Tom Stoneham

A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge: wherein the Chief Causes of Error and Difficulty in the Sciences, with the grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion, are inquired. George Berkeley shows himself just as concerned with skepticism as he is with atheism. Berkeley's most explicit discussion of skepticism, it is crucial that sensible objects are immediately perceived. While Margaret Atherton may think that such fallibility does not inevitably lead to skepticism, it is clear that Berkeley would not accept it as a refutation of skepticism. Unfortunately, Berkeley never fully spells out how his theory delivers the 'reality and perfection of human knowledge' and thus refutes skepticism. Atherton thinks that since cherries and coaches are collections of ideas and thus do not exist "without the mind," though they are "independent of any particular mind", this skepticism is avoided.

This article presents reasonable doubt regarding Johnston’s (1923) view that Collier had never read the Principles, leaving doubt that Collier had read Berkeley before publishing Clavis. Stoneham demonstrates that it is more likely that the publication of the Clavis in London lead to some acquaintance mentioning the similarity with Berkeley's views, which in turn lead to Collier reading the just published Three Dialogues. The article starts by presenting Johnston’s argument as to why he believed that Collier had read Berkeley before publishing Clavis, before presenting doubt towards some of his claims, and drawing out the striking absence of Berkeley’s influence in parts of the text. This article works to present reasonable doubt to the claim that Collier had read Berkeley before publishing Clavis.

A certain conception of epistemology is often seen, by historians of philosophy, as definitive of the modern period in philosophy. This conception structures the epistemological task by a contrast between our privileged or certain knowledge of our own minds and our problematic knowledge of the external world. With this contrast in mind, our knowledge of the external world seems either impossible or inadequate. Even epistemologies which try to take our knowledge of our minds as a foundation for knowledge of the world fail to bestow upon the latter the certainties of the former, because the bridging principles are tentative or probabilistic.

“Why is there something rather than nothing?” is a perennial question of metaphysics. This paper gives a valid form of the subtraction argument, originally presented in Baldwin (1996) to the possibility of an empty world (‘metaphysical nihilism’) supported by modal intuitions, which this paper argues we should accept, making it clear that modal intuitions concern the modal properties of concrete objects and not possible worlds. This form of the subtraction argument is not question begging. The paper concludes that the subtraction argument is persuasive, which means that the question of whether there might have been nothing is not settled by a pre-existing modal theory but by the subtraction argument.

Berkeley’s philosophy of science is normally interpreted as some form of anti-realism, usually instrumentalism or constructive empiricism. In this paper we identify a different strand in his thought about the metaphysics of science, a strand which can be interpreted as a form of structural realism. We begin by picking out this strand in Berkeley’s thought and then look in some detail at different forms of structural realism. While the parallels are striking, the motivations are very different indeed: Berkeley was motivated by an a priori philosophical metaphysical method whereas contemporary structural realists are motivated by a naturalistic method in metaphysics. The consequence is that Berkeley’s position is the more amenable to commonsense.

Philosophical Papers Vol.32(2) 2003: 149-155 Any claim that a substantive philosophical debate with many players and a long history can be analysed as containing just two opposing positions, should be taken as an invitation to find a middle ground. One such attempt is Stoneham (1998), and in this very brief note I shall sketch how that position avoids the regress problem for constitutive accounts, and also the problem of brute error. I shall end by suggesting that the stronger constitutive model is motivated by a misunderstanding of the relation between epistemology and belief formation. An account of the aetiology of our second-order beliefs need not also be an account of their epistemic status.

Tom Stoneham introduces an argument found in Berkeley’s essays on the immortality of the soul. This argument can be sketched out like so: all human appetites can (possibly, at least) be satisfied; there is a human ‘appetite for immortality’; thus, the appetite for immortality can (possibly) be satisfied. Stoneham introduces two objections to this argument, one which Berkeley is likely to have anticipated and one which draws on more contemporary insights. Stoneham then argues that Berkeley has the resources to overcome both objections. In putting forward this defence of Berkeley’s argument, Stoneham’s chapter offers novel insights into the role that sign-usage plays in his account of natural desires. As Stoneham reads him, Berkeley sees natural desires as signs of future experiences in roughly the same way that visual experiences serve as signs of tactual experiences in NTV.

