Pragmatism: The unformulated method of Bishop Berkeley

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 81-96

  Friedman, Lesley ^a  

^a Lynchburg College in Virginia

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33745155532     PISSN: 00225053     EISSN: 15384586     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2002.0096     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. Review of Fraser's "The Works of George Berkeley," Nation 73 (1901): 95-6.
2. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in Volume II of The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, 9 vols., A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, eds. (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1948-57).
3. See especially H. S. Thayer, "Berkeley and Some Anticipations of Pragmatism," in Meaning and Action (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1981), 499-507,
4. and Charles S. Hardwick, "Berkeley and Peirce," in Graduate Studies-Texas Tech University: C. S. Peirce Bicentennial International Congress, K. L. Ketner and J. E. Cook, eds. (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech Press, 1981), 81-5.
5. See also R. H. Popkin, "Berkeley's Influence on American Philosophy," Hermathena 82 (1953): 128-46,
6. and James A. Moore, "The Semiotic of Bishop Berkeley-A Prelude to Peirce?" Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 20 (1984): 325-42.
7. For a more detailed account of these points, see Douglas R. Anderson and Peter S. Groff, "Peirce on Berkeley's Nominalistic Platonism," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1998): 165-78;
8. Cornelis de Waal, "The Real Issue Between Nominalism and Realism, Peirce and Berkeley Reconsidered," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 32 (1996): 425-42;
9. and Lesley Friedman "Peirce's Reality and Berkeley's Blunders," Journal of the History of Philosophy 35 (1997): 253-68.
10. See, for example, Michael Murray, "An Introduction to Bishop Berkeley's 'Theory of Vision,'" British Journal of Ophthalmology 28 (1944): 600-11,
11. and Alan R. White, "A Linguistic Approach to Berkeley's Philosophy," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 16 (1955): 172-87.
12. For more on Peirce's sense of 'philosophy' see Kenneth Laine Ketner's Introduction to Classical American Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 14ff.
13. See Kenneth Laine Ketner's "Peirce's Ethics of Terminology," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 17 (1981): 327-47.
14. Susan Haack makes this point in "Descartes, Peirce and the Cognitive Community," Monist 65 (1982): 169, n. 3.
15. For a list of three classes of indubitables, see David Savan, "Decision and Knowledge in Peirce," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 1 (1965), 40.
16. For more on "paper doubt" and the differences between Peirce and Descartes on doubt, see Haack, op. cit., 156 and 158;
17. Robert G. Meyers, "Peirce on Cartesian Doubt," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 3 (1967): 22-3;
18. and Lesley Friedman "Doubt & Inquiry: Peirce and Descartes Revisited," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35 (1999): 724-47.
19. He ends, however, with the remark above which, I hold, is ultimately his view: that we cannot doubt what we immediately perceive. See also Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, Third Dialogue, para. 21, Volume II of The Works of George Berkeley Bishop of Cloyne (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1948-57): ". . . when, therefore [ideas] are actually perceived there can be no doubt of their existence . . . what a jest it is for a philosopher to question the existence of sensible things . . . I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel" (230).