Presents a concise and comprehensive analysis of George Berkeley’s thought and the impact of his intellectual contributions to philosophy In this latest addition to the Blackwell Great Minds series, noted scholar of early modern philosophy Margaret Atherton examines Berkeley’s most influential work and demonstrates the significant conceptual impact of his ideas in metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. A concise and rigorous primer on Berkeley’s essential writings and contributions to modern philosophy Written by a leading scholar of early modern (...) philosophy Offers insight into the foundations of modern metaphysical and religious philosophy Equips readers to find firm footing in Berkeley’s wider body of published work in the canon of Western philosophy. (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

Introduction In 1709 George Berkeley published his first substantial work, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. As a contribution to the theory of ...

This paper offers a new way to make sense of disagreement expansion from a polylogical perspective by incorporating various places in addition to players and positions into the analysis. The concepts build on prior implicit ideas about disagreement space by suggesting how to more fully account for argumentative context, and its construction, in large-scale complex controversies. As a basis for our polylogical analysis, we use a New York Times news story reporting on an oil train explosion—a significant point in the (...) broader controversy over producing oil and gas via hydraulic fracturing. (shrink)

A specific issue for argumentation theory is whether information and communication technologies play any role in governing argument — that is, as parties engage in practical activities across space and time via ICTs, does technology matter for the interplay of argumentative content and process in managing disagreement? The case made here is that technologies do matter because they are not merely conduits of communication but have a role in the pragmatics of communication and argumentation. In particular, ICTs should be recognized (...) as communication-information services that are delegated degrees of responsibility for managing disagreements arising from practical activities. These services are organized around practical theories for designing disagreement space. However, recognizing this relationship between argument and technology requires accounting for procedures, techniques, or rules and speech acts that are not argumentative propositions in any strict sense but that are consequential for what becomes argumentation in any setting. An account about designing disagreement space, grounded in Jackson and Jacobs’s theory of Disagreement Management, is put forward to address these issues while more generally contributing to understanding argument in context. (shrink)

An invaluable complement to the standards works in early modern philosophy, this anthology introduces an important selection from the largely unknown writings of women philosophers of the early modern period. Readings comment on major works of the period and are easily integrated into courses in the history of modern philosophy. Included are letters to prominent philosophers, philosophical tracts arguing a particular view, and comments on controversies of the day. Each section is prefaced by a headnote giving a biographical account of (...) its author and setting the piece in historical context. Atherton's introduction provides a solid framework for assessing these works and their place in modern philosophy. -- from back cover. (shrink)

Reflections on contemporary national and global change, including its implications for marginalisation, are developed through an appreciation of Manchester as a fulcrum of such processes, and in critical conversation with Ronald Preston's social theology. The reflections also suggest key features of a contemporary public theology. These are elaborated in the second part of the article with references to an emerging substantive public theology agenda through reflections on a bias for inclusivity, the nature of the human, and the procedures for religious (...) interventions in the public square. The article concludes with a brief consideration of Manchester's central role in developing such a public theology, and the latter's emerging character as promoting connections. (shrink)

Berkeley published the New Theory in 1709, the Principles in 1710, and Three Dialogues in 1713. These three books, while differing from one another in form and in content, nevertheless display considerable overlap with one another, covering much the same ground. There is no reason to regard the use Berkeley makes of idealism and claims based on idealism to be significantly different in the New Theory from the other works, and the conclusions he draws there are similar to those of (...) the later works. The Principles certainly differs from the New Theory but is like Three Dialogues in explicitly endorsing an idealist ontology. Nevertheless, the Principles does differ from Three Dialogues in offering considerably less argumentation for this ontology. It can be surmised that Berkeley was acutely aware of the difficulties of convincing others of the truth of his theory, and was prepared to think and re‐think the best way of putting his arguments persuasively. (shrink)

