Post on 22-Feb-2023
God, Value, and Naturalism
(T)he major obstacle to real progress in dealing
with the problem of God is the supernaturalistic
theism of the metaphysical tradition.1
Schubert Ogden’s remark forms my starting-point. I examine
some themes in contemporary philosophy, which show what is
at stake in the question of God, and consider whether
supernaturalistic theism has been the main obstacle to
progress. My theological focus is the position popularized
by John Robinson in Honest to God (1963). Robinson summarizes
what Ogden has in mind and clarifies the available
alternatives. My philosophical focus is the epistemological
question of the relation between experience and physical
things and the metaphysical question of the relation between
nature and value.
1.Experience and Physical Things
According to Ayer belief in the existence of physical
things is problematic, because the evidence is insufficient
to establish it.2 We depend on sense experience for our
knowledge of physical things, but there is no valid
inference from facts about sense experience to facts about
1 Schubert Ogden, “The Reality of God”, 1966. Reprinted in The Reality of God and other Essays, 1966.2 A/J.Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge (1956), pp.75-81
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physical things. Beliefs about physical things are not
justified and do not constitute knowledge. Analogously, our
experiential evidence is insufficient to establish God's
existence - hence, proofs of this type misfire.3 However,
those who object to such proofs usually accept the existence
of physical things. Unlike belief in the existence of God,
belief in the existence of a world containing physical
things is epistemologically unproblematic. The position
with which I am concerned implies, by contrast, that God and
physical things are on an epistemological par, and that both
beliefs are unproblematic: belief in God is justified in
much the way that it is justified to believe in physical
things.4 3 See Honest to God, p.14. G.E. Hughes in ‘Plantinga on the Rationality of God’s Existence’ says that the serious non-believer in God is an everyday acquaintance, admitting all the empirical facts , yetdenying that God exists (Philosophical Review, vol 79, 1970, pp. 246-252.) Not all objections to empirical proofs for the existence of God come from the atheist. Aquinas, commenting on Pseudo-Dionysius’ claim that ‘God is not there. He is beyond what is there’, says that there is an infinite distance between what we can know and God, but that this does not exclude our gaining some kind of knowledge of God. (Summa Theologia , Ia, Q3, art 4, reply 2.) He thinks that the things around us – God’s effects –help to demonstrate that God exists, but tell us nothing about His essential nature (Ibid ., Ia. Q2, art.2, reply to ob 3). Tillich suggeststhat any attempt to argue for God’s existence from things in the world is futile, ‘bringing him down to the level of a thing in the world’ (‘The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge’, Crane Review, 1959, p.87). It is misguided to look for proofs for the existence of God (Systematic Theology, 1, Chicago, 1973, p.237), not because there can be no knowledge of God, but because we are already responsive to what such proofs purport to provide. (Systematic Theology I, p.206). See also Robert R. N. Ross, ‘The Non-Existence of God: Tillich, Aquinas, and the Pseudo-Dionysus’, the Harvard Theological Review, Vol 68, no. 2, 1975, pp. 141-166.4 Ross (op.cit) discusses and criticises this way of thinking in Tillich. Tillich says that God is the ‘presupposition’ of any question (‘The Two Types of Philosophy of Religion’, p.16), and ‘in every
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2. Two Frameworks
We face two questions. Under what conditions can a belief be
accepted without proof? Can these conditions accommodate
belief in God? According to the sceptic, our knowledge of
physical objects is mediated by sense experience and there
is an unbridgeable gap between facts about the sense-
experience and facts about physical objects. The various
responses to this different answers to the question whether
the sceptical framework is mandatory. Someone who accepts
this framework will accept its conception of experience, but
may deny that physical things transcend experience. One
solution is that statements about physical objects can be
translated by statements about sense-contents. A response
more relevant to theological concerns rejects the sceptic’s
framework with its unbridgeable gap between sense-experience
and physical objects. Rather, sense-experience gives direct
access to things, and hence already involves physiucal
things. The problematic proof is no longer necessary.
