Berkeley's Empiricism and the Concept of God: A Defence Of Theism

Abstract

George Berkeley (1685–1753), Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop, occupies a singular and philosophically productive position within the empiricist tradition. Where Locke retained a mind-independent material substratum beneath sensible qualities and Hume systematically dissolved the metaphysical commitments of empiricism into scepticism, Berkeley developed a radical but internally disciplined alternative: the doctrine of immaterialism, or subjective idealism, according to which the existence of sensible things consists entirely in their being perceived. This paper argues that this doctrine is not incidentally but structurally theistic. It demonstrates that Berkeley's argument proceeds through four logically connected stages: first, the conceivability argument, which establishes that the concept of mind-independent matter is not merely unobserved but strictly inconceivable; second, the esse est percipi principle, which establishes that to be is to be perceived; third, the continuity argument, which demonstrates that the continuous existence of sensible objects under the esse est percipi principle requires an infinite, omnipresent perceiver; and fourth, the argument from the order and regularity of experience to a rational, volitional cause. The paper further argues that Berkeley's idea/notion distinction, when properly reconstructed, resolves — or at least substantially defuses — the principal objection that spiritual substance is no better supported than material substance. Principal objections to Berkeley's system are examined and assessed, with the conclusion that while his immaterialism faces genuine difficulties, these difficulties do not undermine the structural theological argument it generates. Berkeley's defence of theism, this paper contends, constitutes a philosophically serious contribution to natural theology, grounded in the internal logic of empiricist epistemology rather than in theological presupposition.