In a familiar limerick attributed to Ronald Knox, the narrator asks how a “tree/should continue to be/when there’s no one about in the Quad,” and is subsequently reassured that its continuous existence is guaranteed by God’s being “always about in the Quad” observing it. This is meant to capture Berkeley’s so‐called ‘continuity argument’ for the existence of God, on which the claim that objects exist continuously over time is supposed to entail the existence of a Divine Mind that continuously perceives (...) the ideas that constitute those objects. But the continuity argument is not an uncontroversial one. For one thing, we might ask what divine perception is supposed to be like – does God perceive all of the ideas that we do, and in the same way that we do? And if so, does this mean that God perceives pain – that God suffers? For another thing, we might ask whether Berkeley is entitled to the claim that objects exist continuously to begin with. In this paper, I look at some of the problems associated with the continuity argument, and then present a reading of divine perception that attempts to prevent these problems from arising at the outset. (shrink)

Berkeley writes in his ThreeDialogues Between Hylas and Philonous that he “acknowledge[s] a twofold state of things, the one ectypal or natural, the other archetypal and eternal[.] The former was created in time; the latter existed from everlasting in the mind of God”. On a straightforward reading of this passage, it looks as though Berkeley is an indirect perception theorist, who thinks that our sensory ideas are copies or resemblances of archetypal divine ideas. But this is problematic because Berkeley’s rejection (...) of scepticism seems partly to rest on a rejection of indirect perception. In this paper, I consider, and reject, three different approaches to solving this problem: that Berkeley’s remarks on archetypes are unrepresentative; that Berkeley is indeed committed to divine archetypal ideas ; and that Berkeley thinks divine archetypal ideas are identical to human ideas. I finally settle on a fourth strategy, which involves reading Berkeley’s archetypes as divine powers to produce ideas. I claim that this reading is consistent with the texts, that it has an etymological basis and philosophical precedent, and that it resolves the problems associated with the other three approaches to archetypes. (shrink)

Berkeley holds that objects in the world are constituted of ideas. Some commentators argue that for Berkeley, ideas are identical to acts of perception; this is taken to proceed from his view that ideas are like pains. In this paper, I evaluate the identity claim. I argue that although it does not follow from the pain analogy, nonetheless the texts suggest that Berkeley does think ideas and acts are identical. I show how Berkeley can account for objects persisting over time (...) and being perceivable by multiple observers, even if the ideas that constitute them are intermittent and dependent on particular actors. (shrink)

It is sometimes suggested that Berkeley adheres to an empirical criterion of meaning, on which a term is meaningful just in case it signifies an idea (i.e., an immediate object of perceptual experience). This criterion is thought to underlie his rejection of the term ‘matter’ as meaningless. As is well known, Berkeley thinks that it is impossible to perceive matter. If one cannot perceive matter, then, per Berkeley, one can have no idea of it; if one can have no idea (...) of it, then one cannot speak meaningfully of it. But if this is Berkeley’s position, then there is a puzzle, because Berkeley also explicitly claims that it is impossible to perceive/have ideas of minds. So if he is relying on a criterion on which terms get their meaning by referring to ideas, then, just as Berkeley rejects talk of material substance, so, too, must he reject talk of mental substance. Famously, however, Berkeley insists that there is no parity between the cases of material and mental substance. It is typically suggested that the disparity between matter and minds rests on the fact that although one cannot strictly speaking perceive minds, nonetheless Berkeley thinks that one can have experiential access to minds via reflection, and that this access allows for meaningful talk of minds. Of course, one can only have reflective experience of one’s own mind. But what of other minds, which one cannot reflectively experience? Here the usual tactic is to suppose that, although one cannot have direct reflective experience of other minds, nonetheless one can indirectly experience such minds via analogy to our own minds, and that this indirect experience grounds the meaningfulness of talk of other minds. In this paper, I argue that the reasoning behind Berkeley’s ‘likeness principle,’ that an idea can only be like another idea, can be generalized to argue against this experience-based account of our access to other minds. I claim instead that Berkeley allows for the meaningfulness of talk of other minds by expanding the criterion of meaning in a different way. I argue that Berkeley holds a criterion of meaning on which a term is meaningful just in case it signifies either an object of experience or an object that one has reason to posit on the basis of experience, i.e., an object that is necessary to explain our experiences. When an object is neither experienced nor explains our experiences, then and only then is Berkeley willing to reject it as meaningless. Thus he writes of “the word matter,” that “it is no matter whether there is such a thing or no, since it no way concerns us: and I do not see the advantage there is in disputing about we know not what, and we know not why” (Principles, §77.) The word is not meaningless merely because we do not know what matter might be; it is meaningless because we also do not know why it should be. Correspondingly, I argue that the term ‘mind’ is meaningful because although we have no experience of minds, nonetheless they play an important role in explaining our experiences. (shrink)

In this paper I look at a particular narrative, famously articulated by Reid, that holds that Descartes’s ‘Way of Ideas’ leads inevitably to Berkeley’s immaterialism. In the service of examining this narrative more closely, I consider Andrew Baxter’s early 18th century criticisms of Berkeley, and especially Baxter’s view that immaterialism begins with a dream hypothesis and is therefore self-undermining. I suggest that a careful consideration of Baxter’s criticism is illuminating in a number of ways: in so far as it anticipates (...) future criticisms of and engagements with Berkeleyan immaterialism, in so far as it helps to reveal the actual structure of Berkeley’s appeal to dreams, and in so far as it helps to uncover the roots of this narrative tying Berkeleyan idealism to Cartesian scepticism. (shrink)

This is a response to Stavroula Glezakos’ commentary on my paper, in which I address three main points: (1) whether Berkeley is entitled to argue via inference to the best explanation, (2) whether Berkeley’s likeness principle might be too strict, and (3) whether the texts support my reading.

On the old story about early modern philosophy, Descartes is a “rationalist” who devalues the senses, and Berkeley an “empiricist” who rejects this. Berkeley plays into this story in his Notebooks, where he writes: “in vindication of the senses effectually to confute wt Descartes saith in ye last par. of the last Med: viz. that the senses oftener inform him falsly than truely”. But when we turn to this “last par.,” we find Descartes maintaining that “my senses report the truth (...) much more frequently than not”. In this paper, I draw on recent commentary to outline Descartes' positive account of sensation. I then look carefully at Berkeley's account of the same, in particular, by considering his distinction between human and divine perception and his account of the laws of nature. In so doing, I suggest that there are noteworthy parallels between Descartes' and Berkeley's accounts with respect to the function of sensation and the ways in which sensations can fulfill this function. I conclude by sketching some ways in which this understanding of Berkeley can illuminate some aspects of Berkeley scholarship. (shrink)