Pasqal asked:

How does Berkeley make the distinction between reality and fantasy? How would Hume react and
criticize this distinction? does he agree/ disagree?

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Berkeley doesn't distinguish reality from fantasy from the outside, but rather in terms of the nature of
the activity. Ontologically, or empirically speaking, all thoughts or ideas are on the same level: "There
is no impression nor idea of any kind, of which we have any consciousness or memory, that is not
conceived as existent" and it is from this that idea of "being is derived". But the idea of being is prior
to fantasy. The impressions which give rise to the idea of "being" entail judgement. Fantasy doesn't
entail the judgement that ideas are external, or coherent with what we judge to be external. Before we
make abstract distinctions between the external and fantasy, we could not tell the difference. But as
we experience more, we learn to make judgements, and the source of judgements is reason. We can
judge whether we are solely responsible for our ideas or not.

Hume would not agree with this, although he too can make the distinction in terms of what is going on
in the subject. For Hume, the imagination allows us to believe in independently existing objects, but
we don't always project a belief in the external world onto our impressions and this is the case with
fantasy.

So there is no agreement here, since for Berkeley reality is determined by judgement which is an act
of reason and for Hume it is a matter of projection or fictionalization since it is determined by the
activity of the imagination. For Hume, reason couldn't tell us whether there was an external reality or
not. Reason gives rise to sceptical arguments: We can reason in favour of the existence of an
external world and we can reason against it. It is the imagination, which is creative, which forms the
external world for us.

Rachel Browne