Heidegger expesses this by complaining that the scandal of
philosophy is not, as Kant believed, that it fails to prove
the reality of things outside us, but that “such proofs are
expected and attempted again and again”.5 McDowell too
purports “not to answer sceptical questions, but to begin to
see how it might be intellectually respectable to ignore
creature God is…more present than the creature is to himself’ (The Shaking of the Foundations, London, 1949, p.47).5 Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie, J. and Robinson, E, London, 1962, p. 205
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them, to treat them as unreal, in the way that commonsense
has always wanted to”.6
How are we to decide between these two approaches? The
second is implicit in our ordinary thinking and sidesteps
traditional epistemology. But to vindicate it, we need to
show that it is intelligible and unproblematic that
experience puts us in touch with physical things and that
beliefs about physical objects do not require proof.7 We
might proceed to show that it is unintelligible to view
experience in sceptical terms and that the demand for a
proof is reprehensible.
3. Dismantling the sceptical framework
Impressed by the fallibility of perception the sceptic
postulates a realm of sensory experience that is in
principle describable without reference to physical objects
and which constitutes the only evidence we have for their
existence. There are then two alternatives. The first is to
accept a precarious dualism, with 'a physical world “behind”
the world of phenomena'.8 The second is to insist, as Ayer
does, that physical objects are to be defined in terms of,
'reduced' to, 'sense-contents'.9 This faces the difficulty
6 John McDowell, Mind and World (Harvard, 1994), p. 113.7 Crispin Wright criticises the precipitate removal of the veil of perception simply to ensure that our relation to things is direct (Proceedings of the British Academy, 1985, LXXI pp.429-72)8 ‘Does Philosophy Analyse Common Sense?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. xvi, 1937, p.173.9 Language, Truth and Logic, pp.53,64
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that our sense experience cannot be adequately described
without referring to physical objects.10 The response to
this is that ‘we are obliged to mention material things when
we wish to describe certain contents, because the poverty of
our language is such that we have no other verbal means of
explaining what their properties are’11 and ‘it must be
possible to define material things in terms of sense-
contents, because it is only by the occurrence of certain
sense-contents that the existence of any material thing can
ever be in the least degree verified’.12 There is, however,
a third alternative – that the description of sense
experience involves essentially and irremediably, and not
just contingently, reference to physical objects. This
excludes both dualism and reductionism, since physical
objects are now incorporated into our sense experience. It
is arguably an intelligible view, while its rivals may be
unintelligible.
4. God/world dualism
There are clear similarities between physical things and God.
Experiential evidence supposedly falls short of both.
Nevertheless there are significant disanalogies. One way of
avoiding God-world dualism – translating God-statements into
statements about the world - fails to capture what we mean by
God-talk. The other way of avoiding dualism – the
10 A.Quinton; P.F.Strawson, Philosophy (1956)11 Language, Truth and Logic, p.6712 Language, Truth and Logic, p.53
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incorporation of God-talk into talk about the world – is less
plausible than the incorporation of physical objects into
sense experience. Current 'commonsense' finds it easy enough
to characterize the world in God-free terms. The obvious
response to God-world dualism is is to deny that He
exists.
What does it mean to say that God is dualistically
opposed to the world? The claim that physical things are
dualistically opposed to the world implies that they are
distinct from expereinced sense-contents and located in a
super-sensible world. Thus there can be no evidence for their
existence and no intelligible account of the relation between
the experiential and physical realms. Analogously, God-world
dualism implies that God is located in a supersensible world,
there is no evidence for His existence, and no intelligible
relation between Him and the things we experience. Robinson
claims that much intuitive and theological thinking
presupposes such God-world dualism. Thus, ‘we have accepted, as
part of our mental furniture, a God who is spiritually or metaphysically “out
there”’, that He is ‘above and beyond the world’ and enjoys a
‘separate existence over and above the sum of all things’13.
The ‘creed of the English’ is this:
[W]hat they identify as ‘God’ is to all intents and
purposes an ‘x’. As Werner Pelz has said, ‘We must
13 1963, p.3. Compare Pseudo-Dionysius: ‘God…is not there: he is beyond what is there’. Divine Names, IV. 2. (Cited in Ross, op.cit, p.3).
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realize that when we use the word “God” we are
talking about something which no longer connects
with anything in most people’s life, except with
whatever happens to be left over when all the vital
connections have been made’. God is a Being in
whose existence they believe (or disbelieve) over
and above (rather than in and through) what for
them makes up ‘life’. The crediting or discrediting
of this Being is almost totally irrelevant to the
question of the reality of God in any sense in which
the Christian is interested. 14
If God is unknowable, unprovable and disconnected from most
people’s lives, we can see why He is described as ‘beyond
what is there’, and why theologians like Ogden doubt the
sense of God-talk which excludes any relationship with Him.15
Ayer happily accepts this conception, and infers from
the unverifiability of God’s existence that this existential
question is meaningless: God is placed on a par with
physical things, and both are banished from our ontology.
