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Reconciling Berkeley's Microscopes in God's Infinite Mind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Dale Jacquette
Dale Jacquette
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802
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Extract

God knows or hath ideas; but His ideas are not convey'd to Him by sense, as ours are. Your not distinguishing where there is so manifest a difference, makes you fancy you see an absurdity where there is none.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , December 1993, pp. 453 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 George, Berkeley, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, The Works of George Berkeley Bishop of Cloyne, ed. Luce, A. A. and Jessop, T. E. (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, 1949), vol 11, p. 184.Google Scholar

2 For discussion of Berkeley's argument from microscopes against colour realism, see Armstrong, D. M., ‘Colour Realism and the Argument from Microscopes’ in Contemporary Philosophy in Australia, Robert, Brown and Rollins, C. D. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969);Google Scholar rpt, Armstrong, , The Nature of Mind and Other Essays (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), pp. 104–118;Google ScholarWilson, Margaret D., ‘Berkeley on the Mind-Dependence of Colors’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, LXVIII (1987) 249–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Berkeley, , Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, p. 245.Google Scholar

4 Bruce, Silver, ‘The Conflicting Microscopic Worlds of Berkeley's Three Dialogues’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXVII (1976), 348–9.Google Scholar

5 Ibid, p. 349.

6 The frontispiece advertisement for the 1713 edition of Berkeley's Three Dialogues announces: ‘The design of which is … [a]lso to open a method for rendering the Sciences more easy, useful, and compendious.’

7 Berkeley, , Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, p. 245.Google Scholar

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid. p. 248.

11 Ibid. pp. 192–4; also p. 247.

12 The inference sequence in (1)–(9) does not constitute another proof for the existence of God in Berkeley's exposition, because there is no need to suppose that C-related objects are identical, but all could be dealt with as strictly distinct, as indeed we must in the philosophically circumspect way to which we are epistemically restricted by the limitations of finite human intelligence. Berkeley has two proofs for the existence of God that precede this discussion, and at this stage of the dialogue Philonous appeals to what have come to be known as the continuity and passivity arguments of the Second Dialogue. See Jonathan Bennett, ‘Berkeley and God’, Philosophy, XL (1965)Google Scholar; rpt, Locke and Berkeley: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. C. B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong (Notre Dame: Notra Dame University Press, 1968), pp. 350–99.Google ScholarTipton, I. C., Berkeley: The Philosophy of Immaterialism (London: Methuen & Co., 1974), pp. 320–50.Google ScholarDale, Jacquette, ‘Berkeley's Continuity Argument for the Existence of God’, Journal of Religion, LXV (1985), 1–14.Google Scholar

13 Berkeley, , Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, p. 252.Google Scholar

14 Ibid. p. 254.

15 It has been argued that Berkeley's God, despite Berkeley's frequent references to the contrary, is not a perceiver, and that God's ideas are not sense impressions as such. See Thomas, George H., ‘Berkeley's God Does Not Perceive’, Journal of the History of Philosophy XIV (1976), 163–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The solution may be to suppose that when Berkeley speaks of God as perceiving or having ideas he does not mean that God merely passively perceives, but also wills the universe of sensible objects into existence in a single complex act.

16 Berkeley, , Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, p. 231.Google Scholar

17 A version of this essay was presented at the British Society for the History of Philosophy and International Berkeley Conference, Oxford University, 16–18 July 1993.