Berkeley's Argument for Idealism

Why Can An Idea Be Like Nothing But Another Idea? A Conceptual Interpretation of Berkeley's Likeness Principle

“…Ott and Holden both argue that Berkeley explicitly rejects this principle (citing, e.g., PHK §81 and DHP 232-33). See Pappas 1995, Rickless 2013: 112, 132, 181-82, Winkler 1989: 30-31, Ott 2015, Holden 2019 located. These are extrinsic properties of the post box.…”

Can the Berkeleyan Idealist Resist Spinozist Panpsychism?

“…11 Samuel Rickless has recently argued forcefully for a version of this interpretation. For a summary of Rickless' interpretation and the role the inseparability argument plays for Berkeley, see Rickless 2013, 185-187. Lisa Downing (2018 argues that the inseparability argument blocks a path that Berkeley's non-idealist interlocutors could have used to escape his attacks, if Berkeley only had the perceptual relativity arguments and his arguments from the immediacy of perceived things at his disposal.…”

Berkeley on Inconceivability and Impossibility

“… For instance, Winkler (/2001, 30‐31) writes that “[o]ne of Berkeley's most deeply held beliefs is that conceivability and possibility coincide”: that “a state of affairs is conceivable […] if and only if it is possible.” Rickless (, 112, 132, 181‐2) and Grayling (, 173) also each state categorically that Berkeley accepts the inconceivability principle, while Kail (, 275) asserts that, for Berkeley, “something's being inconceivable is determined by its involving a contradiction”—in which case inconceivability would entail contradictoriness, and hence, presumably, impossibility. Somewhat more hedged, Pappas (, 133) writes that “Berkeley seems to have accepted” the inconceivability principle; Stoneham (, 135) asserts that Berkeley “probably” held that inconceivability entails impossibility; and Dancy (, 31) similarly finds it “probable” that Berkeley “saw no difference between the question what is possible and the question what is conceivable.” The only commentator I am aware of on the other side of this issue is Ott (, 411), who touches on the question only in passing. …”

“… Rickless (, 181‐7) argues that Berkeley's overall case for idealism rests on his argument that primary qualities are inseparable from secondary qualities (‘the inseparability argument,’ as I call it—see below), which argument Rickless interprets as requiring the inconceivability principle. …”

“… Rickless (, 132 note 50) denies that this passage constitutes a general rejection of the inconceivability principle, suggesting that “the principle that Berkeley denies here is not the claim that inconceivable states of affairs (including states of affairs involving inconceivable things ) are impossible, but rather the different claim that the inability to form an idea or notion of a thing entails that it is impossible for it to exist.” But this narrow reading is implausible. First, Berkeley does not clarify the scope of his doubts about inconceivability entailing impossibility in this way, and misses several opportunities to register any such distinction between inconceivable states of affairs and inconceivable things anywhere in his remarks on conceivability, inconceivability, possibility, and impossibility.…”