Contemporary Humeans treat laws of nature as statements of exceptionless regularities that function as the axioms of the best deductive system. Such ‘Best System Accounts’ marry realism about laws with a denial of necessary connections among events. I argue that Hume’s predecessor, George Berkeley, offers a more sophisticated conception of laws, equally consistent with the absence of powers or necessary connections among events in the natural world. On this view, laws are not statements of regularities but the most general (...) rules God follows in producing the world. Pace most commentators, I argue that Berkeley’s view is neither instrumentalist nor reductionist. More important, the Berkeleyan Best System can solve some of the problems afflicting its Humean rivals, including the problems of theory choice and Nancy Cartwright’s ‘facticity’ dilemma. Some of these solutions are available in the contemporary context, without any appeal to God. Berkeley’s account deserves to be taken seriously in its own right. (shrink)

Berkeley argues that claims about divine predication (e.g., God is wise or exists) should be understood literally rather than analogically, because like all spirits (i.e., causes), God is intelligible only in terms of the extent of his effects. By focusing on the harmony and order of nature, Berkeley thus unites his view of God with his doctrines of mind, force, grace, and power, and avoids challenges to religious claims that are raised by appeals to analogy. The essay concludes (...) by showing how a letter, supposedly by Berkeley, to Peter Browne ("discovered" in 1969 by Berman and Pittion) is, in fact, by John Jackson (1686-1763), controversial theologian and friend of Samuel Clarke. (shrink)

Berkeley's main aim in his well-known early works was to identify and refute "the grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and irreligion." This appears to place Berkeley within a well-established tradition of religious critics of Locke's epistemology, including, most famously, Stillingfleet. I argue that these appearances are deceiving. Berkeley is, in fact, in important respects an opponent of this tradition. According to Berkeley, Locke's earlier critics, including Stillingfleet, had misidentified the grounds of irreligion in Locke's philosophy while all (...) the while endorsing the true grounds of irreligion themselves. Locke's epistemology is innocent; matter and abstraction are to blame. (shrink)

For Berkeley, minds are not Cartesian spiritual substances because they cannot be said to exist (even if only conceptually) abstracted from their activities. Similarly, Berkeley's notion of mind differs from Locke's in that, for Berkeley, minds are not abstract substrata in which ideas inhere. Instead, Berkeley redefines what it means for the mind to be a substance in a way consistent with the Stoic logic of 17th century Ramists on which Leibniz and Jonathan Edwards draw. This (...) view of mind, I conclude, is definitely not the bundle theory that some critics have portrayed it as being. (shrink)

Berkeley's doctrine of archetypes explains how God perceives and can have the same ideas as finite minds. His appeal of Christian neo-Platonism opens up a way to understand how the relation of mind, ideas, and their union is modeled on the Cappadocian church fathers' account of the persons of the trinity. This way of understanding Berkeley indicates why he, in contrast to Descartes or Locke, thinks that mind (spiritual substance) and ideas (the object of mind) cannot exist or (...) be thought of apart from one another. It also hints at why Gregory of Nyssa's immaterialism sounds so much like Berkeley's. (shrink)

Berkeley's immaterialism has more in common with views developed by Henry More, the mathematician Joseph Raphson, John Toland, and Jonathan Edwards than those of thinkers with whom he is commonly associated (e.g., Malebranche and Locke). The key for recognizing their similarities lies in appreciating how they understand St. Paul's remark that in God "we live and move and have our being" as an invitation to think to God as the space of discourse in which minds and ideas are identified. (...) This way of speaking about God, adapted by Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, opens up new ways to think about the relation between God and finite minds. (shrink)

For Berkeley, a thing's existence 'esse' is nothing more than its being perceived 'as that thing'. It makes no sense to ask (with Samuel Johnson) about the 'esse' of the mind or the specific act of perception, for that would be like asking what it means for existence to exist. Berkeley's "existere is percipi or percipere" (NB 429) thus carefully adopts the scholastic distinction between 'esse' and 'existere' ignored by Locke and others committed to a substantialist notion of (...) mind. Following the Stoics, Berkeley proposes that, 'as' the existence of ideas, minds "subsist" rather than "exist" and, accordingly, cannot be identified as independently existing things. (shrink)

