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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Early Modern Christian Platonism, Derek A. Michaud
Early Modern Christian Platonism, Derek A. Michaud
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Berkeley On Infinite Divisibility, David Mwakima
Berkeley On Infinite Divisibility, David Mwakima
Western Ontario Early Modern Philosophy (WOEMP) Online Events
Berkeley, arguing against Barrow, claims that the infinite divisibility of finite lines is neither an axiom nor a theorem in Euclid The Thirteen Books of The Elements. Instead, he suggests that it is rooted in ancient prejudice. In this paper, I attempt to substantiate Berkeley’s claims by looking carefully at the history and practice of ancient geometry as a first step towards understanding Berkeley’s mathematical atomism.
Cancelled - Berkeley's A Priori Argument For God's Exstence, Stephen H. Daniel, Alberto Luis Lopez
Cancelled - Berkeley's A Priori Argument For God's Exstence, Stephen H. Daniel, Alberto Luis Lopez
Western Ontario Early Modern Philosophy (WOEMP) Online Events
Berkeley’s appeal to a posteriori arguments for God’s existence supports belief only in a God who is finite. But by appealing to an a priori argument for God’s existence, Berkeley emphasizes God’s infinity. In this latter argument, God is not the efficient cause of particular finite things in the world, for such an explanation does not provide a justification or rationale for why the totality of finite things would exist in the first place. Instead, God is understood as the creator of the total unity of all there is, the whole of creation. In this a priori argument, we should …
Cavendish And Berkeley On Inconceivability And Impossibility, Peter West, Colin Chamberlain
Cavendish And Berkeley On Inconceivability And Impossibility, Peter West, Colin Chamberlain
Western Ontario Early Modern Philosophy (WOEMP) Online Events
In this paper, I compare Margaret Cavendish’s argument for the view that colours of objects are inseparable from their ‘physical’ qualities (such as size and shape) with George Berkeley’s argument for the view that secondary qualities of objects (such as colours, tastes, and sounds) are inseparable from their primary qualities (such as size and shape). By reconstructing their respective arguments, I show that both thinkers rely on the ‘inconceivability principle’: the claim that inconceivability entails impossibility. That is, both premise their arguments on the claim that it is impossible to conceive of an object that has size and shape but …
The Activity Of Finite Spirits In Berkeley: Willing Sensible Ideas, Benjamin Quinn Formanek
The Activity Of Finite Spirits In Berkeley: Willing Sensible Ideas, Benjamin Quinn Formanek
Theses and Dissertations
Throughout his unpublished and published works alike, George Berkeley repeatedly exclaims that finite spirits have the power to move our bodies by acts of volition. However, given the nature of the way in which Berkeley carves the division between objective and subjective experience, his remarks concerning our agency over our bodies in the real world appear inconsistent. In an attempt to exculpate Berkeley from inconsistency, Sukjae Lee and George Pitcher offer up an occasionalist interpretation of Berkeley. Their account situates finite spirits with agency that extends to producing acts of will which either serve as occasions for God to then …
A Case For Monistic Idealism: Connecting Idealistic Thoughts From Leibniz To Kant With Support In Quantum Physics, Erik Haynes
A Case For Monistic Idealism: Connecting Idealistic Thoughts From Leibniz To Kant With Support In Quantum Physics, Erik Haynes
Masters Theses
Through the analysis of idealistic arguments and evidence from physics, it will be demonstrated that monistic idealism has a great deal of explanatory power as a metaphysical system for the reality that one experiences. Some of the arguments that support this claim include the inadequateness of Cartesian matter, the seemingly infinite divisibility of atoms, matter being reducible to sensations, the unnecessary aspect of matter, and simplicity. Evidence from quantum physics includes such factors as the necessary role of an observer in the collapse of a quantum wave function and the element of nonlocality. Psychological experiments including nonlocal communication, the power …
Berkeley And The Mind Of God, Craig Berchet Knepley
Berkeley And The Mind Of God, Craig Berchet Knepley
Theses and Dissertations
I tackle a troubling question of interpretation: Does Berkeley's God feel pain? Berkeley's anti-skepticism seems to bar him from saying that God does not feel pain, for this would mean there is something to reality 'beyond' the perceptible. Yet Berkeley's concerns for common sense and orthodoxy bar him from saying that God does have an idea of pain. For Berkeley to have an idea of pain just is to suffer it, and an immutable God cannot suffer. Thus solving the pain problem requires answers to further questions: What are God's perceptions, for Berkeley? What are God's acts of will? How …
Reality In The Eyes Of Descartes Vs. Berkeley, Nada Shokry
Reality In The Eyes Of Descartes Vs. Berkeley, Nada Shokry
Papers, Posters, and Presentations
This writing elaborates on how the two Great Philosophers see reality, human and God existence. The reader gets exposed to two different ways of thinking that were essential in the history of American,Western, Human and Religious Philosophy as well as a foundation of Science in the Modern History.
Locke And Berkeley At Twenty Paces, Frederick J. White Iii
Locke And Berkeley At Twenty Paces, Frederick J. White Iii
Frederick J White III
Does the world exist? Or more properly questioned, does anything of the world exist beyond our ideas of it? Locke and Berkeley have become seconds at twenty paces on this dichotomy, and we are asked to consider the outcome of the duel.
Internal Realism: Transcendental Idealism?, Curtis Brown
Internal Realism: Transcendental Idealism?, Curtis Brown
Philosophy Faculty Research
Idealism is an ontological view, a view about what sorts of things there are in the universe. Idealism holds that what there is depends on out own mental structure and activity. Berkeley of course held that everything was mental; Kant held the more complex view that there was an important distinction between the mental and the physical, but that the structure of the empirical world depended on the activities of the mind.