{"agent_id":"berkeley","agent_name":"George Berkeley","slug":"god-as-the-cause-of-ideas","label":"God as the cause of ideas: is divine continuous perception the metaphysical guarantee of the perceivable, or is the appeal to God philosophical sleight of hand?","topic":"God as the cause of ideas","question":"Is divine continuous perception the metaphysical guarantee of the perceivable, or is the appeal to God philosophical sleight of hand?","position":"The ideas of sense are not produced by the will of finite minds; my sense impressions come to me whether I will or no, and my will cannot make a sound where there is no sound or a colour where there is no colour. Yet ideas, being passive, cannot be the cause of other ideas; only an active being can be a cause. Therefore the ideas of sense are produced in finite minds by another active being, infinitely more powerful and wise than any finite mind, who imprints these ideas on us by general laws and constitutes thereby what we call the order of nature. The unperceived perceivable — the trees in the park when no one is there, the far side of the moon, the Pleiades when no astronomer looks — is what God perceives; the world subsists in the mind of God when finite minds are not perceiving it. God produces sensible ideas in finite minds, imprints them on us, excites them in us; the verbs are deliberate. The visible world is a divine language by which God speaks: the consistency of nature is the consistency of God's discourse, and we read the language of nature by accumulated experience as we read any language. I follow Malebranche's Pauline principle In Him we live and move and have our being but not Malebranche's vision in God: we do not see things in God's mind, we see things in our own minds caused by God. I follow Malebranche's denial of finite causal power but not Malebranche's occasionalism, which has finite minds without efficacy at all; finite spirits will, and willing is genuine activity. The God of the system is not an asylum of ignorance, not an ex machina device, not a remote inference; God is, as I showed in the Three Dialogues, the direct upshot of the analysis of perception itself.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The ideas of sense are not produced by the will of finite minds; my sense impressions come to me whether I will or no, and my will cannot make a sound where there is no sound or a colour where there is no colour.","n":[]},{"t":"Yet ideas, being passive, cannot be the cause of other ideas; only an active being can be a cause.","n":[]},{"t":"Therefore the ideas of sense are produced in finite minds by another active being, infinitely more powerful and wise than any finite mind, who imprints these ideas on us by general laws and constitutes thereby what we call the order of nature.","n":[1,2,3]}],[{"t":"The unperceived perceivable — the trees in the park when no one is there, the far side of the moon, the Pleiades when no astronomer looks — is what God perceives; the world subsists in the mind of God when finite minds are not perceiving it.","n":[]},{"t":"God produces sensible ideas in finite minds, imprints them on us, excites them in us; the verbs are deliberate.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The visible world is a divine language by which God speaks: the consistency of nature is the consistency of God's discourse, and we read the language of nature by accumulated experience as we read any language.","n":[]},{"t":"I follow Malebranche's Pauline principle In Him we live and move and have our being but not Malebranche's vision in God: we do not see things in God's mind, we see things in our own minds caused by God.","n":[4]}],[{"t":"I follow Malebranche's denial of finite causal power but not Malebranche's occasionalism, which has finite minds without efficacy at all; finite spirits will, and willing is genuine activity.","n":[]},{"t":"The God of the system is not an asylum of ignorance, not an ex machina device, not a remote inference; God is, as I showed in the Three Dialogues, the direct upshot of the analysis of perception itself.","n":[5]}]],"texts":"Principles §§29-33 (the introduction of God as cause of ideas in finite minds); §§145-156 (the systematic treatment of our knowledge of God); Three Dialogues II (the famous passage where Philonous moves from immaterialism to theism); Alciphron Dialogue IV (the visual-language argument as natural-theology proof); Siris (1744, the Platonic-Neoplatonic late synthesis of God-and-nature). Reception: Malebranche's De la recherche de la vérité (1674-75) as the major influence Berkeley both depended on and rejected; Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779, posthumous) on the design argument; Kant on the limits of natural theology; A.A. Luce's Berkeley and Malebranche (1934) and Berkeley's Immaterialism (1945) ch. VI on the theological architecture; David Berman's biographical readings.","works":["Principles §§29-33 (the introduction of God as cause of ideas in finite minds)","§§145-156 (the systematic treatment of our knowledge