Analyzing The Dialogue Between Hylas And Philonous Argument

In order to demonstrate this argument, Berkeley creates a dialogue between Hylas and Philonous. At the beginning of this dialogue, Hylas believes that is absurd to claim that objects only exists within the mind, and that Philonous is taking skepticism to a new level by claiming this. Philonous decides to persuade Hylas by questioning his beliefs, and he claims his motives are to help Hylas see what is “most agreeable to Common Sense (69).” Berkeley uses this dialogue to address the counter arguments to his belief, and he uses the character Philonous to prove that his point truly is the most logical. At the end of the story, Hylas is left uncertain of what he believes on the nature of objects and the mind, but he agrees that Philonous is more right than he originally was. Berkeley relies on many other

One concept in particular is the idea of the one and the many. While Hylas seems to see the importance of the one in the beginning, Philonous convinces him to question this idea. It is important for Hylas to be able to identify all objects as sharing the commonality of being united under the one category of being material and tangible. Hylas also often criticizes Philonous’s claim by claiming they disregard the idea that there is a one. That the logical conclusion to Philonous’s viewpoint ascribes too much recognition to objects as being the many. Hylas states, “it is just come into my head that the ground of all our mistake lies in your treating of each quality by itself (71).” Philonous treats each sense and perception of an object separately. By doing this, the objects are left being categorized in many different categories, rather than have one common category that unites all of them. Philonous tries to argue that the oneness of each object is that each one has its existence in the mind. However, this is flawed because this oneness does not have any meaning outside of skepticism. It is true that we perceive different aspects