Although George Berkeley himself made no major scientific discoveries, nor formulated any novel theories, he was nonetheless actively concerned with the rapidly evolving science of the early eighteenth century. Berkeley's works display his keen interest in natural philosophy and mathematics from his earliest writings (Arithmetica, 1707) to his latest (Siris, 1744). Moreover, much of his philosophy is fundamentally shaped by his engagement with the science of his time. In Berkeley's best-known philosophical works, the Principles and Dialogues, he (...) sets up his idealistic system in opposition to the materialist mechanism he finds in Descartes and Locke. In De Motu, Berkeley refines and extends his philosophy of science in the context of a critique of the dynamic accounts of motion offered by Newton and Leibniz. And in Siris, Berkeley's flirtation with neo-Platonism draws inspiration from the fire theory of Boerhaave as well as Newton's aetherial speculations in the Queries of the Optics. In examining Berkeley's critical engagement with the natural philosophy of his time, we will thus improve our understanding of not just his philosophy of science, but of his philosophical corpus as a whole. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do artigo "Berkeley and the pyrrhonism" publicado originalmente em The Review of Metaphysics 5 (1951); reimpresso em Burnyeat, Myles (org.) The Skeptical Tradition. University of California Press, 1983, p. 377-396 e em Richard A. Watson and James E. Force (Editors). The high road to Pyrrhonism, p. 297-318.

While De Motu, Berkeley's treatise on the philosophical foundations of mechanics, has frequently been cited for the surprisingly modern ring of certain of its passages, it has not often been taken as seriously as Berkeley hoped it would be. Even A.A. Luce, in his editor's introduction to De Motu, describes it as a modest work, of limited scope. Luce writes: The De Motu is written in good, correct Latin, but in construction and balance the workmanship falls below (...) class='Hi'>Berkeley's usual standards. The title is ambitious for so brief a tract, and may lead the reader to expect a more sustained argument than he will find. A more modest title, say Motion without Matter, would fitly describe its scope and content. Regarded as a treatise on motion in general, it is a slight and disappointing work; but viewed from a narrower angle, it is of absorbing interest and high importance. It is the application of immaterialism to contemporary problems of motion, and should be read as such. ...apart from the Principles the De Motu would be nonsense.1.. (shrink)

The popular Cartesian reading of George Berkeley's philosophy of mind mischaracterizes his views on the relations between substance and essence and between an idea and the act of thought in which it figures. I argue that Berkeley rejects Descartes's tripartite taxonomy of distinctions and makes use of a fourth kind of distinction. In addition to illuminating Berkeley's ontology of mind, this fourth distinction allows us to dissolve an important dilemma raised by Kenneth Winkler.

Berkeley's doctrines about mind, the language of nature, substance, minima sensibilia, notions, abstract ideas, inference, and freedom appropriate principles developed by the 16th-century logician Peter Ramus and his 17th-century followers (e.g., Alexander Richardson, William Ames, John Milton). Even though Berkeley expresses himself in Cartesian or Lockean terms, he relies on a Ramist way of thinking that is not a form of mere rhetoric or pedagogy but a logic and ontology grounded in Stoicism. This article summarizes the central features (...) of Ramism, indicates how Berkeley adapts Ramist concepts and strategies, and chronicles Ramism's pervasiveness in Berkeley's education, especially at Trinity College Dublin. (shrink)

Commentators have not said much regarding Berkeley and Stoicism. Even when they do, they generally limit their remarks to Berkeley’s Siris (1744) where he invokes characteristically Stoic themes about the World Soul, “seminal reasons,” and the animating fire of the universe. The Stoic heritage of other Berkeleian doctrines (e.g., about mind or the semiotic character of nature) is seldom recognized, and when it is, little is made of it in explaining his other doctrines (e.g., immaterialism). None of this (...) is surprising, considering how Stoics are considered arch-materialists and determinists. My aim is to suggest that our understanding of Berkeley’s philosophy is improved significantly by acknowledging its underlying Stoic character. I argue that Berkeley proposes not only a semantic ontology based on assumptions of Stoic logic but also a doctrine in which perceptions or ideas are intelligible precisely because they are always embedded in the propositions of a discourse or language. (shrink)

