assumed that at a certain point he began to ponder the world around him. Of

course, these first attempts fell short of being scholarly, probably

consisting of a few grunts and snorts at best. As time passed on, though,

these ideas persisted and were eventually tackled by the more intellectual,

so-called philosophers. Thus, excavation of "the external world" began. As

the authoritarinism of the ancients gave way to the more liberal views of

the modernists, two main positions concerning epistemology and the nature

of the world arose. The first view was exemplified by the empiricists, who

stated that all knowledge comes from the senses. In opposition, the

rationalists maintained that knowledge comes purely from deduction, and

that this knowledge is processed by certain innate schema in the mind.

Those that belonged to the empiricist school of thought developed quite

separate and distinct ideas concerning the nature of the substratum of

sensible objects. John Locke and David Hume upheld the belief that

sensible things were composed of material substance, the basic framework

for the materialist position. The main figure who believed that material

for He is at the heart of Berkeley's position. In short, the materialist

Having proven that the materialist is, at best, a doubter, Berkeley

because the "material substratum1" itself can not be sensed, its existence

can exist alone, it is the same as a secondary quality in which an actual

a burn. The materialist would attribute this pain to the lit candle

It is here that Berkeley directs an alternate hypothesis: that the abstract

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2459
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)