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ABSTRACT
An interpretation of Berkeley’s theory of meaning must account for operative utility as well as Berkeley’s commitment to the truth of Christian scriptures. I argue that formalist and use-theoretic interpretations of Berkeley are incompatible with his claims that scriptures are universally true. I propose an alternative reading focused on Berkeley’s defense of reasonable assent to scripture in the absence of ideas signified by them. For Berkeley, the meaning of scripture is constituted by ideas in other minds (particularly, the divine mind). That meaning is known to God and mediately perceived by finite minds. Nevertheless, Berkeley thinks that scriptures have operative utility that is evidence of their truth. That evidence makes it reasonable for finite minds to assent to scriptures even when those minds lack immediately perceived ideas signified by them.
Acknowledgements
For helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I thank Kenneth Pearce, Colin Chamberlain, Margaret Atherton, Kenneth Winkler, and audiences at the 2018 Berkeley Workshop at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and the 2020 APA Central “Author Meets Critics” session for Kenny Pearce. I also thank three anonymous reviewers and the editors of BJHP for extremely helpful comments and suggestions.
Notes
1 All references to Berkeley’s writings are to The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. Edited by A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, 9 vols. London: Thomas Nelson, 1948–57 [Works]. The following abbreviations are used for specific works: Philosophical Commentaries [PC]; Manuscript Introduction to the Principles [MI]; An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision [NTV]; A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge [PHK]; Introduction to the Principles [PI]; Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous [DHP]; Alciphron [ALC]; Theory of Vision … Vindicated and Explained [TVV]; De Motu [DM]; and Defense of Freethinking in Mathematics [DFM]. Section or entry numbers are used where available. Section numbers in MI follow those in Bertil Belfrage’s (Berkeley, George Berkeley's Manuscript Introduction) Doxa edition of MI. Page numbers in brackets refer to those in the respective volume of Works.
2 See MI 40; PI 20; and ALC VII.5 [292].
3 See Belfrage (“The Clash on Semantics”; “Berkeley’s Theory of Emotive Meaning (1708)”; 1987); and Berman (“Cognitive Theology and Emotive Mysteries”). For other sources, see Jakapi (“Emotive Meaning and Christian Mysteries”, n 1); and Williford (“Berkeley’s Theory of Operative Language”, n 6).
4 See Williford and Jakapi (“Berkeley’s Theory of Meaning”).
5 See Roberts (“Berkeley on Language”); and Pearce (Language and the Structure). For other sources, see Williford and Jakapi (“Berkeley’s Theory of Meaning”, n 10).
6 Jakapi defends this claim extensively, as discussed below.
7 For discussion, see Winkler (“Berkeley and the Doctrine of Signs”, 129–133); and Pearce (Language and the Structure, 57–68).
8 As this and subsequent examples indicate, I use single quotes when mentioning a word and italics to identify a meaning.
9 For a defense of that interpretation, see Winkler (Berkeley: An Interpretation, 223).
10 For discussion, see Belfrage (“The Clash on Semantics in Berkeley’s Notebook A”, “Berkeley’s Theory of Emotive Meaning (1708)”).
11 See PC 378, 696; and “Of Infinites” (Works 4: 235-236).
12 An anonymous reviewer helpfully pointed out that Locke’s ideational theory only conflicts with the claim that scriptures are meaningful if, like Berkeley, one rejects abstract ideas. Thus, Berkeley is confronted with a conflict between an ideational theory, his rejection of abstract ideas, and the meaningfulness of scriptures.
13 Also see PI 20, discussed in section 4, below.
14 PHK 34.
15 There is insufficient space here to explore what constitutes assent for Berkeley. For the present purposes, I assume that Berkeley held a roughly Lockean view of assent. Locke defines assent as, “the admitting or receiving any proposition for true, upon arguments or proofs that are found to persuade us to receive it as true, without certain knowledge that it is so”, (Essay IV.xv.3).
16 Note that not knowing the sense of an utterance does not entail that the utterance lacks a sense altogether.
17 Jakapi (“Faith, Truth, Revelation and Meaning”, 28).
18 See PI 20.
19 Williford and Jakapi conclude that Berkeley admits both truth-conditions and operative utility; and that the fact that Berkeley recognizes multiple functions of language does not imply that “the meaning of the relevant utterances” is constituted by “their uses, emotive effects, or corresponding prescriptions”, (2009, 105). In an earlier paper, Williford argues that Berkeley’s readers, “should not attribute to Berkeley a view of language that has implications that are at odds with his known religious beliefs”, (Williford, “Berkeley’s Theory of Operative Language”, 286).
20 Other than ‘inspired writers’ like Paul, who have (let’s assume) premonitory ideas signified by scripture.
21 I have called Williford and Jakapi’s ‘formalist’ because it is exactly similar to formalist theories in philosophy of mathematics. According to those theories, the meaning of a mathematical statement is constituted by rule-governed manipulation of mathematical terms. For a classic account of formalism, see Hilbert (“On the Infinite”).
22 Similarly, they claim that for Berkeley, “No metaphysical theory of the denotatum of the term ‘force’ is needed for us to understand its meaning in the context of a physical theory”, (“Berkeley's Theory of Meaning”, 112–113).