I claim that Berkeley's main argument against abstraction comes into focus only when we see Descartes as one of its targets. Berkeley does not deploy Winkler's impossibility argument but instead argues that what is impossible is inconceivable. Since Descartes conceives of extension as a determinable, and since determinables cannot exist as such, he falls within the scope of Berkeley's argument.

Berkeley, Newton, Explanation, and Causation -/- I argue in this paper that Berkeley’s conception of natural law explanations, which echoes Newton’s, fails to solve a fundamental problem, which I label “explanatory asymmetry"; that the model of explanation Berkeley uses fails to distinguish between explanations and justifications, particularly since Berkeley denies real (efficient causes) in non-minded nature. At the end I suggest Berkeley might endorse a notion of understanding, say in astronomy or mechanics, which could be (...) distinguished from explanation. (shrink)

Berkeley desarrolla su teoría de la visión en la obra de juventud Ensayo para una nueva teoría de la visión, que por lo general ha sido leída atendiendo sólo a sus aspectos científicos o perceptuales. En este artículo propongo una lectura distinta, que busca mostrar que el Ensayo no sólo atiende aspectos científicos sino, por el contrario, anticipa el inmaterialismo de obras posteriores. Esto lo hace porque Dios cumple un importante papel en él, lo cual se debe, entre otras (...) cosas, a que la teoría de la visión es desarrollada en función de Dios, pues de Él depende tanto la vista y los objetos visibles como el argumento del lenguaje visual. (shrink)

A plausible reading of Berkeley’s view of voluntary motion is occasionalism; this, however, leads to a specious conclusion against his argument of human action. Differing from an unqualified occasionalist reading, I consider the alternative reading that Berkeley is a conservationist regarding bodily motion by the human mind at will. That is, finite minds (spirits) immediately cause motions in their body parts, albeit under the divine conservation. My argument then comports with the conservationist reading from three perspectives: (i) theodicy (...) that the human mind is held liable for sinful actions; (ii) an account of the human mind influencing other minds; and (iii) an improper but necessary directing principle of the human mind. This article is a stepping stone to grasping why the conservationist reading is more coherent than the occasionalist one. (shrink)

L'objectiu d'aquest article és oferir un anàlisi dels arguments principals del Tractat sobre els Principis del Coneixement Humà, de G. Berkeley. Aquests arguments -que es troben a I, §4, I, §5-7 i I, §23 de l'obra de Berkeley- tenen como a objectiu demostrar la inconcebibilitat d'un món extern de caràcter físic. Argumentaré que la validesa d'aquests tres arguments depèn del anomenat «principi de semblança». La conclusió a la que arribaré és que l'acceptació del principi de semblança -i, en (...) conseqüència, dels arguments que d'ell en depenen- es problemàtica, però que, en qualsevol cas, el principi es manté com a una bona crítica reductiva al materialisme representacionalista de John Locke, en tant que aquest no pot negar les premisses que duen a la seva justificació i que la seva defensa contra dit principi presenta un seguit de problemes als quals sembla no haver-hi resposta. (shrink)

This essay consists of two parts. Part I offers an explanation of Berkeley's understanding of the relationship between materialism and evil. Berkeley regards materialism as the chief instrumental cause of evil in the world. It is the belief in matter that encourages us to believe that God is not immediately, intimately present in every aspect of our life. Immaterialism, by contrast, makes God's immediate presence vivid and thereby serves to undermine the motivation to vice. Part II locates (...) class='Hi'>Berkeley's view on matter and evil within the Christian Neoplatonic tradition. I compare Plotinus' minimalist approach to matter and his identification of matter with evil to Berkeley's eliminitivism about matter and his corresponding identification of materialism as the chief source of evil. (shrink)

