Berkeley's immaterialism: An interpretation and critique

Berkeley's arguments for immaterialism turn on his use of the phrase sensible object'. This phrase is usually interpreted as 'physical bodies perceived by sense' or 'physical bodies with sensible qualities', and 'physical bodies' are usually identified with putative material bodies. However, a long tradition of scholarship has developed according to which Malebranche exerted an influence on Berkeley's philosophical thought equal to if not greater than Locke's influence. Yet this scholarship has not changed how Berkeley's arguments are interpreted. Berkeley is read as responding almost exclusively to Locke, and his phrase 'sensible object' is almost universally taken to refer to Lockean material bodies.;In this dissertation, Berkeley's phrase 'sensible object' is shown to refer to Malebranche's notion of an intelligible body rather than to a Lockean material body. When this is presupposed, Berkeley's arguments for immaterialism turn out to differ considerably from what may be called the standard interpretation. His rejection of abstract ideas becomes (in part) the acknowledgement that it is absurd to claim, as Malebranche does, that abstract ideas are mind-independent. His stubborn insistence that houses, mountains and trees (intelligible objects---not material objects---in Malebranche's system) are nothing but the things we perceive by sense, and those nothing but subjective ideas and sensations, becomes a rejection of the claim that intelligible bodies could have the kind of dual ontological status (part mind-independent abstract idea, part mind-dependent sensation) that Malebranche claims they must have. His irksome claim that one cannot conceive of an unperceived tree becomes the sagacious insight that it is impossible to conceive of an intelligible body (an abstract idea made perceptible via sensations for Malebranche) existing mind-independently and out of all relation to any perceiver'. Since intelligible bodies are our only means of cognizing (conceiving, perceiving, etc.) material bodies, their incoherence implies that material bodies are inconceivable in the sense that any attempt to cognize them results in an inconsistent idea. And because what is inconceivable in this sense cannot exist, matter is rejected. None of these claims is properly understood apart from the influence of Malebranche's doctrine of intelligible bodies.