23 Logic textbooks typically define an interpretation of a formal language as an assignment of truth-values to sentences within that language. Alternatively, an interpretation may be an assignment of values to terms in a formal language. If that language is compositional, the result is an indirect assignment of truth-values to sentences.
24 One might worry that, since ideational readings attribute to Berkeley the view that meanings are ideas (hence the name) an ideational reading of Berkeley does not imply that the sun itself constitutes the meaning of the word ‘sun’. This worry assumes a robust distinction between objects and ideas. On such a distinction, ideas are representations of objects, and objects exist independently of the ideas that represent them. But such a distinction is not available in Berkeley’s metaphysics. The sun itself is an idea for Berkeley, and the same idea that is the sun constitutes the meaning of the word ‘sun’. Thus, an ideational reading of Berkeley does imply that the sun itself (an idea) constitutes the meaning of the word ‘sun’.
25 An anonymous reviewer points out that Berkeley’s markings on the manuscript indicate that he revised this phrase to read, “any truth whether about general or particular ideas.” According to the reviewer, this change indicates that Berkeley intends the argument of this passage to be restricted to truths about ideas, and not to apply to all truths. But since there are only minds and ideas (including notions) in Berkeley’s metaphysics, I’m not sure that Berkeley thinks that there are truths that are not about minds, ideas, or notions. I also suspect, given the passage quoted above, that Berkeley does not think that knowledge of truths about minds, or about notions, is lost if one loses the ability to correctly manipulate signs.
26 Note that in the first sentence of this passage, Berkeley rejects Williford and Jakapi’s claim that a notational system can make a discourse that is too complex to grasp on its own comprehensible to a finite mind. Berkeley’s rejection also impacts a similar reading of discourse complexity defended by Pearce, discussed below.
27 It might be objected that in the 1752 edition of Alicphron, Berkeley endorses the view that, “relations, habitudes, or proportions … cannot be by us understood without the help of signs”, (ALC VII.14 [307]); and that Berkeley says there of arithmetic in particular, “If we suppose rude mankind without the use of language, it may be presumed, they would be ignorant of arithmetic”, (ALC VII.12 [304]). One might think that (a) these passages indicate that Berkeley does think that the ability to correctly manipulate signs constitutes knowledge of arithmetic; and (b) Berkeley may have changed his view between the 1708 MI and the 1752 ALC. I have no comment at the moment on whether Berkeley changed his view. However, it seems to me that even the later passages do not commit Berkeley the claim that arithmetical knowledge is constituted by correct manipulation of signs. Rather, these passages are consistent with a reading according to which arithmetical knowledge is constituted by ideas, but signs are a necessary heuristic aid for clearly and distinctly perceiving those ideas. In particular, insofar as arithmetical knowledge requires clear and distinct apprehension of relations between ideas, Berkeley might think that correct manipulation of signs is an indispensable heuristic device for identifying those relations.
28 See Philosophical Investigations 7.
29 Berkeley previews this argument against “mere jargon” a few pages earlier: “where there is not so much as the most inadequate or faint idea pretended to … my inference shall be, that you mean nothing at all; that you employ words to no manner of purpose, without any design or signification whatsoever. And I leave it to you to consider how mere jargon should be treated”, (DHP 223, emphasis added).
30 Also see DM 1 and DFM 48.
31 Berkeley also rejects formalism in this passage, since according to formalism the meaning of formal signs is constituted “only [by] the very signs themselves” and rule-governed relations among them.
32 The ‘Aristotle’ case, as an anonymous reviewer helpfully points out, is an instance of unreasonable assent.
33 It is unclear whether Alciphron is saying that reasonable assent is impossible, or any assent – whether reasonable or unreasonable – is impossible.
34 The possibility of assenting to propositions in other minds seems to be independent of the truth of the proposition assented to, since Berkeley certainly does not agree that the world is governed by fate or chance.
35 For discussion, see Jakapi (“Emotive Meaning and Christian Mysteries”, 411; “Faith, Truth, Revelation and Meaning, 30).
36 It might be objected that this result is similar to Pearce’s holistic use-theoretic reading; and that therefore this reading also implies that truth is relative for Berkeley. But the difference is that, whereas on Pearce’s reading truth is constituted by general utility, on the present reading truth merely correlates with general utility (as Jakapi argues, discussed in section 1).
37 Recall that this is an idea of the operative utility that would occur if everyone assented to Paul’s utterance.
38 I suspect that for Berkeley the imagination learns to associate ideas as cause and effect. From such associations the mind also learns to mediately perceive a cause that cannot be immediately perceived originally by means of an effect that is immediately perceived. At TVV 39, Berkeley says, “In certain cases, a sign may suggest its correlate as an image, in others as an effect, in others as a cause.” And in DHP 223, he says that, “from a cause [or] effect … there may reasonably be inferred the existence of a thing not immediately perceived.” For instance, suppose that I feel a sudden sharp pain in my ankle. I can associate that pain as an effect. Although I do not immediately perceive anything that I associate as its cause, I can mediately perceive that cause by means of the pain that I associate as its effect. Similarly, Berkeley might think that Paul associates his divinely revealed premonition as an effect, and the divine idea that it signifies as its cause, without Paul being able to immediately perceive that divine idea either by sense or imagination. However, it must be remembered that Berkeley does not think that ideas are literal causes. Rather, to associate ideas as cause and effect is to take one as a divinely instituted sign for the other (PHK 65, TVV 39).