SOURCE: “Berkeley's World View III: The Existence of Unperceived Objects,” in Berkeley, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1977, pp. 163-79.

In the following essay, Pitcher examines Berkeley's ideas regarding the existence of unperceived objects.

Although Berkeley believes that he must deny that we ever perceive so-called physical objects (e.g., trees and houses) and maintains that we perceive only our own ideas, he sometimes says things that imply that we do, after all, perceive things like trees and houses. Consider this passage from the Principles:

Sensible objects may likewise be said to be without the mind, in another sense, namely when they exist in some other mind. Thus when I shut my eyes, the things I saw may still exist, but it must be in another mind.

(PHK [Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge] I 90; see also PHK I 3 and 48)

If ‘the things I saw may … exist … in another...