The new Berkeley

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 1-24

  Hight, Marc ^a   Ott, Walter ^b  

^a HAMPDEN SYDNEY COLLEGE   (United States)

^b EAST TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149354768     PISSN: 00455091     EISSN: 19110820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00455091.2004.10716557     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. All references are to A.A. Luce and T.E. Jessop, eds., The Works of George Berkeley, 9 vols. (London: Thomas Nelson 1949-58).
2. When citing the Principles, the numbers given refer to paragraphs; when citing the Philosophical Commentaries, the reference is to a numbered entry; when other works are cited, the reference is to the page number of the relevant volume in Luce and Jessop. The following abbreviations are convenient: NTV, New Theory of Vision; PI, the published Introduction to the Principles; P, Principles, Part I; PC, Philosophical Commentaries; TD, Three Dialogues. References to Descartes are to John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, eds., The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1985) (hereafter 'CSM').
3. See especially Margaret Atherton, 'The Coherence of Berkeley's Theory of Mental Substance,' in Critical and Interpretive Essays on Berkeley, Walter Creery, ed. (London: Croom Helm 1991)
4. and Kenneth Winkler, Berkeley: An Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1989).
5. Stephen Daniel, 'Berkeley, Suárez, and the Esse-Existere Distinction,' American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 74 (2000) 621-36, at 623
6. Daniel, 'Berkeley, Suárez,' 623.
7. Berkeley's Ontology (Indianapolis: Hackett 1992), 170.
8. The core of this chapter is reprinted in a shorter form in Muehlmann, ed., Berkeley's Metaphysics: Structural Interpretive, and Critical Essays (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press 1995).
9. Muehlmann, Berkeley's Ontology, 188
10. G.W. Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, Leroy Loemker, ed. (Boston: D. Reidel 1976), 116.
11. Cf. Descartes, who invokes the same exhaustive distinction. Principles I:48, CSM 1:208.
12. Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, Categories (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984), 4a10.
13. We borrow this example and analysis from William Kneale, 'The Notion of a Substance,' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 40 (1939-1940), 105.
14. We read 'require' instead of Cottingham's 'depends on' for indigeat. CSM I, 210, Principles 51.
15. It is worth noting that the sense in which properties depend on a substance is, for Descartes, quite different from that in which substances depend on God.
16. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Peter H. Nidditch, ed. (New York: Clarendon Press 1991), 295 and 297 (II.23.1 and II.23.4). It is important in this connection to recall that Locke sometimes uses 'idea' to refer to the quality the idea is an idea of (see II.viii.8). In the former passage, for instance, Locke's point seems to be that there must be an extra-mental substance which supports the qualities, not the ideas. Similarly, in the latter passage the 'antecedent of 'they' is 'sensible Qualities' rather than 'ideas.' In any case, Locke clearly holds that both ideas and qualities (conflated or not) require an underlying continuant or support.
17. Locke, Essay, II.12.6.
18. Cf. II.12.4, where he distinguishes modes from substances in virtue of the fact that the former cannot subsist by themselves.
19. Letter to Arnauld April 30, 1687. G.W. Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, Leroy Loemker, trans. and ed. (Boston: D. Reidel 1976), 86
20. Descartes seems to be an immediate exception, since he takes matter to be a substance yet attributes infinite divisibility to it. But since it is matter 'all the way down,' we actually never reach a lower level for the parts. Recall that in his definition of a substance (Principles 51), matter qualifies because it requires nothing other than itself to exist. For matter, parts are parts, and all parts are essentially homogeneous in their properties except for those associated with size and motion, and those are only accidental. We submit that what Descartes was chiefly concerned about was not simplicity per se, but rather the need for a continuant. Matter underlies change, regardless of how far down one needs to divide it to get an appropriate explanation.
21. Leibniz, Philosophical Papers, 620
22. If we are being careful, no external cause for being might perhaps only be a necessary condition for substancehood. Leibniz, however, apparently thinks it sufficient as well.
23. Quoted from A.A. Luce, 'Another Look at Berkeley's Notebooks' Hermathena 110 (1970), 8.
24. Michael Ayers, Berkeley: Philosophical Works (Dent: London 1975), xxi-xxii.
25. Bertil Beifrage, 'A New Approach to Berkeley's Philosophical Notebooks,' in E. Sosa, ed., Essays on the Philosophy of George Berkeley (Boston: D. Reidel 1987), 217-30.
26. In private correspondence Daniel has asserted that Belfrage's article has 'refuted' Luce's interpretation of the '+' sign. More charitably, Daniel has the admirable desire to preserve as much of Commentaries as good scholarship will allow and thus believes that any possibility that we can employ the entries seriously compels us to do so. Although we are sympathetic, we believe that changes required elsewhere to accommodate this methodology come at too high a price.
27. Beltrage, 226
28. See Ayers, 'Substance, Reality, and the Great Dead Philosophers,' American Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1970), 38-49.
29. For a detailed analysis of Berkeley's gradual rejection of the congeries account, see Charles McCracken, 'Berkeley's Cartesian Concept of Mind,' The Monist 71, 4 (1988), 596-611, at 597.
30. Daniel, 'Berkeley on the Meaning of Idea,' presented at the APA Pacific Division 2002, 4.
31. See also 'Berkeley, Suárez,' 623.
32. Daniel, 'Berkeley's Christian Neoplatonism, Archetypes, and Divine Ideas,' Journal of the History of Philosophy 39, 2 (2001) 239-58, at 245-6
33. Daniel, 'Berkeley, Suárez,' 633-4
34. See, e.g., Aquinas's de ente et essentia, in Selected Philosophical Writings, T. McDermott, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993).
35. Suárez, Metaphysical Disputations 2, 1, 9, in Opera (Paris, 1856-78)
36. For Descartes's statement of this position, see Principles §63-4.
37. This conception may be what leads Malebranche to say that 'the soul is painted with the colours of the rainbow when looking at it'; in such a case, the soul 'actually becomes blue, red, or yellow' (The Search After Truth, T.M. Lennon and P.J. Olscamp, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997), Eleventh Elucidation, 634.
38. Only ideas qua sensations are modifications; ideas qua 'pure perceptions' are, for Malebranche, eternal ideas in the mind of God. For a valiant attempt to make sense of Malebranche's claims about the former, see Nicholas Jolley, The Light of the Soul (Oxford: Clarendon 1990), 60. On Jolley's view, Malebranche is exploiting the tendency, found also in Descartes and Locke, to treat ideas of secondary qualities on analogy with pain. They, like pain, do not have representational content.
39. Daniel, 'Berkeley's Christian Neoplatonism,' 249
40. Daniel, 'Berkeley's Christian Neo-Platonism,' 245
41. Cf. PC 715
42. Muehlmann cites the coach passage at TD 204 (176), where Berkeley seems to indicate that we can perceive the coach via the sound we hear. Muehlmann concludes that '[A] sound does sometimes "perceive a color" ....' In fact, Berkeley says that the sound suggests the coach. We think NTV 9 is a more charitable example for Muehlmann, even though we think it too fails to make his point.
43. 'Introduction,' in Berkeley's Metaphysics, 15
44. Cf. P 57
45. The authors would like to thank Robert Muehlmann, Stephen Daniel, and two anonymous referees.