Verificationism involves an implausible theory of meaning,
and our epistemological limitations with respect to a
transcendent God do not entail that the question of His
14 The Honest to God Debate, ed. John Robinson and David Edwards, 1963, p.22915 ‘The Reality of God’, pp. 50-1
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existence is meaningless. However, the verificationist's aim
of eliminating God-talk can be achieved without this theory
of meaning. Why talk of God if there is no evidence for His
existence?
Robinson agrees that the existence of a transcendent God
is unverifiable, and his existence can be neither proved nor
disproved.16 He does not conclude, however, that we must stop
talking about God, for he rejects this dualistic framework.
But is he right to suppose that dualism has been ‘part of
our mental furniture’? It is difficult to say, because it is
unclear whose mental furniture is at issue. Are we concerned
with everyday people or with theologians, philosophers, or
scientists? There is unlikely to be straightforward
unanimity, either across all these categories or within any
one of them. The mental furniture of everyday people, in this
context as in others17, will be unclear at the edges.
Furthermore, given the imagery associated with God (in
contrast to physical objects) the metaphysical commitments
will be unobvious. The image of God as ‘above’ us and ‘in
heaven’ need carry no particular metaphysical commitment,18and even if it does imply dualism, this may simply guarantee
that God’s reality is of a different order from that of 16 ‘If God is equated with a supernatural Being whose existence overand above the world has to be demonstrated, I am not prepared to spend time contending the charge [of atheism]. Not that I would presume to deny such a Being (he is not capable of disproof).’ (“Comment on Alasdair Macintyre’s “God and the Theologians”, in Robinson and Edwards,op.cit., pp. 229-230.)17 Does the non-philosopher think about himself dualistically? Opinionis divided, as it is on the question of what this really shows.
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anything else. Some people may require such a guarantee if
belief in God, rather than some lowly substitute, is to be
preserved and justified.
In every category there are people who regard God as
unreal. Is there a significant relation between such atheism
and God-world dualism? One motive for atheism derives from
science. It is felt that scientific methodology provides a
valid and important source of knowledge. This is true, but
it has no immediate theological implications unless we assume
that it provides the only source of knowledge. This further
step commits us to scientism or 'secularism', which
'circumscribes the limits of the whole cognitive sphere'19 and
unjustifiably assumes that the scientist has a monopoly on
what can be known. This supposed monopoly on the knowable
fosters dualism. If science circumscribes the limits of
nature, whatever eludes scientific comprehension is to be
banished from our ontology. Nature is identified with ‘what
natural science aims to make comprehensible’, and threatens
to ‘empty it of meaning’, ‘to leave it disenchanted’. 20
Where does this leave God? Scientism implies that if God
exists, He exists in a supernatural realm. Then it leaves two
alternatives. Either we banish God from our ontology and
settle for the natural world alone or we locate God in a 18 C.S. Lewis claims that nobody would conclude from this that God is metaphysically ‘out there’ if this is intended to imply that He is ‘spatially external to the universe’. (The Observer, 24 March, 1963. Reprinted in Robinson and Edwards, op.cit, 1963, p.91.)19 Op. cit., p.920 Mind and World, pp. 70-1.
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supernatural realm. If we take the second route, we are
trying to accommodate aspects of reality which elude
scientific investigation, aspects central to our conception
of ourselves and the world, and comprehensible only by
introducing God. It is a short step to concluding that we
postulate God for explanatory purposes, purposes which
require His separation from nature.
