“As sure therefore as the sensible world really exists, so sure is there an infinite omnipresent spirit who contains and supports it …”—Berkeley (Second Dialogue)
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Robert Oakes, “Does Traditional Theism Entail Pantheism?”,American Philosophical Quarterly 20, 1983, pp. 105–112. In this essay Oakes interestingly argues that Berkeley's “theocentric mentalism”, and other types of theism are pantheistic. If Aquinas, Maimonides and other theists who maintain the conservation doctrine were only claiming that as a matter of fact entities could not exist apart from divine conserving activity, then this would not entail any ontological identification between God and those entities. Consider a person pushing a button to drink from a water fountain. The fountain of water is dependent upon the conserving activity of the drinker, but we are not inclined to think that the fountain is an aspect or modification of the drinker. However, it is clear that Berkeley, like Descartes, maintains a strong logical version of the conservation doctrine.
Oakes,, pp. 108–110. P. A. Byrne has offered an argument similar to that of Oakes'. See, P. A. Byrne, “Berkeley, Scientific Realism and Creation,”Religious Studies 20, 1984, pp. 453–464. Byrne says, According to the doctrine of preservation ex nihilo the world and its contents have no existence apart from God's will … The things that make up the world are not substances in their own right. If the contents of the universe have this sort of contingency … then they are thoughts or volitions in the mind of God … The deliberately produced thoughts or volitions in someone's mind have no existence in their own right … (460). Both Oakes and Byrne employ the idea of the world being radically dependent upon God for its perdurance to support their respective conclusions about the implications of Berkeley's adherence to the doctrine—pantheism and immaterialism. Byrne does not explicitly discuss pantheism. However, in a related essay Oakes does argue that because of his adherence to the conservation doctrine, Descartes, like Berkeley, appears to be commited to immaterialism. See Robert Oakes, “Material Things: A Cartesian Conundrum,”Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64, (1983) 144–150.
Oakes,, pp. 108–110.
Colin Turbayne, “The Berkeley, Plato, Aristotle Connection”, in Colin Turbayne ed.,Berkeley: Critical and Interpretive Essays (Minnesota: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1982), pp. 295–310. Turbayne convincingly argues that these principles, along with the “Identity Principle”, (“the perceiving of an idea isnot distinct from the idea perceived”), are not inconsistent on Berkeley's account despite their seeming so.
Turbayne,, p. 303.
Byrne,, p. 462.
This paper was presented to the Berkeley Tercentenary Conference, Maison Francaise, Oxford, August 1985. The discussion that followed helped me to improve (I hope) this paper considerably.
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Levine, M.P. Berkeley's theocentric mentalism: Pantheism?. SOPH 26, 30–41 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02781154
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02781154