Berkeley thinks he has discovered two philosophical doctrines which are indeed 'the Chief Causes of Error and

Difficulty in
the Sciences' and also 'the Grounds of Skepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion
1. epistemic/linguistic doctrine of abstraction,
2. metaphysical doctrine of corporeal substance

Doctrine of abstract ideas
The view that human beings have a faculty of 'abstraction' whereby we form new 'clear and distinct ideas' by taking away
the specificity of existing ideas, so that, from particular ideas of triangles, we form the abstract idea 'triangle' which is
"neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once" (Locke).

Criticism by Berkley [abuse of language]

The claim is that terms like 'triangle' or 'cherry tree' get their meaning by being associated with an 'abstract idea' - a clear
and distinct, but underspecified, idea of a triangle with no particular lengths or angles, or a cherry tree with no particular
height or color. It is precisely this notion which leads to materialism: those who believe that language works this way
suppose that I have some abstract idea of a cherry tree, a particular type of material object, and that I can abstract further
to get an idea of material objects in general, abstracted away from any particular sense experiences. Thus the sentence
'there is a cherry tree over there' takes on all sorts of metaphysical significance: there is a natural kind, 'cherry tree', which
is a sort of material object, having a substratum which exemplifies certain properties, such as its color, size, and shape.


Locke had accepted Descartes axiom that rather than being conscious of individual physical objects the mind is in fact
conscious of mental impressions or representations caused by these objects, which he terms Ideas. His theory, accordingly,
is that it is the action of objects upon our sensory organs that give rise to our awareness of Ideas, which are specifically
caused by the action of the qualities of physical objects upon our sensory organs, saying that external objects furnish the
mind with ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us

For Locke the relationship between the physical object and the Idea is one of cause and effect; the mind on Lockes analysis is
comparable to a blank slate acting effectively as a mirror for the objects of the external world, onto which Ideas are imprinted.