Berkeley's system of philosophy

Abstract

Philosophy is not a discipline in which practitioners must operate with certain assumptions in order to be doing philosophy at all (unlike many other disciplines where if one turns ones attention to certain basic assumptions one is no longer doing anything within that discipline but rather something else- probably philosophy). In philosophy no alleged truths or principles are exempt from examination or challenge. However, in any discipline it is normal for some investigators to cover various underlying questions about method, or principles of reasoning, while others leave these questions aside and deal with other matters, taking certain answers to such questions for granted. This sort of division of labour is usually desirable even when method or first principles of reasoning are a subject of genuine controversy. To spend ones time on the often difficult disputes about the first principles of a discipline, disputes about the methods or principles of reasoning which should be employed, is to not spend it on other matters...