“Why is there something rather than nothing?” is a perennial question of metaphysics. This paper gives a valid form of the subtraction argument, originally presented in Baldwin (1996) to the possibility of an empty world (‘metaphysical nihilism’) supported by modal intuitions, which this paper argues we should accept, making it clear that modal intuitions concern the modal properties of concrete objects and not possible worlds. This form of the subtraction argument is not question begging. The paper concludes that the subtraction argument is persuasive, which means that the question of whether there might have been nothing is not settled by a pre-existing modal theory but by the subtraction argument.

In well-documented cases, it is plausibly unethical to ask trauma sufferers for details relating to their trauma. We propose that the reasons are twofold: First, the details requested are not required by those asking for them; second, the request comes with potential for significant harm for the victim arising from the exchange. Requests meeting these conditions are widespread, including in predominant forms of psychotherapy, so accepting these conditions has surprising and challenging consequences for a wide range of interactions with the victims of trauma, including well-meaning ones. Given these surprising and challenging consequences, we explore what, if anything, could offset the two conditions, focusing primarily on therapeutic interactions, which are sometimes thought to have a distinctive or sui generis character. We conclude that none of the options we consider wholly off-set the two conditions, and that they are only partly off-set by insufficient research into alternatives. We outline implications for the status of treatments which require the recollection of trauma as the default kind of intervention, and for interactions with victims of trauma more broadly.

We argue that genuine modal realism can be extended, rather than modified, so as to allow for the possibility of nothing concrete, a possibility we term ‘metaphysical nihilism’. The issue should be important to the genuine modal realist because, not only is metaphysical nihilism itself intuitively plausible, but also it is supported by an argument with pre-theoretically credible premises, namely, the subtraction argument. Given the soundness of the subtraction argument, we show that there are two ways that the genuine modal realist can accommodate metaphysical nihilism: (i) by allowing for worlds containing only spatiotemporal points and (ii) by allowing for a world containing nothing but the null individual. On methodological grounds, we argue that the genuine modal realist should reject the former way but embrace the latter way.

Suppose nothing exists. Then it is true that nothing exists. What makes that true? Nothing! So it seems that if nothing existed, then the principle that every truth is made true by something (the truthmaker principle) would be false. So if it is possible that nothing exists, a claim often called 'metaphysical nihilism', then the truthmaker principle is not necessary. This paper explores various ways to resolve this conflict without restricting metaphysical nihilism in such a way that it would become trivial and uninteresting.

Paul Boghossian has argued that Externalism is incompatible with privileged self-knowledge because (i) the Externalist can cite no property to be the reference of an empty natural kind concept such as the ether; (ii) without reference there is no content; hence (iii) either we do know on the basis of introspection alone whether an apparent natural kind thought has content or not, in which case we can infer from self-knowledge and a priori knowledge of Externalism alone to the existence in our environment of water, gold etc.; (iv) or we do not know, without empirical investigation, whether an apparent natural kind thought has content. An Externalist not wanting to accept either (iii) or (iv) can deny (i). All empty natural kind concepts refer to the necessarily uninstantiated property of being identical to nothing. Since they have different senses and self-knowledge is only held to extend to the existence and identity of sense, this is compatible with privileged self-knowledge, and Externalism is still true of the concepts

This volume brings together a collection of new essays by leading scholars on the subject of causation in the early modern period, from Descartes to Lady Mary Shepherd. Aimed at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates, the volume advances the understanding of early modern discussions of causation, and situates these discussions in the wider context of early modern philosophy and science. Specifically, the volume contains essays on key early modern thinkers, such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant. It also contains essays that examine the important contributions to the causation debate of less widely discussed figures, including Louis la Forge, Thomas Brown and Lady Mary Shepherd.

George Berkeley’s idealism, which he called immaterialism, has two fundamental theses, which we can call the ontological and the metaphysical. His most original and challenging argument is his denial that there is any substantive difference between primary qualities such as shape, size and motion, and secondary qualities such as colour, taste and texture. Berkeley’s thought is that what is immediately perceived can always be experienced in a single perception, that our perceiving it now does not depend upon our perceiving anything else, either now or at some other time. His examples, such as our immediately perceiving a painting or words in a book but not what the painting is of or the words describe, tend to emphasize that what is immediately perceived is present. But it is important to see it is not just being present but being wholly present that matters for immediate perception.

