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Manuel Fasko and Peter West (eds.), Berkeley’s Doctrine of Signs, De Gruyter, 2024, 240pp., $109.99 (hbk), ISBN 9783111197586.
Reviewed by Stephen H. Daniel, Texas A&M University
For several decades Berkeley scholars have been discussing his doctrine of signs, but this is the first volume devoted entirely to the topic. As Manuel Fasko and Peter West indicate in their Introduction, by “doctrine of signs” they do not mean simply Berkeley’s particular way of describing ideas of sense as signs within a divine discourse. Rather, they want to show how signs not only refer to perceivable entities but also stand in for unperceivable “notions” that are principles for identifying and organizing our ideas (1).
Of course, as in other accounts of Berkeley’s thought, what it means to say that signs “refer” to ideas or “stand in” for notions is still a largely ignored topic, even in this collection. Indeed, none of the essays…
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