In this reply, I use an act theory to explain divine ideas and Berkeley’s archetype–ectype distinction. I argue that divine ideas are acts of divine self-consciousness in reply to the objection that if divine ideas are acts, then for Berkeley they are acts without objects. The result is a much more plausible account of Berkeley’s archetype–ectype distinction than is available on representationalist interpretations. Lastly, while arguments from illusion are indispensable to representationalist theories, Berkeley’s rejection of arguments from illusion is evidence that he endorsed an act theory of ideas.

Some aspects of Berkeley’s view of volitional causation would be unobjectionable to his contemporaries. That minds are efficient causes and that their causal power consists in volition would be troubling to neither Descartes nor Locke, since both recognized that through the power of will, minds could create ideas. But Berkeley’s view is not that agent causation is one kind of causal power, it is that it is the only kind, and few of his contemporaries would have found that claim acceptable. Malebranche is an exception: he also thought agent causation the only genuine causation. Many commentators link Berkeley with Malebranche in supposing that both treated necessary connection as the defining feature of causation. I argue that this is mistaken: a “true cause” for Berkeley, is not, as it is for Malebranche, such that the mind perceives a necessary connection between it and its effects. A true cause is a volitional cause. This is a claim about what causation is, not a claim about where necessary connections are located (in the will rather than in the world). Berkeley’s view of agent causation offers an alternative to causation understood as necessary connection; it does not provide an alternative place for necessary connections to occur. This reading of Berkeley permits him to hold that both an infinite spirit and finite spirits are genuine causes.

Scholars disagree about the nature of the doctrinal apparatus that supports Berkeley’s case for passive obedience to the sovereign. Is he a rule-utilitarian, or natural law theorist, or ethical egoist, or some combination of some or all these elements? Here I argue that Berkeley is an act-utilitarian who thinks that one is more likely to act rightly by following certain sorts of rules. I also argue that Berkeley mischaracterizes and misevaluates Locke’s version of the social contract theory. Finally, I consider the potentially practically self-defeating nature of Berkeley’s claim that there is no obligation to submit to the rule of “madmen” or “usurpers.”

The article discusses Berkeley’s idea of how to promote the common good in Ireland in the first half of the 18th century when society differed in respect to religion, political obedience, language, and culture. More specifically, since religion was still the core of Berkeley’s vision of human well-being, the article contains a reconstruction of his views on religious diversity and tolerance, as they were discussed in his works published between the 1730s and 1750s, when he was Bishop in Cloyne and published his most practical works. They will be analyzed in order to present the meaning of an evolution in his attitude towards Irish Catholics during the period. My particular aim is to show that the ‘Good Bishop’ sincerely aimed at the conversion of their hearts to the ‘true religion’, despite his officially moderate attitude towards them after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.

Berkeley’s two most obvious targets in Alciphron are Shaftesbury and Mandeville. However, as numerous commentators have pointed out, there is good reason to think Berkeley additionally targets Anthony Collins in this dialogue. In this paper, I bolster David Berman’s claim that “Collins looms large in the background” of Dialogue VII, and put some meat on the bones of Raymond Martin and John Barresi’s passing suggestion that there is a connection between the Clarke–Collins correspondence, Alciphron, and the objection that Berkeley raises regarding persons and their persistence conditions therein. Specifically, I argue that we have evidence that Berkeley’s objection to consciousness–based views of personal identity, as found in VII.8, is a response to a challenge that Collins raises to Clarke in “An Answer to Mr. Clarke’s Third Defense of his Letter to Mr. Dodwell.” This is significant not just because this objection is usually—and consistently—taken to be an objection to Locke, but also because Berkeley’s objection works against Collins’s theory of personal identity in a way that it doesn’t against Locke’s.

Samuel Rickless has recently defended an act utilitarian interpretation of Berkeley’s Passive Obedience. Part of his argument is a criticism of my natural law reading of Berkeley, particularly my contention that natural lawyers are committed to a distributive notion of universality, while utilitarians are committed to a collective sense of universality. This essay is, in part, a reply to Rickless’s criticisms. I argue that if we assume that Berkeley was either a natural lawyer or a utilitarian, and if we can find grounds for distinguishing natural law theories from utilitarian theories, then a natural law theory provides a more philosophically defensible fit with the texts than does a utilitarian theory.

I argue that for Berkeley the meaning of a general term is constituted by the multiple particular ideas indifferently signified by that term. This reading faces two challenges. First, Berkeley argues that the meaning of sentences containing general terms is constituted by the one idea signified by the name in that sentence rather than by multiple ideas, implying that general terms are meaningful although they do not signify multiple ideas. Second, Berkeley writes that finite minds know the meaning of the biblical phrase ‘good thing’ even though that phrase fails to signify any ideas at all. Both challenges are met by deploying Berkeley’s account of mediate perception.

This paper argues for a re-evaluation of the relationship between Berkeley and his predecessor, the neo-Aristotelian thinker John Sergeant. In the literature to date, the relationship between these two thinkers has received attention for two reasons. First, some commentators have attempted to establish a causal connection between them by focusing on the fact that both thinkers develop a theory of “notions.” Second, some have argued that both Berkeley and Sergeant develop “anti-representationalist” arguments against Locke’s epistemology. The first issue has received much greater attention, particularly from commentators seeking an explanation for Berkeley’s use of the term “notion.” Only one scholar (G. A. Johnston in 1923) has considered Berkeley and Sergeant’s anti-representationalism in any depth. In this paper, I argue that the weight given to the causal connection between Berkeley and Sergeant’s “notions” is misplaced since the evidence in favor of this connection is weaker than is usually acknowledged. Instead, I build on Johnston’s analysis of the conceptual connection between Berkeley and Sergeant’s anti-representationalism. I first corroborate Johnston’s claim that there are striking similarities between their criticisms of Locke before going beyond that analysis to identify two important similarities between their anti-representationalist arguments.

Contra Todd Ryan’s interpretation, I argue that it is possible to reconstruct a metaphysical argument that does not restrict likeness in general to ideas. While I agree with Ryan that Berkeley’s writings provide us with the resources to reconstruct such an argument, I disagree with Ryan that this argument entails a restriction of likeness to ideas. Unlike Ryan, I argue that Berkeley is not committed to the claim that we can compare only ideas, but to the view that the only thing that can be compared to an idea is another idea.

In this paper, I present and analyze Berkeley’s sporadic claims on the animal‒human divide, concentrating on his early works, especially his Notebooks. Before drawing our attention to the importance of imagination, I start by contextualizing Berkeley’s views on animal cognition more generally. More specifically, I aim to clarify that though he verbally agrees with Descartes that animals cannot imagine like we do, Berkeley’s view is motivated by fundamentally different considerations. What he ultimately denies is that animals can imagine in a sense that requires the sort of spontaneous and creative activity we share more with God than animals.