Could an object have only mass and no other property? In giving an affirmative answer to this question, Jonathan Schaffer (2003, pp. 136-8) proposes what he calls ‘the subtraction argument’ for ‘the possibility of free mass’. In what follows, we aim to assess the cogency of this argument in comparison with an argument of the same general form which has also been termed a subtraction argument, namely, Thomas Baldwin’s (1996) subtraction argument for metaphysical nihilism, which is the claim that there might have been no concrete objects. The comparison will be instructive because Baldwin’s argument has been the subject of considerable recent debate (of particular relevance for current purposes are Paseau 2002, Authors 2005, and Paseau 2006), and the lesson of this debate seems to be that subtraction arguments, such as Baldwin’s and Schaffer’s, are faced with a dilemma: either they are invalid or they fail to be suasive. We outline how Baldwin’s argument can be reformulated so as to avoid both horns of this dilemma, and we then argue that Schaffer’s argument cannot so avoid the dilemma.

I aim to draw the reader's attention to an easily overlooked account of perception, namely that there are no perceptual experiences, that to perceive something is to stand in an external, purely non-Leibnizian relation to it. I introduce the Purely Relational account of perception by discussing a case of it being overlooked in the writings of G.E. Moore, though we also find the same move in J. Cook Wilson, so it has nothing to do with an affection for sense-data. I then discuss the relation between the PR account and recent disjunctive accounts of perceptual experience, and note that the PR account has some claim to be the only one that truly respects the directness of perception. The paper does not aspire to persuade the reader of the correctness of the neglected PR account, merely that it should be treated as a serious candidate in philosophical debates about perception.

This volume brings together a collection of new essays by leading scholars on the subject of causation in the early modern period, from Descartes to Lady Mary Shepherd. Aimed at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates, the volume advances the understanding of early modern discussions of causation, and situates these discussions in the wider context of early modern philosophy and science. Specifically, the volume contains essays on key early modern thinkers, such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant. It also contains essays that examine the important contributions to the causation debate of less widely discussed figures, including Louis la Forge, Thomas Brown and Lady Mary Shepherd.

Embodiment is a fact of human existence which philosophers should not ignore. They may differ to a great extent in what they have to say about our bodies, but they have to take into account that for each of us our body has a special status, it is not merely one amongst the physical objects, but a physical object to which we have a unique relation. While Descartes approached the issue of embodiment through consideration of sensation and imagination, it is more directly reached by consideration of action and agency: whenever we act upon the world, we act by moving our bodies. So if we can understand what an immaterialist such as Berkeley thinks about agency, we will have gone a fair way to understanding what he thinks about embodiment. §1 discusses a recent flurry of articles on the subject of Berkeley’s account of action. I choose to present Berkeley as a causal-volitional theorist (realist) not because I think it is the uniquely correct interpretation of the texts, but because I find it more philosophically interesting as a version of immaterialism. In particular, it raises the possibility of a substantive account of human embodiment which is completely unavailable to the occasionalist. §2 articulates an apparent philosophical problem for Berkeley qua causal-volitional theorist and show that Locke was aware of a related problem and had a solution of which Berkeley would have known. §3 distinguishes two interpretations of Berkeley’s famous denial of blind agency – as the assertion of a weak representational condition or a strong epistemic one – and provide evidence that there was a well-established debate about blind powers in the seventeenth century which took the metaphor of blindness as indicating an epistemic rather than merely representational failing. What remains to do in §4 is to consider whether Berkeley, with his own peculiar commitments, could in fact accept this account of agency.

Locke and Leibniz on Substance gathers together papers by an international group of academic experts, examining the metaphysical concept of substance in the writings of these two towering philosophers of the early modern period. Each of these newly-commissioned essays considers important interpretative issues concerning the role that the notion of substance plays in the work of Locke and Leibniz, and its intersection with other key issues, such as personal identity. Contributors also consider the relationship between the two philosophers and contemporaries such as Descartes and Hume

We argue that Armstrong's Combinatorialism allows for the possibility of nothing by giving a Combinatorial account of the empty world and show that such an account is consistent with the ontological and conceptual aims of the theory. We then suggest that the Combinatorialist should allow for this possibility given some methodological considerations. Consequently, rather than being 'spoils for the victor', as Armstrong maintains, deciding whether there might have been nothing helps to determine which metaphysics of modality is to be preferred.