UK-Japan Special Conference

Aspects of Early Modern British Philosophy
Organized by the University of Oxford andJapanese Society for British Philosophy,
under the auspices of Musashino University

Date: 11th and 12th September 2019.
Venue: St Peter’s College of the University of Oxford
Programme

11 September
9:00-10:15am
Hiroyuki Yorozuya (Assistant Professor, Hiroshima Institute of Technology)“Hume, Causation and Agentive Experience”
10:15-11:30 am
Jonathan Cottrell (Lecturer, University of Edinburgh)“Interpreting Hume on Mental Representation”
11:30 am
Coffee11:45am-1:00pm
Shigeyuki Aoki (Associate Professor, Chuo University)“Locke versus Berkeley revisited – an interpretive essay on historiography”
1:00 pm
Lunch
2:15-3:30pm
Ruth Boeker (Assistant Professor, University College Dublin)“Shaftesbury on Liberty and Self-Mastery”
3:30 pmTea3:45-5:00 pm
Masaki Ichinose (Professor of Musashino University, Emeritus Professor of UTokyo)“Locke on language and its privateness”

12 September
9:00-10:15am
Clare Moriarty (Visiting Research Associate, King's College London)“Berkeley and Anti-Mathematicism”
10:15-11:30 am
Tomokiyo Nomura (Regular Lecturer, Shumei University)“Let others think for you: Berkeley and Assent”
11:30 amCoffee
11:45am-1:00pm
James Harris (Professor, University of St Andrews)“Between Locke and Filmer: Hume on allegiance”
1:00 pm
Lunch
2:15-3:30pm
Taro Okuda (Professor, Nanzan University)“Hume's Moral Sentiments and Moral Particularism”
3:30 pmTea
3:45-5:00 pm
Peter Kail (Associate Professor, University of Oxford)“Berkeley and the Material Attitude”

Contact
Organiser in Japan: Masaki Ichinose, Musashino University, Tokyo, JAPAN
Email: masaichi@musashino-u.ac.jp

Abstracts●“Hume, Causation and Agentive Experience”

Hiroyuki Yorozuya (Assistant Professor, Hiroshima Institute of Technology)In the contemporary philosophy of action, David Hume has widely been assumed todefend the causal theory of action. Under this assumption, some philosophers argue that,given his theory of causation, Hume’s account of human agency is untenable. The aim of
this presentation is to resist this understanding of Hume. I will argue that Hume’s theoryof causation does not make his account of human agency implausible. I will also showthat we need to focus on the qualitative feature of agentive experience in Hume’s view.
●“Interpreting Hume on Mental Representation”Jonathan Cottrell (Lecturer, University of Edinburgh)
Some of Hume’s central arguments in the Treatise concern what our perceptions canand cannot represent. The past two decades have seen an explosion of literature aiming
to reconstruct the theory of mental representation that (it is assumed) underlies thesearguments. This paper argues that, in fact, Hume nowhere offers a theory of mental
representation that is both (i) consistent with Treatise Book 2’s theory of the passions(specifically, with the theory of sympathy presented in “Of the love of fame” takentogether the view, presented in “Of the influencing motives of the will”, that passions arenon-representational); and (ii) fit to underwrite the Treatise’s arguments about what ourperceptions can and cannot represent. But this is no cause for concern because Humeneeds no such theory for the purposes of his mature philosophy, as presented in the Essays
and Treatises on Several Subjects.
●“Locke versus Berkeley revisited – an interpretive essay on historiography”

Shigeyuki Aoki (Associate Professor, Chuo University)
What is it that philosophy should make "advance" or "progress"? In this paper I would
like to discuss the interpretative debates on the first two philosophers from the British
Empiricists trio - Locke, Berkeley, Hume. Then I argue that philosophy (apparently)
makes progress when, with hindsight, some "abstraction" - weaving through thearguments in one vector - is adopted as a historiographical method.
●“Shaftesbury on Liberty and Self-Mastery”

Ruth Boeker (Assistant Professor, University College Dublin)
The aim of this paper is to show that Shaftesbury’s thinking about liberty is best
understood in terms of self-mastery. Since he does not offer a detailed andsystematic treatment of liberty, I begin by analysing Shaftesbury’s reflections onquestions concerning human choice. Human choice is the theme of a painting
entitled The Choice of Hercules that he commissioned and of the so-called story of anamour, which addresses the difficulties of controlling human passions. Jaffro
distinguishes three notions of self-control that are present in the story of an amour.
Although I agree with many aspects of Jaffro’s interpretation, I question hisconclusion that self-control in the Stoic sense is best reserved for “moral heroes”.
I propose an alternative developmental interpretation and show that one advantageof my interpretation is that it takes seriously that for Shaftesbury philosophy ismeant to be practical and help us improve our lives. I end the paper by examining
Shaftesbury’s concept liberty. I argue that rather than trying to situate Shaftesbury’sview within debates among compatibilists and incompatibilists it is more promising
to understand his concept of liberty in terms of self-mastery and thus regard it asa version of positive liberty.
●“Locke on language and its privateness”

Masaki Ichinose (Professor of Musashino University, Emeritus Professor of UTokyo)
It is well known that Locke understands significations of words as nothing but ideas
in the minds of speakers. Thus, it might be natural that Locke’s theory of language isinterpreted as a kind of the private language theory in a Wittgensteinian sense. However,Locke clearly admits the possibility of communication through language between us.
How should we solve this seemingly contradictory argument of Locke? My strategy ininterpretation of Locke is that; we accept the literal connotation of Locke’s claim thatsignifications of words lie in ideas of speaker’s mind, so, in that sense, Locke clearlytakes meaning of words to be somehow private. However, its privateness is not theprivateness in the sense of private language, but the privateness in the sense of private
property. I will confirm and bolster up this interpretation through examining the relation
between notions of idea and person by considering Locke’s arguments in his Second
Treatise of Two Treatises of Government. My understanding would connect Locke’stheory of language with the notion of intellectual property like patents.
●“Berkeley and Anti-Mathematicism”
Clare Moriarty (Visiting Research Associate, King's College London)