BERKELEY: THE ORIGIN OF CRITICISM OF THE INFINITESIMALS Abstract: In this paper I propose a new reading of a little known George Berkeley´s work Of Infinites. Hitherto, the work has been studied partially, or emphasizing only the mathematical contributions, downplaying the philosophical aspects, or minimizing mathematical issues taking into account only the incipient immaterialism. Both readings have been pernicious for the correct comprehension of the work and that has brought as a result that will follow underestimated its importance, (...) and therefore will not study as should be. Against traditional readings I make one that stand out both philosophical and mathematical aspects, with the purpose to show that richness and complexity of the work deserve that it has an special place within Berkeley´s works. (shrink)

Berkeley’s social and political writings play an important role in his philosophy although, surprisingly, has been little studied by scholars. This lack of scholarly attention is a deficiency because such writings are not only interesting, but even more essential for understanding Berkeley’s philosophy as a whole, since point toward the same goal that his epistemological and metaphysical writings serves, namely, consolidate his apologetic and humanist project. This paper focuses on that forgotten part of Berkeley’s philosophy and aims (...) to explore a little researched topic but recurrent in his social and political writings, namely, that of the Civil Authority and the Secular State. (shrink)

Berkeley was a philosopher who wrote about such diverse topics as natural philosophy, political philosophy, mathematics, economy, and theology. Within this broad range of interests, his concern about the infinite spirit stands out; thus, the aim of this paper is to trace the origins of Berkeley´s conception of God, an issue which is already prefigured in the Philosophical Commentaries. The importance of knowing and analyze the notes that make up the Commentaries lies in that they make it possible (...) to understand not only how the incipient immaterialist philosophy was established, but above all –being purpose of this paper– what features and role God acquired within it. (shrink)

I argue that Berkeley's distinctive idealism/immaterialism can't support his view that objects of sense, immediately or mediately perceived, are causally inert. (The Passivity of Ideas thesis or PI) Neither appeal to ordinary perception, nor traditional arguments, for example, that causal connections are necessary, and we can't perceive such connections, are helpful. More likely it is theological concerns,e.g., how to have second causes if God upholds by continuously creating the world, that's in the background. This puts Berkeley closer to (...) Malebranche than to Hume. -/- As far the what I call the "first strategy;" defending the passivity of ideas by ordinary introspection, I refer to the work of the French psychologist Albert Michotte,(1940) and those now extending his experiments, to show that (1) there is an immediate and quite robust visual impression of causality, (admitted in fact by Berkeley, Malebranche and Hume) and (2) of more importance, the impression isn't due to projecting into nature expectations gained from experienced regularities. (shrink)

Clues about what Berkeley was planning to say about mind in his now-lost second volume of the Principles seem to abound in his Notebooks. However, commentators have been reluctant to use his unpublished entries to explicate his remarks about spiritual substances in the Principles and Dialogues for three reasons. First, it has proven difficult to reconcile the seemingly Humean bundle theory of the self in the Notebooks with Berkeley's published characterization of spirits as “active beings or principles.” Second, (...) the fact that Berkeley did not publish his Notebooks insights on mind has led some to claim that he later rejected his early views. Third, many of the Notebooks entries on mind have a ‘+’ sign next to them, which has been understood for decades to comprise a Black List of views about which Berkeley had doubts or subsequently rejected. In my dialogue, I describe how Berkeley's “congeries” account of mind (1) differs from Hume's bundle theory in a way that complements Berkeley's published remarks and (2) undercuts the claim that he later rejected his early views. Most importantly, (3) I show how a careful analysis of the British Library manuscript of the Notebooks refutes the Black List hypothesis. (shrink)

