Contra Todd Ryan’s interpretation, I argue that it is possible to reconstruct a metaphysical argument that does not restrict likeness in general to ideas. While I agree with Ryan that Berkeley’s writings provide us with the resources to reconstruct such an argument, I disagree with Ryan that this argument entails a restriction of likeness to ideas. Unlike Ryan, I argue that Berkeley is not committed to the claim that we can compare only ideas, but to the view that the only thing that can be compared to an idea is another idea.
This paper argues for a re-evaluation of the relationship between Berkeley and his predecessor, the neo-Aristotelian thinker John Sergeant. In the literature to date, the relationship between these two thinkers has received attention for two reasons. First, some commentators have attempted to establish a causal connection between them by focusing on the fact that both thinkers develop a theory of “notions.” Second, some have argued that both Berkeley and Sergeant develop “anti-representationalist” arguments against Locke’s epistemology. The first issue has received much greater attention, particularly from commentators seeking an explanation for Berkeley’s use of the term “notion.” Only one scholar (G. A. Johnston in 1923) has considered Berkeley and Sergeant’s anti-representationalism in any depth. In this paper, I argue that the weight given to the causal connection between Berkeley and Sergeant’s “notions” is misplaced since the evidence in favor of this connection is weaker than is usually acknowledged. Instead, I build on Johnston’s analysis of the conceptual connection between Berkeley and Sergeant’s anti-representationalism. I first corroborate Johnston’s claim that there are striking similarities between their criticisms of Locke before going beyond that analysis to identify two important similarities between their anti-representationalist arguments.
In this paper, I present and analyze Berkeley’s sporadic claims on the animal‒human divide, concentrating on his early works, especially his Notebooks. Before drawing our attention to the importance of imagination, I start by contextualizing Berkeley’s views on animal cognition more generally. More specifically, I aim to clarify that though he verbally agrees with Descartes that animals cannot imagine like we do, Berkeley’s view is motivated by fundamentally different considerations. What he ultimately denies is that animals can imagine in a sense that requires the sort of spontaneous and creative activity we share more with God than animals.
I argue that for Berkeley the meaning of a general term is constituted by the multiple particular ideas indifferently signified by that term. This reading faces two challenges. First, Berkeley argues that the meaning of sentences containing general terms is constituted by the one idea signified by the name in that sentence rather than by multiple ideas, implying that general terms are meaningful although they do not signify multiple ideas. Second, Berkeley writes that finite minds know the meaning of the biblical phrase ‘good thing’ even though that phrase fails to signify any ideas at all. Both challenges are met by deploying Berkeley’s account of mediate perception.
Samuel Rickless has recently defended an act utilitarian interpretation of Berkeley’s Passive Obedience. Part of his argument is a criticism of my natural law reading of Berkeley, particularly my contention that natural lawyers are committed to a distributive notion of universality, while utilitarians are committed to a collective sense of universality. This essay is, in part, a reply to Rickless’s criticisms. I argue that if we assume that Berkeley was either a natural lawyer or a utilitarian, and if we can find grounds for distinguishing natural law theories from utilitarian theories, then a natural law theory provides a more philosophically defensible fit with the texts than does a utilitarian theory.
Berkeley’s two most obvious targets in Alciphron are Shaftesbury and Mandeville. However, as numerous commentators have pointed out, there is good reason to think Berkeley additionally targets Anthony Collins in this dialogue. In this paper, I bolster David Berman’s claim that “Collins looms large in the background” of Dialogue VII, and put some meat on the bones of Raymond Martin and John Barresi’s passing suggestion that there is a connection between the Clarke–Collins correspondence, Alciphron, and the objection that Berkeley raises regarding persons and their persistence conditions therein. Specifically, I argue that we have evidence that Berkeley’s objection to consciousness–based views of personal identity, as found in VII.8, is a response to a challenge that Collins raises to Clarke in “An Answer to Mr. Clarke’s Third Defense of his Letter to Mr. Dodwell.” This is significant not just because this objection is usually—and consistently—taken to be an objection to Locke, but also because Berkeley’s objection works against Collins’s theory of personal identity in a way that it doesn’t against Locke’s.
The article discusses Berkeley’s idea of how to promote the common good in Ireland in the first half of the 18th century when society differed in respect to religion, political obedience, language, and culture. More specifically, since religion was still the core of Berkeley’s vision of human well-being, the article contains a reconstruction of his views on religious diversity and tolerance, as they were discussed in his works published between the 1730s and 1750s, when he was Bishop in Cloyne and published his most practical works. They will be analyzed in order to present the meaning of an evolution in his attitude towards Irish Catholics during the period. My particular aim is to show that the ‘Good Bishop’ sincerely aimed at the conversion of their hearts to the ‘true religion’, despite his officially moderate attitude towards them after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.
