The complexity of causation and immaterialism

This chapter develops a suggestion of Ken Winkler’s that, for Berkeley, causal claims are not based on necessary connections but instead confer intelligibility on action through appeal to volitional ends. It uses this insight to frame an argument that will provide reasons for rejecting George Pitcher’s much-discussed worry that occasionalism is unavoidable for an immaterialist like Berkeley, thus removing what might be seen as a barrier to Berkeley’s idea that we can base a knowledge of God’s causal powers on a knowledge of human agency. In making this argument, the chapter shows that Berkeley’s distinction between immediate and mediate perception provides room for mental causation, yielding an account of mental agency that is sufficiently rich to permit Berkeley to claim that we have a knowledge of human mental agency on which we can base a knowledge of God’s agency. Humans can serve as a teleologically based example of rational agency from which we can develop a picture of divine agency with divine wisdom and divine goodness.