La propuesta inmaterialista de Berkeley, elaborada definitivamente en sus Principles (1710), tiene como antecedente remoto los postulados del capadocio Gregorio de Nisa, quien en algunas de sus obras desarrolló argumentos, en relación con la materia, muy semejantes a los que planteó Berkeley casi catorce siglos después. El presente escrito tiene por objetivo mostrar que las concepciones de ambos pensadores tienen elementos en común, lo que permite sostener que el filósofo de Cesarea es un antecede lejano del inmaterialismo berkeleyano. (...) // Berkeley's immaterialism has as a remote antecedent in the postulates of the Cappadocian Gregory of Nyssa, who in some of his works developed arguments, concerning the matter, very similar to those that Berkeley presented almost fourteen centuries later. This paper aims to show that both philosophical conceptions have elements in common, which allows us to assert that the Cappadocian father is a distant precedent of Berkeley's immaterialism. (shrink)

In this paper I expose and analyze the berkeleian proposal of notional knowledge. Among other things, this proposal represents Berkeley´s attempt to know the mind or spirit, that is, the thinking and active thing that, by its own activity, results unrepresentable as idea. As such knowledge is already mentioned in the Philosophical Commentaries I will refer to them to know the origins of that proposal. However, as notional knowledge appears in more detail in later works I will make use (...) especially the Treatise to tackle the complex notional doctrine. -/- . (shrink)

Review of Miller's The Berkeley Plato. It is argued that Berkeley University possesses a contemporary portrait of Plato as an aristocrat adorned with the ribbons of athletic victory.

By focusing on the exchange between Descartes and Hobbes on how the self is related to its activities, Berkeley draws attention to how he and Hobbes explain the forensic constitution of human subjectivity and moral/political responsibility in terms of passive obedience and conscientious submission to the laws of the sovereign. Formulated as the language of nature or as pronouncements of the supreme political power, those laws identify moral obligations by locating political subjects within those networks of sensible signs. When (...) thus juxtaposed with Hobbes, Berkeley can be understood as endorsing a theologically inflected version of deontological ethics in which moral laws are linked directly to the constitution of the self. (shrink)

Since nothing about God is passive, and the perception of pain is inherently passive, then it seems that God does not know what it is like to experience pain. Nor would he be able to cause us to experience pain, for his experience would then be a sensation (which would require God to have senses, which he does not). My suggestion is that Berkeley avoids this situation by describing how God knows about pain “among other things” (i.e. as something (...) whose identity is intelligible in terms of the integrated network of things). This avoids having to assume that God has ideas (including pain) apart from his willing that there be perceivers who have specific ideas that are in harmony or not in harmony with one another. (shrink)

In several essays I have argued that Berkeley maintains the same basic notion of spiritual substance throughout his life. Because that notion is not the traditional (Aristotelian, Cartesian, or Lockean) doctrine of substance, critics (e.g., John Roberts, Tom Stoneham, Talia Mae Bettcher, Margaret Atherton, Walter Ott, Marc Hight) claim that on my reading Berkeley either endorses a Humean notion of substance or has no recognizable theory of substance at all. In this essay I point out how my interpretation (...) does not assume that Berkeley adopts a bundle theory of mind, but instead redefines what it means for a simple substance to be the principle by which ideas are perceived. (shrink)

Os dois ensaios aqui traduzidos: “Uma visita a uma glândula pineal”, publicado originalmente em 21 de abril de 1713 no número 35 do Guardian e a “A glândula pineal (continuação)”, publicado no dia 25 de abril, no número 39, formam uma unidade não apenas pela referência a ideia de glândula pineal concebida por Descartes como ponto de interação entre a alma e o corpo, mas também pela forma literária e pelo pseudônimo comum. Eles fazem parte de um conjunto de quatorze (...) ensaios atribuídos a George Berkeley, reunidos e publicados pela primeira vez apenas em 1871, no volume III da edição organizada por A. C. Fraser. Os ensaios publicados no Guardian foram escritos durante a permanência de Berkeley em Londres em 1713, quando Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) e Richard Steele (1672-1729), seus conterrâneos, contribuiriam para lhe abrir caminho no ambiente literário inglês. O principal objetivo de Berkeley ao publicar os ensaios foi o de defender o teísmo cristão contra os “livre-pensadores” da época, assumidos como materialistas e ateus. A tradução aqui apresentada foi realizada com base na edição organizada por Luce e Jessop. The Works of George Berkeley Bishop of Cloyne. Luce, A. A. and Jessop, T. E. London and Edimburgh: Nelson, 1948, v. 7, 185-192. (shrink)

