Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Further Reflections on Theism 237
these points, one may reply to Berkeley that while whatever is thought of is
conceived, this is only to say that it is engaged via a conception, and not that
it is itself one; likewise whatever is thought of is ‘present to the mind’, but not
necessarily as something contained within it.
So far so good, but this does not refute Berkeley’s point that the realist
assumption, that some things are mind-independent, is self-contradictory: for
he argued that just as an object cannot be both seen and unseen, so nothing
can be both conceived and unconceived. To respond to this a further distinction
is called for: that between the fact of conceiving of something and the
content of what is conceived – the object itself and whatever is predicated of
it. It is indeed contradictory to say: ‘I can conceive of something that is
unconceived of ’; for this is equivalent to saying: ‘the thing in question is both
conceived of and not conceived of ’. However, it is not at all contradictory to
conceive of something as existing unconceived, for in this case the fact of
one’s conceiving it is not part of what is entertained or asserted. A further
way of putting the point is by saying that although I may be conceiving it, it
is not thereby shown to be part of an object’s nature, let along of its being, to
be conceived of by me or by anyone else.
These lines of reply are satisfactory so far as diffusing Berkeley’s immediate
argument for the self-contradictory nature of realism, and for the thesis that
the objects of thought are always ideas. They do not, though, suffice to show
that he is wrong in thinking that the world is somehow constituted by our
conception of it. To see what force there is in this latter suggestion consider
the version of it developed with great ingenuity by Michael Dummett in
connection with truth, meaning and understanding. 17 Another way of expressing
the realist’s assertion of the mind-independent existence of certain
entities (be they particulars, properties, or the ‘world’ in its entirety, however
this last is understood) is by saying that the truth or falsity of statements
concerning these entities is independent of our capacity to determine whether
or not they are true. This is so because, for the realist, the truth-makers,
the states of affairs in which those entities feature and in virtue of which
statements concerning them are true, exist and have the character they do
independently of our conception of them.
Arguably it is also part of the realist view that mind-independence implies
the possibility of entities whose character and existence transcend the
recognitional capacities of knowers. In short, there might be things of which
we not only do, but of which we can know nothing. Cast in the semantic
mode: there may be statements, the truth conditions of which are beyond our
powers to determine or even to conceive of. This can seem no more than
common sense made philosophically explicit; but if so then the problems
which now arise prompt the question of whether common sense may be
incoherent. For what content attaches to the idea of existents of which we