Students of Stoic philosophy, especially of Stoic ethics, have a lot to swallow. Virtues and emotions are bodies; virtue is the only good, and constitutes happiness, while vice is the only evil; emotions are judgements ; all sins are equal; and everyone bar the sage is mad, bad and dangerous to know. Non-Stoics in antiquity seem for the most part to find these doctrines as bizarre as we do. Their own philosophical or ideological perspectives, and the criticisms of the Stoa (...) to which these gave rise, are no less open to criticism than are the paradoxes and puzzles under attack – but they may be, often are, better documented, less provocatively attention-begging, or simply more familiar. Even disputes within the Stoa can be obscured or distorted by modern prejudices. Posidonius rejected Chrysippus' theory of a unitary soul, one rational through and through, on the grounds that such a theory could not satisfactorily account for the genesis of bad – excessive and irrational – emotions, the πάθη. Posidonius' own Platonising, tripartite soul feels more familiar to us because the Republic tends to be a set text rather more often than do the fragments of Chrysippus' de anima; and the balance in Plato's favour is unlikely to change. When Posidonius wrote, on the other hand, the Chrysippean soul was school orthodoxy, and Platonism the latest thing in radical chic. (shrink)

It is time to bring the rich resources of these traditions into the contemporary debate about the nature of self. This volume is the first of its kind.

Stoic work on ambiguity represents one of the most innovative, sophisticated and rigorous contributions to philosophy and the study of language in western antiquity. This book is both a comprehensive survey of the often difficult and scattered sources, and an attempt to locate Stoic material in the rich array of contexts, ancient and modern, which alone can guarantee full appreciation of its subtlety, scope and complexity. The comparisons and contrasts which this book constructs will intrigue not just classical scholars, and (...) philosophers, but also logicians, theoretical linguists, communication theorists and historians of grammar and of literary theory. The Stoics on Ambiguity is designed to be intelligible to readers with no Greek or Latin. (shrink)

Students of Stoic philosophy, especially of Stoic ethics, have a lot to swallow. Virtues and emotions are bodies; virtue is the only good, and constitutes happiness, while vice is the only evil; emotions are judgements ; all sins are equal; and everyone bar the sage is mad, bad and dangerous to know. Non-Stoics in antiquity seem for the most part to find these doctrines as bizarre as we do. Their own philosophical or ideological perspectives, and the criticisms of the Stoa (...) to which these gave rise, are no less open to criticism than are the paradoxes and puzzles under attack – but they may be, often are, better documented, less provocatively attention-begging, or simply more familiar. Even disputes within the Stoa can be obscured or distorted by modern prejudices. Posidonius rejected Chrysippus' theory of a unitary soul, one rational through and through, on the grounds that such a theory could not satisfactorily account for the genesis of bad – excessive and irrational – emotions, the πάθη . Posidonius' own Platonising, tripartite soul feels more familiar to us because the Republic tends to be a set text rather more often than do the fragments of Chrysippus' de anima; and the balance in Plato's favour is unlikely to change. When Posidonius wrote, on the other hand, the Chrysippean soul was school orthodoxy, and Platonism the latest thing in radical chic. (shrink)

Berkeley has been notoriously charged with inconsistency because he held that spiritual substance exists, Although he argued against the existence of material substance. Berkeley is only inconsistent on the assumption that his argument in favor of spiritual substance parallels the rejected argument for material substance. I show that berkeley is relying on quite a different argument, One perfectly consistent with his theory of ideas, Based on presuppositions the germs of which can be found in the thought of his predecessors in (...) the theory of ideas, Descartes and locke. (shrink)

Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own, asked why there were no women writers before 1800. If she had been thinking about philosophers instead of writers in the traditional women’s areas of plays and fiction, she might have asked why there were no women philosophers at all, for I suspect that most people would find it very hard to name a woman philosopher before the present day. To help her in answering her question, she invented a fictional character, Judith (...) Shakespeare, a sister to William Shakespeare. The conditions of Judith’s life made it impossible for her to write, and so Woolf speculated that the women who would have been writers did not lead the kinds of lives that permitted them to realize their talents. Woolf’s image of Judith Shakespeare is a very powerful one but her speculation is only half right. There undoubtedly were many women in the past who would have been talented writers or philosophers if their lives had been different, but Judith Shakespeare’s image can also blot out our knowledge of women who, contrary to Woolf’s speculation, did exist and did write. Indeed, we know now there were even women who wrote philosophy. These women were in many ways exceptional, for Woolf is quite right that most women did not live either with enough privacy or with enough income to allow them to write. Often, they were members of the aristocracy, whose position enabled them to behave eccentrically, sometimes to be able to demand privacy, and sometimes to be able to invite contacts with leading intellectuals. Quite often, these women were childless, which in an age before birth control made them exceptions to the general rule, and at a time when many women were bearing their last child in their forties, was the only thing that could have given them private time. Nevertheless, research in the last ten or fifteen years has uncovered the work of quite a number of these women: for example, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Electress Sophie, Queen Christina of Sweden, Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia, Anne, Lady Conway, Mary Astell, Damaris, Lady Masham, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Emilie du Chatelet, Catherine Macaulay, Lady Mary Shepherd, and many more. Woolf’s question then comes up again in a slightly different form. Why is it that the work of these women was for so long unknown? Why do so many people even today remain ignorant of the existence of women philosophers before the present day? I am not going to answer this question directly; in fact, I suspect it has multiple answers. Instead, I am going to present a case study from amongst all the cases of all of these women. I hope by considering the history of this woman, and, in particular, considering the way in which she was read, it will be possible to gain some insights into the ways in which women have failed to be incorporated into philosophical history. The woman I am going to discuss is Lady Mary Shepherd. Mary Shepherd actually falls outside of Woolf’s target date of 1800, since she flourished in the first half of the nineteenth century, but this merely reflects my point about the greater ignorance that prevails about women in philosophy. (shrink)

