" (6).
The opening of the First Dialogue proceeds to highlight Berkeley's seeming commitment to vulgar ideas. The character, Philonous, who represents Berkeley in the Dialogues, says to Hylas that he (Philonous) has recently begun to question the " affected doubts of some philosophers and fantastical conceits of others." (10) Philonous/Berkeley continues saying that he "[is] even so far gone of late in this way of thinking that I have quitted several of the sublime notions I had got in their [the philosophers"] schools.".
It is important, when looking at all this evidence of Berkeley's belief in the veracity of the vulgar not to assume that he does not believe that philosophy deepens our understanding of what those truths are. After all, his overall view is that true ideas come from combining the vulgar and the philosophical. In the same section where he supports the vulgar, he reaffirms that he does not believe that what philosophers call "material substance" exists. However, philosophers are not purely wrong, they are merely failing to examine the empirical evidence using the reason and common sense which every vulgar person has and which Berkeley employs. .
It is in the Third Dialogue, where Hylas and Philonous are wrapping us their conversation, that "Philonous" makes his opinion about the synergy of philosophical and vulgar opinions apparent. Philonous tells Hylas that what he was trying to do in the preceding conversation was:.
to unite and place in a clearer light the truth shared between the vulgar and the philosophers, the former being of opinion that those things they immediately perceive are the real things, and latter, that the things immediately perceived are ideas which exist only in the mind. (112).
As Berkeley goes on to say in the same paragraph, these two ideas, the vulgar and the philosophical, constitute what Berkeley believes to be true. When we combine these two ideas, we can see that what Berkeley is saying is this - the only real things are ideas that exist only in the mind and are immediately perceived.
