Berkeley An Interpretation

by Winkler, Kenneth P.

• ISBN13: 9780198249078
• ISBN10: 0198249071
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1989-05-11
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

George Berkeley (1685-1753) held that matter does not exist, and that the sensations we take to be caused by an indifferent and independent world are instead caused directly by God. Nature has no existence apart from the spirits who transmit and receive it. In this book, Winkler presents these conclusions as natural (though by no means inevitable) consequences of Berkeley's reflections on such topics as representation, abstraction, necessary truth, and cause and effect. He offers new interpretations of Berkeley's views on unperceived objects, corpuscularian science, and our knowledge of God and other minds.

Author Biography

Kenneth P. Winkler is Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College, Massachusetts

Table of Contents

Bibliographical Note	p. xiii
Words And Ideas	p. 1
Two kinds of signs	p. 1
Ideas as objects	p. 3
Ideas as images	p. 10
Representation and signification	p. 14
Abstract Ideas	p. 22
The argument	p. 28
Objections and replies	p. 35
Abstract ideas as images	p. 43
Abstract ideas as objects	p. 46
Does Berkeley blunder in reading Locke?	p. 49
Simple Ideas	p. 53
The search for a simple idea	p. 55
Simplicity and abstraction	p. 65
Consequences	p. 73
Necessity	p. 76
Simple and complex ideas	p. 80
Demonstration, necessity, and certainty	p. 82
An anachronistic hypothesis?	p. 98
Berkeley's response	p. 100
Conclusion	p. 102
Cause And Effect	p. 104
Berkeley on the causal relation	p. 106
Necessary connection	p. 117
The account defended	p. 129
Immaterialism	p. 137
The argument of Principles 4	p. 137
Immediate perception	p. 149
A commentary on the First Dialogue	p. 161
The argument of Principles 3	p. 175
Against matter	p. 178
The master argument	p. 183
Materialism and abstraction	p. 188
Berkeley's phenomenalism	p. 191
Unperceived Objects	p. 204
Two interpretations	p. 205
The denial of blind agency	p. 207
Unperceived objects	p. 216
Two objections	p. 224
Archetypes	p. 228
Archetypes in Siris	p. 232
Mabbott's objections to divine ideas	p. 234
Conclusion	p. 236
Corpuscularianism	p. 238
The corpuscularian background	p. 238
Primary and secondary qualities	p. 255
Immaterial corpuscles	p. 263
Spirit	p. 276
The parity objection	p. 278
An alleged incoherence	p. 290
The mind and its acts	p. 309
Index	p. 313
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