GOD, NATURE AND LANGUAGE: AN ESSAY ON BERKELEY’S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Text topic: Studies

Text author: Машан Богдановски

This paper gives a critical account of the precise character of Berkeley’s fictionalism and instrumentalism in his philosophy of science. Two replies are given to the objections typically raised against his vision of science and its incompatibility with the scientific practice. The first objection claims that his immaterialism is incompatible with the natural causation, and the second that it is not able to give an explanation for the complex structure of issues raised by natural sciences. The replies rely on Berkeley’s thesis concerning the language of God, claiming that there are no causal but only semantic relations between the signs and the signified in the world. The system of nature constitutes a language which God uses to communicate with the finite creatures.