Takaharu Oda

A plausible reading of Berkeley’s view of voluntary motion is occasionalism; this, however, leads to a specious conclusion against his argument of human action. Differing from an unqualified occasionalist reading, I consider the alternative reading that Berkeley is a conservationist regarding bodily motion by the human mind at will. That is, finite minds (spirits) immediately cause motions in their body parts, albeit under the divine conservation. My argument then comports with the conservationist reading from three perspectives: (i) theodicy that the human mind is held liable for sinful actions; (ii) an account of the human mind influencing other minds; and (iii) an improper but necessary directing principle of the human mind. This article is a stepping stone to grasping why the conservationist reading is more coherent than the occasionalist one.

Is the shape of the Earth really a globe? Reading closely, the author of this voluminous paperback (first published as hardcover in 2015), historian David Wootton, does not take for granted the fact that the Earth is round or spherical. However, this does not mean that he is a relativist. And it is interesting to consider why he regards science as progress against any relativist view of the history of science. On the whole, the book is an extraordinary contribution to the studies of the history of early modern science and philosophy. Through the seventeen chapters with rich notes and illustrations, Wootton elaborates on epistemological problems in observing the heavens and the earth, or how openly and clearly people at the time constructed scientific knowledge. For instance, convincingly, Wootton re-interprets Butterfield’s and Kuhn’s conceptions of ‘scientific revolution’ in early modern Europe, and re-examines the idea of ‘eureka’, ‘discovery’, or ‘invention’ (p. 67) as a necessary precondition for science. For he positively defends the view that the scientific revolution ‘has been so astonishingly successful’ (p. 571), that the unique fact of science is ‘progress’ in its history (p. 513). In this progressive sense, he is philosophically neither committed to Kuhn’s (and Rorty’s) subdued relativism that science evolves within a set of its terms, nor to strong relativism that progress in science is illusory and thus falsifiable. Also, in some longer notes, he explicates why the relativism of a number of historians is undermined (pp. 580–92).

This article presents a new approach to Japanese Zen Buddhism, alternative to its traditional views, which lack exact definitions of the relation between the meditator and the Buddha’s ultimate cause, dharma. To this end, I offer a comparative analysis between Zen Buddhist and Christian views of causality from the medieval to early modern periods. Through this, human causation with dharma in the Zen Buddhist meditations can be better defined and understood. Despite differences between religious traditions in deliberating human causal accounts, there are parallel ways of thinking and practicing between Christian and Buddhist meditators. Firstly, I reconstruct three sorts of Christian scholastic theories of creaturely causality: conservationism, occasionalism, and concurrentism. Secondly, Zen Buddhist doctrines are introduced by placing particular emphasis on dharma as causal agency. Focusing on the Japanese Zen practice of meditation, finally I expound two theories of human causality: Sōtō Zen quasi-occasionalism following Master Dōgen’s teaching of enlightenment, and Rinzai Zen quasi-concurrentism given the meditator’s interactive kōan practice. Hence, my comparative analysis explains why religious beings are causally active, passive, or interactive in relation to the first agency, God or dharma, whereby systematically establishing alternative definitions of human causality in Zen Buddhism.

This article will consider how and why a pragmatist way of thinking is inferred in the Buddhist ethical discourse of curing the sick. This medical analogy, where the Buddha as a medical doctor acts upon the sick, contains a profound implication that the sick need not understand the reason for their sickness, insofar as they are cured or enlightened. What is taken to be pragmatism is critically clarified in this Buddhist context. There being a dissimilarity in terms of the respective ends (ultimate nirvāṇa vs. end as a means to further ends), the two types of moral discourse—Buddhist ethics and American pragmatism—have a common ground. That is, the human is receptive to the utility of a moral end, in which truth works regardless of one’s understanding of its absolute, abstruse reason.

