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.

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.

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.

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.

There are many questions we can ask about time, but perhaps the most fundamental is whether there are metaphysically interesting differences between past, present and future events. An eternalist believes in a block universe: past, present and future events are all on an equal footing. A gradualist believes in a growing block: he agress with the eternalist about the past and the present but not about the future. A presentist believes that what is present has a special status. My first claim is that the familiar ways of articulating these views result in there being no substantive disagreement at all between the three parties. I then show that if we accept the controversial truthmaking principle, we can articulate a substantive disagreenment. Finally, I apply this way of formulating the debate to related questions such as the open future and determinism, showing that these do not always line up in quite the way one would expect

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.

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.

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.

Almost all who write on Collier note a striking similarity between a short passage in his Clavis Universalis and the famous claim that esse is percipi in Berkeley's Principles. This essay explores that similarity in more detail than has been done before. The comparison forces us to address an issue about the nature of passivity in Berkeley's theory of mind. Two interpretations consistent with the text are offered and one is favoured on the grounds that it makes some of Berkeley's arguments more plausible. The idealisms of Berkeley and Collier are shown to have a common source.

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.