George Pappas

 ( 1942 Births ) 

George Sotiros Pappas (4 May 1942-3 September 2025) is a professor of philosophy at Ohio State University. Departmental profile at OSU source: id=59391458 Pappas specializes in epistemology, the history of early modern philosophy, philosophy of religion and metaphysics. He is of Greek and English origin.

He is the author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on "Internalist versus Externalist" conceptions of epistemic justification. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article

He was co-editor (with Marshall Swain) of Essays on Knowledge and Justification (1978), an anthology of essays relating to the Gettier problem Gettier Problem bibliography at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy used as a core text in undergraduate epistemology courses. Suggested epistemology reading list

Pappas is an editorial consultant of Berkeley Studies.

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Studies in Berkeley's philosophy Pappas is known to be a leading Berkeley scholar; his essay "Berkeley and Scepticism" was in 1993 awarded the International Berkeley Prize.See: Berkeley Prize Winners.
The annual International Berkeley Essay Prize competition was established by Colin Murray Turbayne and his wife in 1990. Pappas is a regular participant of International Berkeley Conferences. International Berkeley Conferences At one such conference, celebrating the 300th anniversary of George Berkeley's birth, Pappas propounded a new approach to the relationship between Berkeley's anti-abstractionism and "esse est percipi""To be is to be perceived." A core proposition of Berkeley's ontology. principle. On Pappas' reading, Berkeley's two theses — that there are no abstract ideas and that sensible objects must be perceived in order to exist — entail one another.

Pappas' interpretation of Berkeley's esse is percipi thesis has sparked much discussion. In
- McKim, Robert. "Abstraction and Immaterialism: Recent Interpretations", Berkeley Studies 15 (1997–1998): 1–13. In 1989, the Garland Publishing Company brought out a 15-volume collection of major works on Berkeley; Pappas' paper "Abstract ideas and the 'esse is percipi' thesis" was included in the third volume,w Doney (ed), Berkeley on abstraction and abstract ideas, N.Y.; L.: Garland, 1989. — XVII, 434 p. — (Philosophy of George Berkeley; 3; A Garland series) as it was considered to be a significant contribution to Berkeley scholarship.

Pappas developed his treatment of Berkeley's "esse est percipi" principle to repudiate the "inherence interpretation of Berkeley", upon which Edwin E. Allaire, among others, elaborated.
The article is a classical work of Berkeley scholarship.For more detail, see:

• (A wide grasp of literature on the "inherence account".)
• Robert G. Muehlmann (2026). 9780271042282, Pennsylvania State Press. . ISBN 9780271042282
  (Muehlmann's Introduction provides further bibliographical information of the various articles in defense and in criticism of this view.)
• Katia Saporiti (2026). 9783465035107, Vittorio Klostermann. ISBN 9783465035107

For up-to-date criticism of the "inherence account," see:

That account is put forward to answer an extremely perplexing question in the history of philosophy: Why did Berkeley embrace idealism, i. e., why did he hold that esse est percipi, that to be is to be perceived?

After emerging in the early 1960s, the "inherence account" attracted numerous proponents and became an influential element of contemporary Berkeley scholarship. In his paper "Ideas, minds, and Berkeley" Pappas revealed some discrepancies between fountain-head evidences and Allaire's approach to a reconstruction of Berkeley's idealism. Pappas' critical examination of the "inherence account" is greatly appreciated by Berkeley scholars. Pappas' penetrating remarks compelled Edwin B. Allaire to revise and improve his conception.

Even those who share Allaire's account of Berkeley's idealism acknowledge Pappas' article to be "an excellent review and critique of the IA inherence."

In 2000, Pappas published his monograph Berkeley's thought in which some parts were based on earlier papers of his. While writings by A. A. Luce or Geoffrey Warnock are long outdated, Berkeley's thought is often included in lists of recommended literature on Berkeley's philosophy.As examples, take:

• Talia Mae Bettcher (2008). 9780826489913, Continuum Publishing. ISBN 9780826489913

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Publications

• George S. Pappas (2026). 9780801437007, Cornell University Press. . ISBN 9780801437007

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See also

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

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