Third Dialogue Between Philonous And Hylas

In the third dialogue between Hylas and Philonous there is a discussion about the process of immediate perception. So far, Hylas understands that we can never know what things are really like because we cannot think that sensible qualities really resemble the true qualities of objects. Hylas is therefore worried that we can never have access to true nature, only to the things that we perceive. Philonous argues Hylas is wrong because he has a sceptical view depending of the theory that real things are material and it is only once he abandons this view, that he will no longer have a reason to be sceptical. Philonous asserts that idealism is immune to scepticism: we cannot doubt that what we are perceiving really exists or not because the mere

He claims that Berkeley’s theory of idealism does not give an adequate account of illusions and hallucinations. Hylas argues that since we perceive bundles of ideas, there must be an idea that corresponds to illusions we experience; however, we do not say that the physical object is as it looks in the illusion. He says, for example, if we see an oar in water, it will appear bent to us. Then if we lift the oar out of the water we will see that it is really straight thus the bent appearance of the oar was an illusion caused by the refraction of the water. His question is therefore, if the oar is nothing in reality over the way it is perceived, then is it really straight or is it crooked? If we take Philonous’s approach, we cannot say that we are wrong about our initial judgement of the oar, because the sensible qualities really resemble the true qualities. Therefore, it is obvious that what is immediately perceived is a crooked

Therefore, Hylas is right in that what we perceive when looking at the oar half-submerged in water is that it is crooked, however, we are wrong in our judgement. If the perceiver would “conclude that upon taking the oar out of the water he shall perceive the same crookedness; or that it would affect his touch, as crooked things are wont to do: in that he is mistaken…his mistake lies not in what he perceived immediately, and at present (it being a manifest contradiction to suppose he should err in respect of that) but in the wrong judgement he makes concerning the ideas he apprehends to be connected with those immediately perceived.” (Berkeley, 1988). Therefore, the illusion we perceive only becomes misleading if we were to infer from it that when we touched the oar it would feel crooked or when we pulled the oar out of the water then it would look crooked. However, Berkeley argues that in immediate perception, there is no inference, simply the perception and collection of the sense-data and this “indubitability of immediate perception is one of the essential aspects of Berkeley’s theory of perception” (Stack, 1970). Berkeley does not allow for errors in the ideas that we actually have; so,