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Berkeley and Cognition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

M. Glouberman
M. Glouberman
Affiliation:
University of the Negev
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Extract

In ‘Berkeley and God’, Jonathan Bennett diagnoses Berkeley's intermittent advocacy of the proposition that physical things ‘do sometimes exist when not perceived by any human spirit’ (380) by pinning on him the invalid argument, vitiated by the ambiguity of ‘depend’, from (i) all ideas depend on (=belong to, are owned by) some spirit or other, via (ii) some sensible ideas do not depend on (=are not caused by) these spirits themselves, to (iii) some ideas depend on (=belong to, are owned by) non-finite spirits.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 56 , Issue 216 , April 1981 , pp. 213 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1981

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References

1 Philosophy 40 (1965). Unembellished numbers in the text give the pagination in Locke and Berkeley, edited by Martin, C. B. and Armstrong, D. M. (Garden City, New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I incorporate classical references into the text as well, supplying section locations in standard editions. Berkeley: quotations are from Berkeley's Philosophical Writings, edited by Armstrong, D. M. (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1965)Google Scholar. For the Dialogues and correspondence, I give Armstrong's pagination after an oblique stroke. Locke: Essay (London: Routledge, undated). Kant: The Critique of Pure Reason, cited in A/B form, is translated by Smith, N. K. (London: Macmillan, 1964)Google Scholar. Quotations from the Dissertation and correspondence make use of translations in Kant: Selected Pre-Critical Writings by Kerferd, G. B. and Walford, D. E. (Manchester: Manchester U.P., 1968)Google Scholar. For the latter two sources, I give volume and page number of the texts in the Academy edition of Kant's works, followed by pagination in the translated edition, both after an oblique stroke, and in that order.

2 As sympathetic a scholar as Furlong, E. J. puts up a very dispirited defence in ‘Berkeley and the Tree in the Quad’, Philosophy 41 (1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his recent study, Berkeley (London, Henly and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), 177, George Pitcher approves Bennett's charge that Berkeley is ambiguity-blind.

3 I am indebted to Thomas, George H., ‘Berkeley's God Does Not Perceive’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 14 (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Similar remarks apply to the word ‘appearance’ which, on Bennett's reading, Berkeley should avoid like the plague. He doesn't.

5 It will not be lost on the reader that the characterization of a datum as an ‘appearance’ is (implicitly) relational.

6 Cf. Spinoza's discussion of superficiality at Ethics 1P15N.

7 This would also supply a partial explanation of Berkeley's use of the semantic terminology concerning standard sensible ideas as remarked in section 2. For Berkeley maintains that (abstract) predicates are basically and proprietarily linguistic.

8 See Hume's far more explicit account of this matter, in discussing ‘distinctions of reason’, at Treatise 1.1.7, last paragraphs. Cf. Berkeley's comment in the Commonplace Book 318/371.

9 Grant No. 56436, from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, covered part of the material costs of preparing this piece.