Robinson finds two related difficulties. First, if God
is unknowable and unconnected with nature, our putative
explanation is empty. Second, it presupposes a
‘supranaturalistic’ world-view:
A picture of the world in which the reality of God is represented by
the existence of gods or of a God in some other order or realm
of being ‘above’ or ‘beyond’ the world in which we live. ‘The
supernatural’ is used so loosely in ordinary speech
as equivalent to ‘the divine’ that I have preferred
to retain Tillich’s term ‘supranatural’ to
characterize this particular description or
‘projection’ (in the map-maker’s sense) of the
reality we call God. For what is in question is not
the truth of the transcendent and unconditional as
such (which most people mean by ‘the supernatural’
and suppose that I am denying), but simply the
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particular model by which this ‘dimension’ of
reality is given expression.21
5. Nature and Value
Scientific naturalism implies that value too, if has a place
anywhere, is located in a supernatural realm. The natural
world cannot be value-involving, leaving supernaturalism as
the only alternative.22 One kind of naturalism identifies
evaluative properties with those that pull their weight in
the natural sciences or psychology, a reduction which
eliminates the phenomena to be ‘reconstructed’. One response
to this is a supernaturalism locating value in another world,
an option whose epistemological and metaphysical difficulties
make it equally likely to lose hold of its subject-matter. A
different response is to abandon the two-worlds framework, by
modifying our understanding of the natural world so that it
already involves the phenomena that elude the dualistic
framework. The result is ‘expansive naturalism’, 23‘relaxed
21 Robinson and Edwards, op.cit, p. 256-722 See Roger Crisp, ‘Naturalism and Non-naturalism in Ethics’, in Identity, Truth and Value: Essays for David Wiggins, ed., Sabina Lovibond and S.G. Williams, 2000, pp.113-129; James Griffin, Value Judgement, 1996, ch 3; John McDowell, ‘Aesthetic Value, Objectivity, and the Fabric of the World’, reprinted in his Mind, Value, and Reality, Harvard, 1998, pp.112-130, ‘Two Sorts of Naturalism’, reprinted in his 1998, pp.167-197, 1998; David Wiggins, ‘Moral Cognitivism, Moral Relativism and Motivating Beliefs’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 91, 61-85, ‘Cognitivism, Naturalism, and Normativity’, in Reality, Representation, and Projection, ed. John Haldane and Crispin Wright, Oxford, 1993. 23 Griffin, 1996, op.cit., ch 2.
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naturalism’24or ‘naturalized platonism’.25 This anti-dualism
seems justified by the inadequacies of its competitors. We
need substantial, accessible values as much as we need
physical things, and the modes of their rehabilitation are
analogous. Does Robinson want to expand naturalism to
accommodate God? Is this further expansion defensible?
6. Robinson and God
Robinson steers a path between theism and atheism: he denies
the existence of a personal, transcendent creator of the
universe, without concluding that God does not exist. Rather,
he amends the conception of God supposedly pervasive in our
tradition. He appears to be an atheist only to one who clings
to dualism.26 The typical atheist abandons dualism, yet
retains a framework which obscures any genuine alternative.
Atheism is no better than Ayer's expulsion of physical things
or the naturalist's reconstruction of value.
To Robinson the traditional picture of God as an entity
separate from the world seems hopeless, and simply a variant
of the “man in the sky”. However, he does not wish to
substitute an immanent for a transcendent deity, but to
‘validate the idea of transcendence for modern man’.27God is
required because our being has depths unacknowledged by
naturalism, including ‘depths of revelation’, ‘intimations of24 Mind and World, p. 8825 Mind and World, p. 9126 Honest to God, p.527 op.cit., p.25
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eternity’, ‘awarenesses of the unconditional, the numinous
and the ecstatic’ and ‘judgements of the holy and the
sacred’, none of which can be explained using ‘purely
naturalistic categories’.28The question of God is the question
whether this depth of being is real or illusory, a question
concerning ‘what you take seriously without any reservation’,
‘what for you is ultimate reality’. The theological aim is
not to establish the existence of a separate entity, but to
press ‘through in ultimate concern’ to ‘the ground of our
being’. 29 His response to the question whether God, thus
construed, really exists, is that the question presupposes an
unreal contrast: it makes no sense to question the existence
of ultimate reality.30
Like our moral philosophers, Robinson cites phenomena
which cannot be explained by a certain kind of naturalism
without being reduced to something else. In the moral case,
the phenomenon is value, our capacity to make moral
distinctions. In the theological case it is our judgements of
the holy and the sacred, etc. Moral philosophers acknowledge
their uncertainty how to define the limits of nature.
However, they focus on a specifically scientific naturalism,
which disenchants nature and empties its meaning. Robinson 28 op.cit., p.3329 op, cit., p.14. Compare Ogden:‘the primary use or function of “God” is to refer to the objective ground in reality itself of our ineradicable confidence in the final worth of our existence. It lies in the nature of this basic confidence to affirm that the real whole of which we experience ourselves to be parts is such as to be wor thy of, and thus itself to evoke, that very confidence’ (Op.cit., p.37)30 op.cit., p.14
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accepts this characterization of the offending naturalism. It
comprehends nature in terms of materialism and mechanism,
excluding crucial aspects of reality. It excludes freedom and
morality, as our moral philosophers say. He cites Feuerbach:
‘the true atheist is not the man who denies God, the subject;
it is the man for whom the attributes of divinity, such as
love, wisdom and justice are nothing. And denial of the
subject is by no means necessarily denial of the attributes’.