George Berkeley's first published work, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision was prepared simultaneously with his second, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. In the New Theory, Berkeley argues that visual objects are in the mind, mind‐dependent ideas, but he appears to leave tactile objects outside the mind in mind‐independent space. The position the New Theory refutes is not the one that Berkeley identifies as causing problems for the Principles. But he still sees the New Theory (...) as contributing an important step in the argument of the Principles. He is frequently said to have employed a language analogy, to have compared vision to language, and indeed he does just that through the New Theory. Berkeley apparently assumed that anyone who read both the New Theory and the Principles would be in a position to appreciate the usefulness of the New Theory for the moral and theological aims of the Principles. (shrink)

It is argued here that large-scale organization and networked computing enable new divisions of communicative work aimed at shaping the content, direction, and outcomes of societal conversations. The challenge for argumentation theory and practice lies in attending to these new divisions of communicative work in constituting contemporary argumentative realities. Goffman’s conceptualization of participation frameworks and production formats are applied to articulate the communicative work of organizations afforded by networked computing that invents and innovates argument in all of its senses—as product, (...) process, and procedure. Communicative work, however, may be scaffolding argumentative contexts and practices that are quite different than what has constituted past argumentative realities. The computerization of argument happens as organizations invent and innovate argument practice relative to the demands and opportunities of interorganizational communication. The cases and examples examined here suggest that argument practice is evolving around the logic of conversation and the principle of personalization. The analysis challenges argumentation theory to seriously engage with the construction of communicative contexts and the realization of ideas about disagreement management in organizational practice and information infrastructures. Directions for integrating insights from a design perspective on argument with insights from organizational and information systems theory are proposed for coming to terms with an era of large-scale organization and computerization, in particular the evolution of argument practice, the inscription of argument in the built environment, and the absorption of socio-cultural argument practices by organizations and computation. (shrink)

George Berkeley was born on 12 March 1685 in Ireland, in or near Kilkenny. Berkeley's education began in Kilkenny, at the Duke of Ormonde's school. Berkeley took his BA in 1704 and, while waiting for a fellowship vacancy, worked on some mathematical issues, the results of which he published in 1707 as Arithmetica and Miscellanea Mathematica. In 1709, he published his first significant work, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, rapidly followed in 1710 by A Treatise Concerning the (...) Principles of Human Knowledge. In 1724, Berkeley published A Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches, in which he laid out his plans for his university, to be situated in Bermuda. There are several important lessons to be learned from Berkeley's continued involvement with The Querist throughout the period of his life at Cloyne. Dying at age 68, Berkeley can be said to have lived out close to his allotted three‐score‐and‐ten years. (shrink)

George Berkeley's arguments have attracted a good deal of attention, but the account of abstraction has been often treated as if it were an entirely independent piece of writing. Berkeley links Locke's use of abstract general ideas to a belief in the possibility of an idea of existence abstracted from perception, that is, to the central issue of the Principles of Human Knowledge. The mistake Berkeley has been pointing to, the reliance on abstract general ideas, is a philosophical mistake, but (...) here it is clear Berkeley takes this mistake to have far‐reaching consequences, diverting the search for knowledge from what would be useful to know into trivial byways. Having identified the consequences of a mistaken belief in abstract ideas, Berkeley returns to his earlier claim, that it is language that leads us into this error. (shrink)