Existe já uma grande quantidade de literatura dedicada à presença na filosofia inicial de Berkeley de alguns assuntos tipicamente platônicos (arquétipos, o problema da mente de Deus, a relaçáo entre ideias e coisas, etc.). Baseados em alguns desses escritos, nas próprias palavras de Berkeley, assim como no exame de alguns elementos da tradiçáo platônica num amplo sentido, sugiro que, longe de serem apenas tópicos isolados, livremente espalhados nos primeiros escritos de Berkeley, eles formam uma perfeita rede de (...) aspectos, atitudes e modos de pensar platônicos, e que, por mais alusivos ou ambíguos que esses elementos platônicos possam parecer, eles constituem um todo coerente e complexo, desempenhando um papel importante na formaçáo da própria essência do pensamento de Berkeley. Em outras palavras, sugiro que, dadas algumas das ideias apresentadas em suas primeiras obras, foi de certo modo inevitável para George Berkeley, em virtude da lógica interna do desenvolvimento de seu pensamento, chegar a uma obra táo abertamente platônica e especulativa como Siris (1744). (shrink)

Subjective idealism can be defined as the view that ‘the objective world independent of man does not exist; it is the product of man's subjective cognitive abilities, sensations, and perceptions’. George Berkeley often is said to be the founder of this species of idealism, and when someone wants to offer an example of a subjective idealist, Berkeley is usually the first person who comes to mind. However, those making this claim largely seem to be only passingly familiar with (...) Berkeley’s work, sometimes to the point that there have been doubts they had even read him. Meanwhile, many serious readers of Berkeley have rejected this reading of Berkeley, showing that it relies on a neglect of many of Berkeley’s own claims. How has this gulf between the common impression of Berkeley and the views of many of his most attentive readers arisen and been sustained? This paper suggests that, to a large extent, it has been due to neglecting to set Berkeley’s work in its proper historical context. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do verbete "George Berkeley, de Michael Ayers, retirado de "A Companion to Epistemology", ed. Jonathan Dancy e Ernest Sosa (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 261–264. Criticanarede. ISSN 1749-8457.

A review from the book: Stefan Storrie (ed.) (2018). Berkeley’s Three Dialogues: New Essays. Oxford (UK): Oxford University Press. 240 pp.

There is a problem regarding God and perception right at the heart of Berkeley ’s metaphysics. With respect to this problem, I will argue for : It is intractable. Berkeley has no solution to this problem, and neither can we hope to offer one on his behalf. However, I will also argue for : The truth of need not be seen as threatening the viability of Berkeley ’s metaphysics. In fact, it may even be seen as speaking (...) in its favor. (shrink)

Berkeley doesn't use the Time-Gap Argument, as Leibniz does, to prove either that we immediately see only ideas or that we see physical objects mediately. It may be doubted whether he was even aware of the time-gap problem that gives rise to the argument. But certain passages in the Three Dialogues and elsewhere suggest that Berkeley would have had cogent answers to anyone who claimed that this argument, construed as being in aid of the conclusion that we only (...) perceive ideas, is unsound. Discussing points made by Bertil Belfrage, Len Carrier, John Foster, A. C. Grayling, Howard Robinson, A. D. Smith, Tom Stoneham, and Colin Turbayne, I try to show that the Time-Gap Argument can be expanded into a strong argument for Berkeleian Idealism. I also idnicate how the latter provides a solution to J. J. Valberg's "puzzle of experience" and disarms James Cornman's argument in Perception, Common Sense, and Science that Berkeley, too, faces a time-gap problem. (shrink)

