Abstract

We live in a world of objects and individuals that stabilize the flow of perceptions and sensations. Before Quine—drawing on pragmatist considerations—considered the object as a ‘posit’ made by the mind for practical purposes with the same epistemological status as a myth, we find in Berkeley’s philosophy the idea that the physical object as a unit made up of qualitatively different ideas is a construction of the mind for living. In this article I attempt to show that this classical reading of Berkeley is not erroneous, and I emphasize the role of language in this unification of ideas. The physical object is not a pure ‘myth,’ because it is based on real links between ideas and offers epistemic guarantees distinct from purely practical ones, but it is a human construction designed to accommodate practical endeavors.