In precisely 33 paragraphs that begin his Principles of Human Knowledge George Berkeley lays out the argument that establishes his position. There are strong reasons for adopting “immaterialism” as the name for Berkeley's theory. Another term frequently used in connection with Berkeley is “idealism”. This term too has a lengthy pedigree: Kant referred to Berkeley as a Dogmatic Idealist. Berkeley does go on to offer an elucidation of what it means to say that spirit is the only substance, but he (...) does not do so right away. The only argument that he has offered rests on the anti‐abstraction claim. Berkeley has not, for example, argued that the reason sensible qualities exist only in the mind is because there is no material substance for them to exist in. Anti‐abstractionism also turns out to be central to his argument that ideas cannot resemble mind‐independent real things. (shrink)

Since replying to objections is a familiar philosophical practice, there is nothing very surprising about the presence of such replies here in the Principles of Human Knowledge. The author of the objections is George Berkeley and he decided which objections to answer and in what order they would appear. Berkeley points out that on his criterion, an idea of a thing that is extended, solid, and heavy will be the idea of a real thing. Berkeley says that extension belongs to (...) mind because it exists when perceived; it is a manner of being perceived by a mind. It is not an accident of mind, but instead exists because of something a mind does. The mistake the philosophers are driven to making, according to Berkeley, lies in misunderstanding the nature of the cause of our ideas. Berkeley's own position then is designed specifically to address the mistakes of the philosophers and to provide a better theory. (shrink)

Berkeley begins his discussion of the consequences of his principles negatively, by identifying a rival principle, one that has adverse consequences for human knowledge. About natural philosophers, Berkeley wants it to be known that they are the worst offenders when it comes to encouraging scepticism. This is because they have added what amounts to a new principle to a general mistrust of the senses engendered by the twofold existence principle. Berkeley attributes the error philosophers have fallen into a belief in (...) abstract ideas, linking the issue of external existence with that of abstraction. Berkeley's refutation of scepticism together with his positive account of the knowledge of nature constitutes his evidence for his proof that we have knowledge of God. Understanding the nature of knowledge that is actual allows us to identify the agent of that knowledge as a wise and good spirit, that is to say, as God. (shrink)

In the first few pages of the Third Dialogue, several interesting things happen that provide a framework for this final dialogue. The first is that Hylas embraces skepticism with noticeable fervor. At the beginning of the Third Dialogue, Hylas is ripe for the kind of skepticism to which philosophers fall prey. Philonous's reply to the annihilation objection does depend, however, on a claim he has made previously, that sensible things that are independent of my mind must depend on God's mind, (...) for the reason that ideas can only depend upon minds. Philonous's argument rests on the allegation that ideas are inert and only spirits like God are agent. Hylas's response to Philonous's claim, that he is merely adopting the standard theistic position that God is the ultimate cause, is to offer his own standard objection to any such theistic claim, a version of the problem of evil. (shrink)

The First Dialogue of Three Dialogues covers a lot of ground. It introduces the two characters of the Dialogues, lays down the issue to be discussed, and, by means of the conversation, wrings from Hylas two important concessions. Hylas, who is apparently accustomed to sleeping in, opens the dialogue by revealing that he is up early due to a problem on his mind arising from a late night discussion. Philonous responds with a flowery and enthusiastic account of the beauties of (...) nature to be enjoyed by the early riser. Philonous gets from Hylas the willing admission that nothing is perceived immediately except the proper objects of the senses. George Berkeley leads into the discussion of primary and secondary qualities from a last ditch attempt by Hylas to resurrect his argument about sound with respect to color. He proposes that color is nothing more than the motion of light particles. (shrink)

In Hylas's first attempt to retrieve his original intuition he tries to repair matters by offering a more complicated account of what a perception is. He is not quarreling with the position that the understanding of the world begins with having perceptions, but he does want to maintain that perceptions can consist of two elements, what Hylas calls an object and a sensation. Hylas calls himself a “thinking being” but one who is affected by sensations. Berkeley concludes the First Dialogue (...) with a discussion that aims at undercutting the view that ideas can be thought of as pictures of the objects they represent. He kicks off this discussion by having Philonous restate Hylas's position. The last point of agreement reached by Hylas and Philonous at the end of the First Dialogue is the Likeness Principle: an idea can be like nothing but another idea. (shrink)

