Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Esse est percipi — to be is to be perceived; there is no inert mindless matter; only minds and ideas exist
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Early) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Disembodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Berkeley argues (§§98–99) that time is the succession of ideas in a mind; abstracted from minds it is unintelligible. Time is emergent from mental life, linear within experience, non-deterministic in the human will's active employment.
Space
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Similar to time: space is treated as an idea given through sense, not as a mind-independent container. In the New Theory of Vision (1709), Berkeley argues that visual space is constructed from tangible cues — a doctrine that anticipates modern perceptual psychology.
Matter
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Matter, in the philosophers' sense of mind-independent substance, does not exist. What exists are ideas and the spirits that perceive them. The orderliness of "physical" objects is the regularity of God's perceiving and willing.
Observer
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
The Berkeleyan observer is the spirit — finite, plural, active in willing and perceiving, fundamentally disembodied (the "body" is itself a bundle of ideas perceived by the spirit). Knowledge is immediate. The metaphysical agency is unambiguously personal: God's perceiving sustains the orderly cosmos.
Energy
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Causal energy is the activity of spirits — there are no material forces. God's will is the ultimate energetic source; finite spirits cause within their limited domain.
Information
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Ideas are the substantival informational content of reality. God's mind contains all ideas; finite minds receive them. Personal information is conserved across death — Berkeley retains a robust Anglican commitment to personal immortality.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Berkeley's argument has been criticised since Hume and Kant for substituting one mystery (mind-independent matter) for another (the orderly God-sustained ideas). Samuel Johnson's famous reply — "I refute it thus," kicking a stone — is philosophically unserious but expresses the common-sense reservation Berkeley anticipated and addressed throughout. Berkeley's working-out of how unperceived objects continue to exist (God perceives them) has been read as elegant or as an ad hoc rescue.