Why does Berkeley reject abstract ideas? is is persuasive

Why does Berkeley reject abstract ideas? is is persuasive

1. Locke

   • Book 2 ch 1
     • his statement of empiricism
       • Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished one word=experience
         • nternal sense or relfation
           • e.g. never seen green before
   • Book 2 ch 2
     • simple ideas:'the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the sense simple and unmixed'
       • complex i
   • Book 2 ch 3
     • Simple: 1. sense, 2. senses 3. reflection 4. reflection and sesnse
       • complex: . Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another, so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one; by which way it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence; this is called abstraction: and thus all its general ideas are made. .
         • interesting, difference between 1 and 2
         • modes and substances
   • Book 3 ch 2
     • need general words e.g. sheep
       • Part 6: Words become general, by being made the signs of general ideas; and ideas become general, by separating from them the circumstances of time, and place, and any other ideas
         • part 7: idea of man: Wherein they make nothing new, but only leave out of the complex idea they had of Peter and James, Mary and Jane, that which is peculiar to each, and retain only what is common to them all.
           • part 12 +13 : essences
             • part 15: real and nominal essence, part 17: can't know real, so abstracct idea is the same as nominal, pretty much, and as close as we will get to real
               • part 18: modes: abstract= real essence, substances, abstract= jsust nominal
                 • part 19: ingenerable and incorruptible
                   • key, for disputing B's received maxim

2. Berkeley

   • section 9: 'mental separation' form sbract simple and complex ideas, talk of how it 'leaves out the complex or compounded idea it has of Peter, James , and any other particular man, that which is peculiar to each, retain only what is common to all' therefore all the particulars 'equally partake'
     • section 10: you can separate some things accepts you have the faculty of 'representing to myself, the ideas of those particular things I have perceived, and of variously compunding and dividing them' e.g. can consider a hand without a body but hand and eye 'it must have some particular shape and colour' 'cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstrct idea above' (the idea of a man)
       • section 10 (hint of received maxim): so he says he can abstract some ideas as 'it is possible they may really exist without them' but he can 'tconceive separately 'those qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated' e.g. colour or motion can't exist without the object in real life so can't cnoceive of them
         • section 11: Ooutlines his successful possible argument, in brutes ( humans) 'we observe in them no use of words or any other general sign; which is built on this supposition- that the making use of words implies the having general ideas' but he a word becomes general by being made the sign, 'not of an abstract general idea, but of several particular ideas' e.g. when you say a general thing about motion e.g. moving in a circle, you don't think about the absract idea of moving in a circle you think of a object moving in a circle e.g. the change of motin is proportional to the impressed force" these propositions arre understood of motion in general 'it will no follow that they suggest to my thoughts an idea of motion without a body moved'
           • section 12: he things a general idea is made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the sort (no abstraction occurs) e.g. a mathmetician cutting a line in two equal parts, using a 1 and aa half black line the line here is particular, but by using the name 'line', can be taken absolutely to be particular but if taken as a sign is made general and the generality of the line is not because it is a sign of an abstract general line, but because of all the other particular right lines that possible eixist
             • ' i do not deny absolutely that there are general ideas but only that there are any absract general ideas'
             • section 14= cradle bit, not relevant, although dascribes abstraction as 'painstaking'
               • section 15: even if images were possible, don't have any content says that general ideas from abraction are absurd as they don't consist of the 'absolute positive nature or conception of anything' only in the 'relation it bears to the particulars signified or represented by it'
                 • but then if you have a triangle e.g. isosceles you can abract as far as calling it an isosceles as you see that by seeing that there is a right angle and same legnths, don't have to specify lengths etc. 'so far he may abstract; but this will never prove he can frame an abstract, general, inconsistent idea of a triangle'
                   • it is impossible to make a proposition in which all the particulars do indifferently partake and by which they are all equally represented

3. Berkley

   • selective atension: Locke + Kail
     • although, Locke, not as clear
       • Berkeley- still presentes problems outside of selective attnetion? or include this if OG explanation
         • Berkely: linguistic argument
           • Ayer= why bad
             • me: why not that bad
         • need more stuff on selective attentionqz