SOURCE: “The Attack on Matter” and “Immaterialism and Common Sense,” in The British Empiricists, Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 106-38.

In the first essay that follows, Urmson gives an overview of Berkeley's conflict with John Locke in the area of the definition of matter. In the second, he examines Berkeley's contention that, in order for his theory of immaterialism to be considered true, it must coincide with common sense.

The Attack on Matter

George Berkeley was born on 12 March 1685, near Kilkenny in Ireland. His ancestry was English, but his grandfather, a royalist, moved to Ireland at the time of the restoration. Berkeley considered himself to be an Irishman; he referred to Newton as ‘a philosopher of a neighbouring nation’ (P [Principles of Human Knowledge] 110) and, commenting sarcastically in his private notebook on what he regarded as a philosophical absurdity, he wrote: ‘We Irishmen cannot attain to these truths’ (C...