Three Dialogues Between Hylas And Philonous, By George Berkeley

How Berkeley Explains Physics and Metaphysics

In Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, by George Berkeley, has various arguments to explain what the physics and metaphysics are. Berkeley strains the link between the physics and metaphysics in may ways that all are connected through the first two dialogues. The first dialogue talks about sensible qualities and the second talks about how God and the mind are connected. Berkeley gives the question of is the object in the mind or does it exist on its own. It is this question that makes us think about how we perceive the world today. Berkeley expresses many opinions through two people, Hylas and Philonous. For Hylas he believes in the matter aspect of things while Philonous believes in the

We first start with Philonous saying, Sensible things are nothing else but so many sensible qualities, or combinations of sensible qualities” (58). So it comes into question, what does Berkeley want us to understand what a sensible thing is? He's trying to say that sensible thing is a something that is that sensible. Hylas starts out the conversation with the sense of heat and cold. They are trying to explain how heat and cold are made in our minds and what it is. Hylas explains it like this, “I am content to give up this point, and admit that heat and cold are only sensations existing in our minds. Still, there are plenty of other qualities through which to secure the reality of external things” (65). So what Hylas is saying is that the heat and cold are in that certain object and our minds proceed that sensation as hot or cold. For Philonous, he interprets it in a different way. He explains it like this, “if it turns out that the same argument applies with regard to all other sensible qualities, and that none of them can be supposed to exist outside the mind, any more than heat and cold can” (65). So what Philonous is trying to say it is more of it than just the mind and the object that proceeds cold or heat. For both of them perceiving heat and cold is all in the mind, but it's just the fact that Hylas stays that, “heat or cold is in the object itself” and Philonous says

It all starts with Philonous bring up the conversation of sound. “Then as to sounds, what must we think of them: are they accidents really inherent in external bodies, or not?” (67) Hylas then explains what he thinks sound is [“That they inhere not in the sonorous bodies is plain from hence: because a bell struck in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump sends forth no sound. The air, therefore, must be thought the subject of sound. Because, when any motion is raised in the air, we perceive a sound greater or lesser, according to the air's motion; but without some motion in the air, we never hear any sound at all” (67)] Phil answers saying that he had never heard a sound that travels in the air itself by motion in the air. Hylas says that there is a vibration in the air that goes in you ear and then you experience the sensation as sound. Phil then questions if sound is a sensation. He again questions Hylas by asking, “can any sensation exist without the mind?”(67) The idea that Berkeley is trying to get across is two different views in the perception of sound. Well all relating to the metaphysics and physics, it brings to the discussion of primary and secondary thinking. By primary I mean, how Hylas is talking about the object and by secondary I’m talking about Philonous and the mind. Berkeley clearly wants us to understand that the mind is a great