The chapter focuses on attributions of the transparency of thought to early modern figures, most notably Descartes. Many recent philosophers assume that Descartes believed the mind to be “transparent”: since all mental states are conscious, we are therefore aware of them all, and indeed incorrigibly know them all. Descartes, and Berkeley too, do make statements that seem to endorse both aspects of the transparency theses (awareness of all mental states; incorrigibility). However, they also make systematic theoretical statements that directly (...) countenance “unnoticed” thoughts or mental states, that is, thoughts or mental states of which the subject is unaware and has no knowledge. Descartes, having identified the essence of mind with thought or representation, distinguishes bare states of mind from states of which we have reflective awareness, thereby providing a theoretical tool for understanding both his seeming endorsement of transparency and his actual denial of it: Descartes distinguished between a basic perceptual state, or a basic awareness, and reflectively conscious states that involve explicit noticing and cognizing on the part of the subject. Leibniz (as is better known) directly endorsed a similar distinction between bare perception and reflective consciousness, using the term “perception” for the first and “apperception” for the second. In these cases, bare perceptions are not transparently available to the subject, and so in fact the subject does not have knowledge, hence does not have incorrigible knowledge, of all its occurrent mental states. This chapter gives evidence to support these claims; elaborates the complex psychology of the subject found in Descartes and other early moderns; and notes some ways in which these early moderns contributed to the genesis of the modern subject. Finally, it compares McDowell’s conception of the Cartesian mind with the conceptions of mind found in the writings of Descartes, Berkeley, and Leibniz, finding that his characterization caricatures the positions of early modern philosophers. McDowell's characterization has four elements: consciousness as essence of mind; intentionality as exclusively mental; the veil of perception; and the transparency of mind. Only the second point, about intentionality, fully fits Descartes. As a consequence of his own misdirection, McDowell misses the actual basis of his difficulty in connecting mind with world, which arises from a point of agreement between him and Descartes: the removal of intentionality from material sensory systems. But whereas Descartes could relocate (nonconceptual) sensory intentionality in mental states, McDowell is left to account for it with his overly cognitivized scheme of perceptual content as exclusively conceptual. (Paper first given at the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy, 2007.). (shrink)

George Berkeley (1685-1753) is one of the most influential early modern philosophers, and in reason of this a never-ending critical interest focuses on his works. Such a critical attention gave rise to a broad literature and it is in fact quite easy to find valuable introductory books to Berkeley's works. It would be thus superfluous to provide a further summary of the entire production of Berkeley. Rather, I focus on a specific issue, namely the main points of (...) interest of immaterialism for the contemporary debates in philosophy. The currently most discussed Berkeleian arguments are those from his earlier production (those developed around 1709-1713). Thus, I will be mainly concerned with the conceptual structure of A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Among Berkeley's early works, this is the one that was thought as a systematic illustration for philosophers of his ideas. (shrink)

Berkeley in his Introduction to the Principles of Human knowledge uses geometrical examples to illustrate a way of generating “universal ideas,” which allegedly account for the existence of general terms. In doing proofs we might, for example, selectively attend to the triangular shape of a diagram. Presumably what we prove using just that property applies to all triangles.I contend, rather, that given Berkeley’s view of extension, no Euclidean triangles exist to attend to. Rather proof, as Berkeley would (...) normally assume, requires idealizing diagrams; treating them as if they obeyed Euclidean constraints. This convention solves the problem of representative generalization. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Berkeley and Proof in GeometryVolume 51, Issue 3RICHARD J. BROOK DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000686Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle email.@free.kindle.com@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Berkeley and Proof in GeometryVolume 51, Issue 3RICHARD J. BROOK DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000686Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Berkeley and Proof in GeometryVolume 51, Issue 3RICHARD J. BROOK DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000686Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Instead of interpreting Berkeley in terms of the standard way of relating him to Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, I suggest we consider relating him to other figures (e.g., Stoics, Ramists, Suarez, Spinoza, Leibniz). This allows us to integrate his published and unpublished work, and reveals how his philosophic and non-philosophic work are much more aligned with one another. I indicate how his (1) theory of powers, (2) "bundle theory" of the mind, and (3) doctrine of "innate ideas" are understood (...) in a way significantly different from that found in the standard account. (shrink)

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" In this article I examine the framework of George Berkeley's global metaphysical theory, 'Esse est Percipi'. Then I highlight two competing potential interpretations of the theory.