The “mathematization of nature” was regarded by both natural philosophers of theperiod and subsequent historians as a dominant influence upon the scientific revolutionthat began in the late 16th century. Galileo had described a universe "written in amathematical language", and following the successes garnered by the mathematization ofbranches of the physical sciences—notably astronomy, mechanics and optics—it was
natural that a program of mathematization was seen by many as a promising strategy inother disciplines.
The term “anti-mathematicism” refers to a hostility towards the mathematization ofother disciplines that flourished in some 18th-century scholarship. Eric Schliesser has
defined it in terms of "reservations about the authority and utility of the application of themathematical sciences". Increasingly, scholarship on this phenomenon is providing avaluable way to assess philosophical sympathies and dispositions in the early modernperiod. Anti-mathematical sentiment may concentrate on the application of mathematicalmethods in disciplines where the anti-mathematician believes they do not belong. It may
evaluate the standards of rigour advocated by mathematics and regard them as unduly
burdensome for more socially-grounded subjects. It may be suspicious of the rational
authority conferred on those specializing in mathematics and logic, and it may worry

about how that status translates into other scholarly domains. That Berkeley’s
philosophical instincts are anti-mathematical will be unsurprising to anyone who hasstudied his philosophy, and especially so to those familiar with his candid remarks onmathematics in his Trinity College notebooks.
In this paper I characterise the central features of Berkeley’s anti-mathematicalphilosophy, and argue that his views about mathematics are distinctive and radical evenamong contemporaries with similar philosophical sympathies. Berkeley’s mathematicalantipathy is a special case, and is at times deeply ideological in a way that clarifies
important themes in his broader philosophical project.
●“Let others think for you: Berkeley and Assent”

Tomokiyo Nomura (Regular Lecturer, Shumei University)
The Meaning of Meaning which was published by Ogden and Richars in 1923 wasa gigantic milestone for scholars studying Berkeley’s semantics. From then on, in thelatter half of the 20th Century, many scholars maintained that Berkeley developed anemotive theory of meaning. In the beginning of 21st Century, however, a few scholars like
Williford and Jakapi who were mainly based on the seventh dialogue in Alciphron started
to attack this predominant tendency.
This attack accuses interpretations derived from Ogden and Richars in terms of truthvalue. Usually an emotive theory of meaning asserts that terms which have emotive
meaning does not have truth values. Suppose, as many scholars in 20th century thought,
Berkeley developed this type of emotive theory. According to the seventh dialogue in
Alciphron, Berkeley sates that terms in natural science or mathematics have emotive
meanings. Then, Berkeley has to commit to absurd assertions like these terms in naturalscience or mathematics do not have truth values. This indicates there are something wrong
with this predominant interpretation.
In this presentation, I want to take a small step forward. Leaving from the term like‘truth value’ which Berkeley never heard of, and bring the issue back to the context of theseventh dialogue in Alciphron. In the seventh dialogue in Alciphron, Euphranor
summarizes a discussion concerning meaning by saying that by admitting there are
significant words even though they do not suggest ideas, regulates passions or conducts,‘consequently’ grant there are assents without ideas. By analyzing this relationshipbetween meaning and assents showed in this summary, I will crystalize a theory ofknowledge which focuses on knowledge as a conduct, and leaving from epistemic
individualism towards socially opened epistemology.
●“Between Locke and Filmer: Hume on allegiance”
James Harris (Professor, University of St Andrews)

In this paper I seek to construct an intellectual ancestry for Hume's treatment ofallegiance in Book 3 of the Treatise and the political essays written immediately after theJacobite rebellion of 1745. I argue that Hume is, in effect, trying to find a middle way
between the theories of John Locke, on the one hand, and Sir Robert Filmer, on the other.
I pay particular attention to the relationship between Hume's and Filmer's approaches tothe problem of political obligation, and argue that there is more of an affinity between
Hume and Filmer than has hitherto been appreciated.
●“Hume's Moral Sentiments and Moral Particularism”

Taro OKUDA (Professor, Nanzan University)
In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume said: “To have the sense of virtue, is nothing
but to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the contemplation of a character. Thevery feeling constitutes our praise or admiration. We go no farther; nor do we enquire into
the cause of the satisfaction. We do not infer a character to be virtuous, because it pleases:
But in feeling that it pleases after such a particular manner, we in effect feel that it isvirtuous.”(T3.1.2.3) This famous passage may enable us to interpret that Hume's moral
philosophy takes a kind of moral particularism. Here I shall show this interpretation andraise Humean moral particularism as an alternative Humeanism in metaethics.
●“Berkeley and the Material Attitude”

Peter Kail (Associate Professor, University of Oxford)
Berkeley’s philosophy attempts to give substance to the Pauline doctrine that it is in
God ‘in whom we live, move and have our being’ by offering an account of the natural
world as a system of signs through which God is in constant communication with us,
rather than one comprising mind-independent physical objects governed by blind causal
mechanisms. Whilst holding that this later view is conceptually defective, he neverthelessrecognises that this latter conception is present in ordinary thought and behaviour, whichraises the question of just how Berkeley understands, and can account for, this ‘materialattitude’.