How Berkeley Can Go Quasi and Lose His Mind-Dependence

Abstract

Berkeley defends idealism partly by taking ordinary objects such as tables and stones to consist of ideas. Materialists reject this account of ordinary objects. I argue that Berkeley can undermine this rejection by making quasi-realist moves of the kind that many expressivists about normativity make. This ultimately results in a version of idealism that we cannot believe, since trying to believe it will make us believe materialism. But I argue that this version of idealism may nevertheless be true.