile” Berkeley enthusiastically sketches out a bundle analysis of finite minds: a mind is constituted of episodes of volition and occurrences of ideas.¹ But it is clear that Berkeley endorses a substance analysis by the time the Principles appears. As early as PR 2 he says that a mind is “a thing entirely distinct” from its ideas; and numerous additional passages in both the Principles and Dialogues give voice to the position that finite minds are active substances distinct from, but both “causing” (some of) and “supporting” (all...