of God)","Three Dialogues II (the famous passage where Philonous moves from immaterialism to theism)","Alciphron Dialogue IV (the visual-language argument as natural-theology proof)","Siris (1744, the Platonic-Neoplatonic late synthesis of God-and-nature)"],"reception":"Malebranche's De la recherche de la vérité (1674-75) as the major influence Berkeley both depended on and rejected; Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779, posthumous) on the design argument; Kant on the limits of natural theology; A.A. Luce's Berkeley and Malebranche (1934) and Berkeley's Immaterialism (1945) ch. VI on the theological architecture; David Berman's biographical readings.","status":"The decisive theological move of the system and the point where Berkeley's three sources — Anglican-Irish theology, Malebranche's occasionalism, and Locke's empiricism — converge. Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) developed the most powerful empiricist response to the natural-theology arguments Berkeley relied on. Kant's restriction of natural theology in the Critique of Pure Reason set the post-Berkeleian limits on the kind of argument Berkeley deployed. Luce's Berkeley and Malebranche (1934) is the standard study of the Malebranchean influence and the points at which Berkeley diverged. Luce's Berkeley's Immaterialism (1945) ch. VI on God and human perception is the canonical defense of the theological architecture. The contemporary engagement with Berkeleian theism runs through David Berman's biographical work (Berkeley: Idealism and the Man, 1994) and the analytic philosophy of religion that has rediscovered Berkeleian moves in connection with idealist theism.","era":"1685-1753","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Works Vol 2 - Principles and Three Dialogues","page":"pp. 240–241","canonical":"","quote":"Hyxas. Not so fast, Philonous: you say you cannot conceive how sensible things should exist without the mind. Do you not? go PHILONOUs. I do. HYLAS. Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it possible, that things perccivable by sense may still exist? PHILONous. I can; but then it must be in another mind.","label":"Works Vol 2 - Principles and Three Dialogues, pp. 240–241"},{"n":2,"work":"Works Vol 2 - Principles and Three Dialogues","page":"pp. 250–251","canonical":"","quote":"But will and understanding constitute in the strictest sense a mind or spirit. The powerful cause therefore of my ideas, is in strict propriety of speech a Spirit. very clear, little suspecting that what you advance leads directly to a contradiction. Is it not an absurdity to imagine any imperfection in God? puiLonous. Without doubt. Hy as. To suffer pain is an imperfection. PHILONOUS. It is. HYLAS.","label":"Works Vol 2 - Principles and Three Dialogues, pp. 250–251"},{"n":3,"work":"Works Vol 2 - Principles and Three Dialogues","page":"pp. 241–242","canonical":"","quote":"And is not God an agent, a being purely active? pHILONOus. I acknowledge it. HyLAS. No idea therefore can be like unto, or represent the nature of God. PHILONOUs. It cannot. HyLas. Since therefore you have no idea of the mind of God, how can you conceive it possible, that things should exist in his mind?","label":"Works Vol 2 - Principles and Three Dialogues, pp. 241–242"},{"n":4,"work":"Works Vol 2 - Principles and Three Dialogues","page":"pp. 224–225","canonical":"","quote":"He maintains that we are deceived by our senses, and know not the real natures or the true forms and figures of extended beings; of all which I hold the direct contrary. So that upon the whole there are no principles more fundamentally opposite than his and mine. It must be owned I entirely agree with what the holy Scripture faith, that in God we live, and move, and have our being.","label":"Works Vol 2 - Principles and Three Dialogues, pp. 224–225"},{"n":5,"work":"Works Vol 2 - Principles and Three Dialogues","page":"p. 119","canonical":"","quote":"But alas we need only open our eyes to see the sovereign Lord of all things with a more full and clear view, than we do any one of our fellow-creatures.","label":"Works Vol 2 - Principles and Three Dialogues, p. 119"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"immaterialism-esse-est-percipi","label":"Immaterialism / esse est percipi: are sensible things constituted by perception, or do they have an existence independent of all minds?"},{"slug":"the-likeness-principle-and-the-collapse-of-primary-and-secon","label":"The likeness principle and the collapse of primary and secondary qualities: can primary qualities be 'in matter' in any sense the secondary qualities cannot?"},{"slug":"the-master-argument","label":"The Master Argument: can a sensible object be conceived as existing unperceived, or does the very attempt smuggle the perceiver into the conception?"},{"slug":"the-analyst-and-the-critique-of-the-calculus","label":"The Analyst and the critique of the calculus: are the differentials of fluxions and infinitesimals rigorously grounded, or are they 'the ghosts of departed quantities'?"}]}