Imagism in Locke, Berkeley and Hume

Abstract

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityLocke, Berkeley, and Hume--referred to as "the classical British empiricists"--are examined for the extent to which a doctrine, called 'imagism' by Price, played a formative role in their philosophies. Imagism as defined has two main varieties, the polemical version and the constructive version. According to the former, images are the primary symbols in thinking and all other symbols are secondary and derivative. According to the latter, thought is the manipulation of mental images. It is this latter doctrine which is demonstrated as applicable to the classical British empiricists; so far as the former doctrine appears at all, it is an aberrant doctrine.[TRUNCATED