Brute Fact

Concerns about contingency are explored further by way of a consideration of brute facts. Facts (ways the universe is) that are explanatorily brute are distinguished from those that are ontologically brute. Explanation, being a product of finite minds, must end somewhere, it would seem, but this leaves open the question whether the universe, or its nature, is in any respect ontologically brute. The difficulty of answering this question is registered and the suggestion advanced that reality, being itself, determines what could or must be the case. This leads to an ontological argument of the form, if there is something, if there is anything at all, there could not have been nothing: nothing comes from nothing. The upshot is something like a metaphysical counterpart to the principle of sufficient reason.

Berkeley and Spinoza

There is a widespread assumption that Berkeley and Spinoza have little in common, even though early Jesuit critics in France often linked them. Later commentators have also recognized their similarities. This chapter focuses on how Berkeley’s comments on the Arnauld–Malebranche debate regarding objective and formal reality, and on his treatment of God’s creation of finite minds within nature relate his theory of knowledge to his doctrine in a way similar to that of Spinoza.

Berkeley’s Christian Neoplatonism and Malebranchean Divine Ideas

Berkeley’s doctrine of archetypes explains how God perceives and can have the same ideas as finite minds. His appeal to Christian Neoplatonism opens up a way to understand how the relation of mind, ideas, and their union is modeled on the Cappadocian Church Fathers’ account of the Persons of the Trinity. This way of understanding Berkeley indicates why he, in contrast to Descartes or Locke, thinks that mind (spiritual substance) and ideas (objects of mind) cannot exist or be thought of apart from one another. It also hints at why Gregory of Nyssa’s immaterialism sounds so much like Berkeley’s.

Berkeley’s Pantheistic Discourse

Berkeley’s immaterialism has more in common with views developed by Henry More, the mathematician Joseph Raphson, John Toland, and Jonathan Edwards than those of thinkers with whom he is commonly associated (e.g. Malebranche and Locke). The key for recognizing their similarities lies in appreciating how St. Paul’s remark that, in God “we live and move and have our being” is an invitation to think of God as the space of discourse in which minds and ideas are identified. This way of speaking about God, adapted by Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, opens up new ways to think about the relation between God and finite minds.

Berkeley on God

Berkeley’s use of a posteriori arguments supports a view of God that is accessible and persuasive for finite minds. However, those arguments ultimately support belief only in a God who is finite. This chapter shows how, by appealing to an a priori argument for God’s existence, Berkeley emphasizes God’s infinity. This does not undermine other arguments, for it does not aim to challenge how those arguments support belief in a God who accounts for all we experience. It only indicates that another kind of argument is needed to show how our knowledge of the existence of an infinite God does not depend a posteriori on our experience of things in the world.

Infinitism, finitude and normativity

I evaluate two new objections to an infinitist account of epistemic justification, and conclude that they fail to raise any new problems for infinitism. The new objections are a refined version of the finite-mind objection, which says infinitism demands more than finite minds can muster, and the normativity objection, which says infinitism entails that we are epistemically blameless in holding all our beliefs. I show how resources deployed in response to the most popular objection to infinitism, the original finite-mind objection, can be redeployed to address the two new objections.

The Argument from Intentionality (or Aboutness)

The Theistic Argument from Intentionality (TAI) is a venerable argument for the existence of God from the existence of eternal truths. The argument relies inter alia on the premises that (i) truth requires representation, and that (ii) non-derivative representation is a function of, and only of, minds. If propositions are the fundamental bearers of truth and falsity, then these premises entail that propositions (or at least their representational properties) depend on minds. Although it is widely thought that psychologism—the view that the fundamental truth-bearers are mind-dependent—was refuted by Frege, a psychologistic view of propositions has been undergoing a revival. However, this new psychologism suffers from a problem of scarcity—finite minds cannot generate enough thoughts to play the role of fundamental truth-bearers. This objection paves the way for a revised version of the TAI: only an infinite mind can furnish enough thoughts to play the role of propositions.