Chief amongst the issues Toshihiko Izutsu broached is the philosophisation of Zen Buddhism in his book Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism. This article aims to critically compare Izutsu’s reconstruction of Zen metaphysics with another metaphysical tradition rooted in Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. Putting Izutsu’s terminological choices into the context of Zen Buddhism, we review his argument based on the subject-object distinction and establish a comparison with the Cartesian cogito. A critical analysis is conducted on the functional relationship between subject and object in Izutsu’s metaphysics of Zen. This is examined step by step from the perspective of Descartes’ Meditations. On the one hand, we focus on prima facie similarities in meditative and reflective methodologies used by the Zen and Cartesian approaches. On the other, we highlight some unequivocal differences in the metaphysical role of the subject: an indubitable foundation for the epistemological access to objective reality, and an introspective apprehension of the egoless void or absolute reality.

This volume presents a selection of new articles examining the state of Irish philosophy during the lifetime of Ireland's most famous philosopher, Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753). The thinkers examined include Berkeley, Robert Boyle, William King, William Molyneux, Robert Molesworth, Peter Browne, Jonathan Swift, John Toland, Thomas Prior, Samuel Madden, Arthur Dobbs, Francis Hutcheson, Mary Barber, Constantia Grierson, Laetitia Pilkington, Elizabeth Sican, and John Austin. This interdisciplinary collection includes attention both to local Irish concerns and to Ireland's relation to the broader European context, and discusses philosophical reflections on topics as diverse as religion, economics, laughter, and motherhood.

This article argues that George Berkeley’s (1685–1753) interpretation of scientific and religious language was significantly received in C.S. Peirce’s (1839–1914) pragmatist semiotic.1 To this end, their similar views against transubstantiation in the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion) will be considered. Berkeley being an Anglican bishop and Peirce’s life being linked to the Episcopal Church,2 a chief emphasis will be placed upon Peirce’s deriving his pragmatic method from Berkeley’s philosophy of language. At least three times, Peirce reviewed Berkeley’s works, including Manuscript Introduction (to the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710), in which he identified his version of Berkeleyan nom- inalism.

In this doctoral thesis, I will argue that in his De motu (1721, ‘On motion’), Bishop George Berkeley (c.1684–1753) develops a pragmatist theory of causation regarding mechanical theories outlined previously with Newtonianism. I place chief emphasis on the importance of logic and mathematics in Berkeley’s scientific approach, on which the other levels of semantics, epistemology, and mechanics build up. On my rendering, Berkeley’s pragmatic method to conceive or mathematically imagine causation makes sense in terms of mechanical causes or ‘mathematical hypotheses’. For the mechanist maintains the usefulness and truthfulness of causation by the following definition. Definition. A pragmatist theory of causation is one which holds that: 1 Causal terms are indispensable in scientific deliberation for their usefulness; they cannot be eliminated [contra reductionism]. 2 What a cause is is defined by one’s temporal deliberative practices, independent of a temporal structure that theories hold [contra structuralism]. 3 Causal laws (theories formulated in causal terms) are genuinely true, not fictitious, when one confirms and deduces them [contra instrumentalism]. By justifying this definition, I will object to three rival readings—reductionism, structuralism, and instrumentalism—to my reading of Berkeley as a pragmatist about causation. In particular, my pragmatist reading criticises the most popular instrumentalist reading because, according to the latter, talk of causal terms like forces can be false or merely fictitious inasmuch as one can hold the utility of theories in mechanical practices. The instrumentalist reading is then compatible with mathematical formalism, according to which it is not truth or meaning that counts as formal manipulation or game of meaningless symbols, thereby eschewing a platonist attitude towards mathematical objects. However, I rebut the formalistic instrumentalism from Berkeley’s logical and realist standpoint, maintaining the irreducibility of occult qualities that mathematical objects have in their formulation from hypotheses to propositions. Light shall be shed on the tenet I propose that law-propositions formulated in hypothetical, causal terms must be true, neither false nor fictitious, when we (1) frame, (2) confirm, and (3) express them to the extent of our discursive thinking (in three steps). [339 words]