Questions on Berkeley: Nature

1. How, for Berkeley, is time simply the succession of ideas, and why does this imply that the soul always thinks?

2. What does Berkeley mean by the "archetypes" of sensible qualities, and how are they different (if at all) from the "concreted" sensations that form objects of sense?

3. Berkeley says that the figure, motion, magnitude, etc. of insensible particles cannot explain what we sense about things; why?

4. What is the advantage of thinking about natural phenomena in terms of signs rather than causes?

5. Why does Berkeley reject the idea of absolute space but not the idea of empty space? And how are both different from that concept of space that is sometimes equated with God?

6. What is the significance of saying that arithmetic is not about things but rather signs?

7. Why can't an inch-long line contain an infinite number of parts when "taken absolutely"? and in what way can a line be thought of as having an infinity of parts?

8. How is the belief in infinite divisibility as much a skeptical and atheistic threat as is the belief in the absolute existence of matter?

9. Why are souls naturally immortal?

10. What does Berkeley mean by saying that we have "notions" but not ideas of spirits, relations, and actions?

11. How can we be said to "see God"? and why should this realization be an incentive to virtue and a guard against vice?