Abstract
Berkeley is widely held to be a scientific instrumentalist, but the scope of his instrumentalism has been repeatedly brought into question. Some have asserted that Berkeley capitulated wholesale to a form of external realism at the end of his life, others have supposed principled reasons for thinking that Berkeley is an instrumentalist about some things and not about others. Lisa Downing, for instance, has argued that Berkeley is an instrumentalist about forces but not about corpuscles, and Douglas Jesseph contends that Berkeley rejects mathematical instrumentalism despite being a stronger instrumentalist in the sciences.
Work on this paper was made possible thanks to a 2007–2008 Fulbright Fellowship. Thanks also to Roomet Jakapi, Luc Peterschmitt , and an anonymous referee for some insightful suggestions that have improved the paper.
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Notes
- 1.
Catherine Wilson, “Berkeley and the Microworld,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 76 (1994): 37–64.
- 2.
Lisa Downing, “ Siris and the Scope of Berkeley’s Instrumentalism,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1995): 279–300.
- 3.
Douglas Jesseph, Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mathematics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993): 213.
- 4.
Jesseph, Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mathematics, 76.
- 5.
PC 606. All citations from Berkeley are from The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, eds. A.A. Luce and T.E. Jessop, 9 vols. (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1948–1957). The following abbreviations will be used for convenience: AN: The Analyst 3D: Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, ALC Alciphron: or the Minute Philosopher PC: Philosophical Commentaries (the notebooks), PHK: Principles of Human Knowledge IPHK: Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge, DM: De Motu, and S: Siris. Other texts of Berkeley, not abbreviated, are also from this source. Section numbers will be used for the Principles, De Motu and Siris; all others will be page numbers from the Works.
- 6.
PHK 38.
- 7.
There are, of course, complications with propositions that concern active things and notions. Some of those concerns will be engaged later.
- 8.
Jesseph, Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mathematics, 76.
- 9.
Jesseph, Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mathematics, 76–77.
- 10.
Although it does not depend solely on signs, since memory and imagination can play important roles as well. See PC 883.
- 11.
AN 10, Works IV, 70–71.
- 12.
Compare AN 22, 78. For one example where Berkeley mentions true claims that might be useless or vain, see ALC 308.
- 13.
ALC 293–295.
- 14.
See PHK 131, where Berkeley argues that denying the literal existence of infinitesimals does not negate the usefulness of geometry and mathematics.
- 15.
AN Qu. 19, Works IV, 97.
- 16.
PHK 27.
- 17.
PC 788.
- 18.
S 161.
- 19.
ALC 305.
- 20.
3D 258.
- 21.
See PHK 58.
- 22.
See my Idea and Ontology (University Park, Penn State University Press, 2008), chapter 8. See IPHK 23 for the emphasis on the impossibility of determinate abstract ideas.
- 23.
DM 17.
- 24.
PHK 58.
- 25.
AN 4.
- 26.
Downing, “ Siris and the Scope of Berkeley’s Instrumentalism,” 281.
- 27.
AN 8, my emphasis.
- 28.
Gabriel Moked, Particles and Ideas: Bishop Berkeley’s Corpuscularian Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon, 1988, 25. For a further discussion of the varying views, see Wilson, “Berkeley and the Microworld,” 37–39.
- 29.
Downing, “ Siris and the Scope of Berkeley’s Instrumentalism,” 283.
- 30.
S 235.
- 31.
S 207.
- 32.
Compare S 162. Downing claims that S 207 and 162 show that Berkeley’s aether have some ‘determinate size, shape, weight, etc.,’ although as I shall argue I think she has over-read the passages.
- 33.
Downing, “ Siris and the Scope of Berkeley’s Instrumentalism,” 289–290.
- 34.
S 157.
- 35.
I am leaving aside considerations of intuitive or notional knowledge, which Berkeley does not invoke in these specific discussions in any event.
- 36.
S 159.
- 37.
S 160.
- 38.
See S 303: “There runs a chain throughout the whole system of beings …. The meanest things are connected with the highest.”
- 39.
Downing, “ Siris and the Scope of Berkeley’s Instrumentalism,” 293–294.
- 40.
S 228.
- 41.
I am absolutely not arguing that Berkeley is being disingenuous in Siris. Instead, my claim is that the work is self-reflectively less explicit about issues of presentation in order to make the claims advanced in it more accessible to readers who might otherwise find the unadulterated metaphysics of immaterialism less than palatable.
- 42.
AN 20.
- 43.
Jesseph, Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mathematics, 213.
- 44.
AN 29.
- 45.
Jesseph, Berkeley’s Philosophy of Mathematics, 212–213.
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Hight, M.A. (2010). Berkeley’s Metaphysical Instrumentalism. In: Parigi, S. (eds) George Berkeley: Religion and Science in the Age of Enlightenment. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 201. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9243-4_2
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