The Second Dialogue at first reading looks like something of a mixed bag. As the Dialogue begins, Hylas contributes one further reason for accepting his belief that to exist is one thing and to be perceived is another. Philonous's claim is that philosophers who insist on the absolute existence of sensible things are the ones who threaten men of sense with skepticism. Hylas is prepared to accept God as the ultimate cause of our ideas, but he is unwilling to concede (...) that God is the only cause of our ideas. Hylas's last gasp is to maintain he doesn't need a positive reason to take matter to exist, just so long as the existence of matter has not been shown to be impossible. The Second Dialogue concludes as Hylas admits that matter has been shown to be impossible. In the Second Dialogue, however, this ontological conclusion is embedded in a wider framework. (shrink)

Since the 1960s, many artists have incorporated ecological concerns into their work, an endeavor that has required new strategies in art-making. To explore recent American manifestations of these interests, the David and Alfred Smart Museum commissioned new projects from artists Mark Dion, Peter Fend, and Dan Peterman, each focusing on interrelationships between particular organisms—human beings-and a specific group of sites—a museum building, a river landscape, and a university campus. The results, exhibited at the Smart Museum during the summer of (...) 2000, evoke the varied scales, from the microscopic to the global, at which human actions affect the environment. This catalog documents each of the artists' projects through an array of images and words: Smart Museum Associate Curator Stephanie Smith provides an introduction and brief overviews of the three projects, each of the artists contribute statements, and photographers Susan Anderson and Tom van Eynde document—in over 100 images—the processes and projects that comprise the exhibition. (shrink)

A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life. For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime's quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. (...) In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies. Solms is a frank and fearless guide on an extraordinary voyage from the dawn of neuropsychology and psychoanalysis to the cutting edge of contemporary neuroscience, adhering to the medically provable. But he goes beyond other neuroscientists by paying close attention to the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated, whose uncanny conversations expose much about the brain's obscure reaches. Most importantly, you will be able to recognize the workings of your own mind for what they really are, including every stray thought, pulse of emotion, and shift of attention. The Hidden Spring will profoundly alter your understanding of your own subjective experience. (shrink)

Locke, in his discussion of essences, makes extensive use of a distinction he introduces between nominal and real essences. This distinction has always been found interesting and important, and in fact, R.I. Aaron said of it that ‘there is no more important distinction in the Essay.’ Nevertheless, to say there has not been general agreement about what Locke was getting at is putting it mildly. Interpretations of Locke's point in making such a distinction have varied widely, depending upon whether the (...) importance of the real or the nominal essence is stressed. Locke tells us we should distinguish the nominal essence, which is the abstract idea to which a general name is attached and for which it stands, from the real essence, which is the ‘real internal, but generally in Substances, unknown Constitution of Things, whereon their discoverable Qualities depend.’. (shrink)

Apollonius Dyscolus’ use of ambiguity in grammatical problem-solving has in recent years had the benefit of two scholarly studies. David Blank, in the course of his analysis of the Syntax as a whole, has described the broad functions which Apollonius assigns to ambiguity. Jean Lallot's 1988 paper, ‘Apollonius Dyscole et l'ambigüité linguistique: problemes et solutions’, is devoted exclusively to the treatment of linguistic ambiguity in Apollonius’ work. Yet it is to be feared that the flood of light thrown by these (...) scholars on what had been an unregarded corner of ancient grammar has shown up rather more than Apollonius would have cared to admit, both about the nature, and about the prospects for success, of the enterprise on which he was engaged. At the same time, certain structural features of ancient grammar, at least of the ancient grammar which Apollonius himself constructed, have come into sharper focus: features clear enough with the benefit of hindsight, but glimpsed, it appears, all too dimly by Apollonius himslf. It is now worryingly clear not only that ambiguity was ambiguous for Apollonius, but also that the ambiguity of ambiguity represented a genuine threat to the coherence and value of his work. In this paper I set out to justify both these claims. (shrink)

Bringing together the latest scientific advances and some of the most enduring subtle philosophical puzzles and problems, this book collects original historical and contemporary sources to explore the wide range of issues surrounding the nature of life. Selections ranging from Aristotle and Descartes to Sagan and Dawkins are organised around four broad themes covering classical discussions of life, the origins and extent of natural life, contemporary artificial life creations and the definition and meaning of 'life' in its most general form. (...) Each section is preceded by an extensive introduction connecting the various ideas discussed in individual chapters and providing helpful background material for understanding them. With its interdisciplinary perspective, this fascinating collection is essential reading for scientists and philosophers interested in astrobiology, synthetic biology and the philosophy of life. (shrink)