This is ‘very near’ to the position he seeks. 31 But he also
includes among phenomena ignored by naturalism more properly
religious categories, such as the sacred, holy, and eternal.
They are understood in terms of ‘depth’.
Apart from theological vocabulary, all this is
acceptable to our moral philosophers. They want to explain
our capacity to act freely and make moral distinctions,
avoiding scientific naturalism and supernaturalism. For them,
depth would accommodate these capacities without a
supersensible world. As Griffin says in Value Judgement,32
values are ‘swallowed whole’, contained within the natural
world, not in some realm beyond. Robinson's depth-metaphor
has a similar aim. His quest is an 'exploration into God'
because God is the ‘within of things’ rather than ‘a Being
external to them’;33 as the point around which all our
existence pivots, God lies ‘at the centre rather than off the31 Robinson and Edwards, op.cit, p.30. The quote is from Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity, 1854, p.97.32 P.5133 1967, p.74
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edge of the map’,34 and ‘the implication of all this is not
the abolition of the transcendent in pure naturalism: it is
an apprehension of the transcendent as given in, with, and
under the immanent’.35 Like our moral philosophers, Robinson
attributes to our world a nature which cannot be exhausted in
scientific terms. They all grant that the world has depths
unacknowledged by science, depths that can be accommodated in
a suitably expanded nature.
Have we been subjected to a semantic trick,
comparable to Anselm’s ontological argument and Aquinas’s
third way? Some of Robinson’s claims suggest this, especially
his definition of God as ultimate reality, whose existence we
cannot doubt.36He adds, however, that one can only ask what
ultimate reality is like and whether what lies at the heart
of things and governs their workings is personal or
impersonal. This seems a capitulation, implying that the
important question, the nature of ultimate reality, has no
obvious answer. The assertion that God/ultimate reality
exists says little more than the assertion that something
exists; the crucial theological questions are whether being
really has the supposed depths and, if so, what this
implies.37 The first question is analogous to the question 34 Ibid.35 op.cit. p.7936 Cf.Tillich: ‘an awareness of God is present in the question of God. This awareness precedes the question.’ (Systematic Theology I, p.206)37 Compare Quine: ‘A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: ‘What is there?’ It can be answered, moreover, in a word – ‘Everything’ – and everyone will accept this answer as true. However, this is merely to say
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whether we are beings who make moral distinctions and act
freely. Our moral philosophers respond that we cannot avoid
viewing ourselves in this way, and it would make no sense if
scientific naturalism or supernaturalism were true. And their
answer to the moral analogue of the second question is that
the concession that our being has the relevant depths
justifies our postulation of value.38 There is more to the
natural world than scientific naturalism allows, but this
something more requires no supernatural realm.
Can this response be extended to God? If ‘God’ is
simply a placeholder for that by virtue of which we act
freely and make moral distinctions, the theological
vocabulary seems empty. Even specifically religious
categories, such as the sacred and holy, might be understood
in purely moral terms. Thus, ‘holy’ might mean ‘perfectly
good’, and ‘sacred’ ‘of incomparable worth’. 39 Then the term
‘God’ is semantically superfluous. Despite his proximity to
Feuerbach, however, Robinson denies that theology is
that there is what there is. There remains room for disagreement over cases; and so the issue has stayed alive down the centuries’. (‘On what there is’, in From a Logical Point of View, p.1)38 This does not imply that moral realism is without problems. But many of its traditionally problems stem from a framework which is not mandatory. There may nevertheless remain work to be done after this framework is abandoned. See Paul Grice, The Conception of Value, Oxford, 1991, ch 139 Cf.Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, Oxford, 1958, ch 2, pp. 5-8, citing Kant’s claim that the will unwaveringly obedient to the moral lawis a holy will. Otto believes that the meaning of such words as “holy” and “sacred” cannot be exhausted in moral terms. indeed, that this ‘moralized’ and ‘rationalized’ conception of the holy excludes the dark side of the ‘numinous’. Compare Job and Thomas Mann’s Holy Sinner.