I. Introduction Siris, Berkeley's last major work, is undeniably a rather odd book. It could hardly be otherwise, given Berkeley's aims in writing it, which are three-fold: 'to communicate to the public the salutary virtues of tar-water,'1 to provide scientific background supporting the efficacy of tar-water as a medicine, and to lead the mind of the reader, via gradual steps, toward contemplation of God.2 The latter two aims shape Berkeley's extensive use of contemporary natural science in Siris. (...) In particular, Berkeley's focus on what he calls fire (or aether or light) as a quasiuniversal 'cause' of natural change3 serves these purposes, for the 'activity' of the aether, in his view, can both explain the miraculous virtues of a certain medicine, i.e. tar-water, and reveal God's action and his divine order.4 Berkeley's corpuscular speculations, including his use of fire-theory, are not especially idiosyncratic as natural philosophy. In his theorizing, as Jessop and other have noted, he is heavily indebted to the work of Hermann Boerhaave, the Dutch chemist, botanist, and physician whose teachings were highly influential in mid-eighteenth century Britain.5 Boerhaave, along with other Dutch natural philosophers cited by Berkeley, assigned a central role in accounting for physio-chemical activity to fire, a subtle, insensible particulate substance, sometimes identified with light. (shrink)

This chapter revisits three key disagreements between Locke and Berkeley. The disagreements relate to abstraction, the idea of substance, and the status of the primary/secondary quality distinction. The goal of the chapter is to show that these disagreements are rooted in a more fundamental disagreement over the nature of ideas. For Berkeley, ideas are tied very closely to perceptual content. Locke adopts a less restrictive account of the nature of ideas. On his view, ideas are responsible for both (...) perceptual content and non-perceptual mental content. Recognizing this allows for the following analysis of their disputes. Berkeley often appeals to introspection to suggest that we do not have some particular idea. But Locke’s arguments that we have a particular idea often appeal to the functional role the idea has in our cognitive economy rather than to facts about our immediate phenomenology. (shrink)

The Author considers the strengths and weaknesses of Berkeley’s account of what he calls indifferently the soul, mind, spirit or self. Such an account deserves far more credit than he has standardly been awarded for a significantly modern position, most of which has mistakenly been credited to Schopenhauer. The Aauthor relates Berkeley’s views to those recently expressed by Bill Brewer and attempts to isolate the crucial difference between Berkeley and Schopenhauer.

Is not easy to explain how God is known according to Berkeley. However, from his works one may infer that philosophically Berkeley oscillates between two conceptions of God: (i) as an indispensable and necessary assumption for his theory of ideas and (ii) as a being analogous to the man. From these conceptions, I present here a route for the knowledge of God, which emerges from Berkeley´s concept of finite spirit. As this possess the ideas of imagination and (...) memory and is able to reflect on itself, it is possible to talk about an internal route of knowledge, through oneself, which comes from the own spirit (finite) and leads directly to the knowledge of God. (shrink)

In this paper I have the purpose to analyze George Berkeley’s concept of substance. For this goal, it will be necessary first to track the manner that Berkeley was conceiving that concept, that is, how it was determining in his early philosophy and what kind of role had in it. To make this it must be necessary to review the early notes knowing in Spanish as Philosophical Commentaries; and subsequently it will be required to retake the published work, (...) particularly the Principles, where the concept of substance is already taken as Berkeley definitely used it in his immaterialist philosophy. (shrink)

On the traditional picture, accidents must inhere in substances in order to exist. Berkeley famously argues that a particular class of accidents—the sensible qualities—are mere ideas; entities that depend for their existence on minds. To defend this view, Berkeley provides us with an elegant alternative to the traditional framework: sensible qualities depend on a mind, not in virtue of inhering in it, but in virtue of being perceived by it. This metaphysical insight, once correctly understood, gives us the (...) resources to solve a central problem that still plagues the philosophy of perception: the problem of how, given the power of the mind to create phenomenally rich experiences, ordinary perception can nonetheless be said to acquaint us with the mind-independent world. (shrink)