Berkeley defends idealism partly by taking ordinary objects such as tables and stones to consist of ideas. Materialists reject this move. I will 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 makes us believe materialism. But I will argue that this version of idealism may nevertheless be true.
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University of Reading