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reducible to anthropology, and that knowledge of God is
simply knowledge of man. Indeed, the claim that knowledge of
God is simply knowledge of man need not amount to atheism,
since a theist might respond that understanding man requires
essential reference to God. As Heidegger put it, the
customary humanism ‘does not situate the humanitas of man
high enough’.40
So ‘God’ is not just a placeholder for that which
distinguishes us from the realm of natural law. But his
question whether reality is ultimately gracious looks like a
new but equally problematic version of the question of God's
existence. His talk of ‘trust’ and ‘faith’ raises doubts
whether reality can be understood in these terms.
In Exploration into God Robinson recommends retaining the
one-world position of pantheism whilst avoiding its
depersonalization of God. We are to ‘depersonify but not
depersonalize’.41 This is ‘panentheism’. 42 This suggests that
a positive answer to the God-question is forthcoming and
obvious. Affirming belief in God is to assert a faith in how
things are, and talk of God involves acknowledging a
relationship, which is central to our human constitution and
40 Über den Humanismus, p. 1941 P.8742 op.cit., p.84. For a more comprehensive account of panentheism see Grace Jantzen, God’s World, God’s Body, London, 1984, and In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World,ed. P.Clayton and A. Peacocke, 2004. See my forthcoming ‘God and Other Minds’ for criticism of Jantzen.
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given to us in this world.43 Rudolf Otto agrees that religious
experience cannot be exhausted in moral/humanist terms:
religious experience is 'perfectly sui generis and irreducible
to any other'. He describes how someone might be converted
into such an experience:
He must be guided and led on by consideration and
discussion of the matter through the ways of his
own mind, until he reaches the point at which ‘the
numinous’ in him perforce begins to stir, to start
into life and into consciousness. …In other words
our X cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, it can
only be evoked, awakened in the mind; as everything
that comes ‘of
the spirit’ must be awakened. 44
And in response to one who 'knows no such moments in his
experience' Otto advises that he read no further.45
7.Doubts
This may seem a too convenient way of defending the
significance of religious experience and defusing the
possibility of scepticism. However, Otto's conversion-claims
43 Tillich agrees that awareness of God is central to humanity, implying that, as Ross says, ‘disbelief’ amounts to ‘inhumanity’ (op.cit., p.166)44 op.cit.p.745 op.cit., p.8
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have their moral counterparts. If someone sees no reason to
act decently, ‘it might take something like a conversion to
bring the reasons within the person’s notice’.46 Such a person
will find no reason to act decently and will resist being
'taught' unless he already sees the point of so acting. Moral
conversion is intelligible and defensible. We have the
(broad) naturalistic resources for accommodating value in
the world. And conversion makes the best sense of our
experience of and thought about ourselves and the world,
whereas the positions spawned by dualism are
counterintuitive and philosophically problematic. McDowell’s
point is similar to Otto’s of the guidance of the non-
believer into the relevant experience by ‘consideration and
discussion’. One does not tell the subject what he should
experience but persuades him to see things differently.
(Compare how we might persuade someone to see Wittgenstein’s
duck-rabbit figure as a rabbit.) This approach may not
succeed, and some will remain unmoved by any persuasion. Then
it may be appropriate to abandon hope.
Robinson believes that we can render God-talk
intelligible if scientistically motivated dualism is
abandoned. God-talk cannot be comprehended in purely
humanistic or pantheistic terms, since God figures
irreducibly in the content of religious experience.
Conversion is possible, and those who resist it miss out on
46 J. McDowell, ‘Might there be External Reasons?’, reprinted in Mind, Value and Reality, p.107.
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something fundamental to being human: confrontation with God
is at the heart of one’s constitution as a human being.
8. Overcoming the Tradition?
Robinson’s substantial proposal does not depend on his
interpretation of traditional Christianity. It is noteworthy,
however, that his interpretation is not obviously correct.
Few theologians believe God is literally a supernatural entity
or super-person, since God is not a being in the ordinary
sense. Since God is traditionally conceived as a person,
personally related to ourselves, His remoteness is qualified.
In any case, His remoteness is, at best, pre mortem, and,
crucially, God descends to us personally as Christ. The
tradition doubtless fails to explain fully how we relate to
God, but its framework is not obviously inferior to
Robinson's.
