26th-28th June 2008, International Berkeley Conference, Newport, Rhode Island


redwood library
Organized by Steve Daniel,Maureen Lapan, Nancy Kendrick, Nancy Bredbeck, Joanne Dunlap, and Vince Arnold, the conference was held at the historic Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport. Highlights included a presentation by Sean Berkeley (a descendant of George Berkeley) on John Smibert’s portrait of Berkeley, a demonstration by Cynthia Grund (University of Southern Denmark) on how to visit Berkeley’s home in Newport (Whitehall) online in“Second Life,” a walking tour of Newport and Trinity Church (where Berkeley preached) guided by John Hattendorf (Naval War College), and a bus tour of Berkeley-related sites outside Newport (led by Maureen Lapan) that ended with a dinner at Whitehall. The program included:

  • Bertil Belfrage, Bodafors, Sweden:“The Distorted Berkeley: Consequences of a Biased Edition”
  • Seth Bordner, University of North Carolina: “Berkeley’s ‘Defense’ of ‘Commonsense’”
  • Wolfgang Breidert,University of Karlsruhe: “Knowledge of Existence and Non-Existence”
  • Tom Lennon,University of Western Ontario: “Heterogeneity”
  • Samuel Rickless,University of California, San Diego: “Berkeley’s Master Argument”
  • Ville Paukkonnen, University of Helsinki:“Hylas’ Parity Argument”
  • Melissa Frankel, Harvard University: “Something-We-Know-Not-What, Something-We-Know-Not-Why: Berkeley, Meaning, and Explanation”
  • James Van Cleve,University of Southern California: “Berkeley vs. Reid on Three Puzzles of Vision”
  • Stephen H. Daniel, Texas A&M University: “Berkeley on the Essential Link Between Mind and the Language of Nature”
  • Alan Nelson, University of North Carolina: “Berkeley on Simple Ideas”
    Nancy Kendrick,Wheaton College (Massachusetts): “Berkeley’s Rejection of Existential Necessity”
  • John Roberts,Florida State University: “Berkeley’s God Must Perceive and He Must Be the Christian God”
  • Talia Mae Bettcher, California State University, Los Angeles: “Berkeley on Divine Foreknowledge”
  • Genevieve Migely, Cornell College (Iowa): “Moral Motivation in Berkeley’s Theory of Intentionality”
  • Georges Dicker, SUNY Brockport: “How Hylas Could Have Conquered Pain and Found Pleasure”
  • Caterina Menichelli, University of Macerata: “The Concept of Beauty in Berkeley’s Works”
  • Daniel Flage,James Madison University: “Was Berkeley an Ethical Egoist?”
  • Marta Szymanska, Jagiellonian University (Poland), “Berkeley’Project of Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain and the Concept of Happiness”
  • George Caffentzis, University of Southern Maine, “Locke, Berkeley, and Hume as Philosophers of Money”
  • Luc Peterschmitt, Univ. Charles-de-Gaulle, Lille III, “Can Berkeley Be an Instrumentalist? A Reappraisal of Berkeley’s Philosophy of Science”
  • Timo Airaksinen, University of Helsinki, “Light in Siris