The Irish Context of Berkeley's ‘Resemblance Thesis’

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on Berkeley's reasons for accepting the ‘resemblance thesis’ which entails that for one thing to represent another those two things must resemble one another. The resemblance thesis is a crucial premise in Berkeley's argument from the ‘likeness principle’ in §8 of the Principles. Yet, like the ‘likeness principle’, the resemblance thesis remains unargued for and is never explicitly defended. This has led several commentators to provide explanations as to why Berkeley accepts the resemblance thesis and why he also takes his opponents to do so too. We provide a contextual answer to this question, focusing on epistemological discussions concerning resemblance and representation in Early Modern Irish Philosophy. We argue that the resemblance thesis is implicit in early responses to William Molyneux's famous example of the ‘man born blind made to see’ and trace the ‘Molyneux man’ thought experiment as it is employed by Irish thinkers such as William King and Berkeley himself. Ultimately, we conclude that Berkeley's acceptance of the resemblance thesis can be explained by the Irish intellectual climate in which he was writing.

Resemblance, Representation and Scepticism: The Metaphysical Role of Berkeley’s Likeness Principle

“…his published works, let alone, in the context of the likeness principle, many like Jacovides (2009) suggest that Berkeley simply presumed-and justifiably so-that Locke accepted it, while others like Hill (2011) argue that the resemblance requirement of representation was so widely accepted among the Cartesians and their critics that he might have easily considered it in need of no explicit statement. Others (Fasko and West 2020) pointed to Berkeley's intellectual context in Ireland with a similar conclusion-providing us with another piece of circumstantial evidence. On a similarly popular reading, however, the missing premise is actually a misapprehension on Berkeley's part.…”

“…1 As the traditional account has it, after attacking direct realism, that is, the view that we perceive the very qualities of material objects without any perceptual intermediary, Berkeley turns to the representative or indirect realist and tries to undermine the very possibility of our ideas resembling and, hence, representing anything beyond our minds. Allaire (1982), Winkler (1989: 138-39), Dicker (1985Dicker ( , 2011), Bolton (1987Bolton ( , 2008, Dancy (1998), Jacovides (2009), Downing (2011), Hill (2011, Fasko andWest (2020), andWest (2021) are just a few other examples of those numerous commentators who seem to endorse this standard reading of the relevant passages. According to this interpretation, Berkeley used the likeness principle to prove two things: (i.)…”