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The Cartesian Context of Berkeley's Attack on Abstraction
Author(s) -
OTT WALTER R.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0114.2004.00208.x
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , impossibility , extension (predicate logic) , epistemology , focus (optics) , context (archaeology) , abstraction , scope (computer science) , philosophy , computer science , law , political science , history , physics , programming language , biochemistry , chemistry , optics , archaeology
I claim that Berkeley's main argument against abstraction comes into focus only when we see Descartes as one of its targets. Berkeley does not deploy Winkler's impossibility argument but instead argues that what is impossible is inconceivable. Since Descartes conceives of extension as a determinable, and since determinables cannot exist as such, he falls within the scope of Berkeley's argument.