The philosophical credentials of theology are
contestable. Whereas we have a relatively clear idea of the
defects of dualism in the case of physical objects and value
and of what non-dualism means, God seems more complex, not
simply from metaphysical and epistemological difficulties,
but because we have no clear sense of what non-dualism means.
As for its scientific credentials, Robinson fails to
convince. The tradition does not conflict with science, and
appears to only on the assumption that theology is an
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empirical science and countenances scientifically
inadmissible entities. An analogue of the value-argument is
available: supernaturalism presupposes scientism and clings
to a framework which cannot accommodate our relation to God.
But this defence requires a clearer account of non-dualism
and of its supposed advantages over the tradition. Robinson's
account is this: in place of the traditional two-worlds
framework we have a single world in which God includes and
penetrates the world without being reducible to it. This
overcomes duality without denying diversity, including an
unknowable aspect of God.
9. Conclusion
Our three disputed types of entity seem to form a hierarchy:
God presupposes values and physical things, and values
presuppose physical things, whereas things could seemingly
exist without values and values without God. All three
problems share structural similarities. But is their content
reciprocally related in such a way that values presuppose
God and perhaps physical objects presuppose values? Ogden
and Robinson argue that values presuppose God and that God
presupposes the world, including physical things. But it
may be that they have simply replaced a dualism of worlds
with a dualism of world-aspects. The Godly aspect may be
hard to combine coherently with the human world without
lapsing into a Godless humanism acceptable to those
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philosophers who expand nature to incorporate value but balk
at including God. Perhaps the solution lies in a
reappraisal of nature-expansion. What entitles us to a
particular conception of nature, even a value-involving one?
Have we a clear enough understanding of the limits of
science to reject scientism so brusquely? Might it be that
our ascent beyond the world of science to a value-ridden
world, and even the ascent beyond our sensations to an
objective world of physical entities, requires a further
ascent beyond both? God only knows.
Timothy Williamson
New College, Oxford
1. Physical objects
Three views:
A. TRanscendent , inaccessible beyond. They might be
very different from what we suppose. They are roughly
seen in terms of physical science.
B. Logical constructions out of sense data, experience
narrowly conceived
[B(1)No real POs as we conceive them – only entities of
natural sciences – electrons, etc. This is similar to
A.]
C. Available in experience broadly conceived
No dispute that POs exist. They must exist for life to
be possible. But position B. might lead one to say that
POs don’t really exist, only PO-like agglomerations of
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sensations. But at least PO-like agglomerations of
sensations must exist.
2. Values
A. Transcendent, perhaps difficult of access, e.g. we
might all be wrong about what they require
B(1). Logical constructions out of non-moral items,
pleasures, pains, etc., i.e. non-evaluative or non-moral
entities postulated by science, but not just natural
science, also psychology, sociology, etc.
B(2). No values exist – only entities of natural
sciences. This has something in common with A. If values
did exist they would be as in A. But B(2) says they
don’t exist
C.Values exist accessibly within nature, a nature
expanded so as to include values
The existential status of values is different from that
of POs. It is easier to deny that values exist, though
value-deniers characteristically behave as if they did
exist – leaving aside the Marquis de Sade, the Yorkshire
Ripper, etc. It is this required behaviour and attitudes
that values are postulated to explain, if values are
held to exist. There may be differences in
attitude/behaviour between adherents of B(1) and
adherents of C. E.g. adherents of C may believe that
wrongdoers should be punished because they deserve it,
while adherents of B(1), and B(2), are more likely to
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consider only the effects of ‘punishment’: deterrence,
etc. But both types agree roughly on what constitutes
wrong-doing. (But perhaps utilitarians are inconsistent
in this – e.g.in distinguishing sharply between humans
and animals, in their egalitarianism with respect to all
humans, etc.)
3. God
A. Transcendent and hard of access
B. God is a logical construction out of non-theological
entities, values (Kant, Arnold, Braithwaite), human
psychology (Feuerbach), etc. This may be accompanied
either by the claim that God does exist or that God does
not exist. If God is denied to exist, this is most
likely to be because God would have to be as in A. (At
what point does ‘X’s are [logical constructions out of]
Y’s’ imply ‘X’s don’t exist, only Y’s?’)
C. God is accessible within nature broadly conceived.
(i)But how broadly conceived? Is it expanded beyond not
just what is required for POs, but also for values?
(ii)Is God required in the way POs and values are? Sane
and well-behaved individuals seem to do without belief
in God, though none has so far emerged from an entirely
godless society.
(iii)Robinson thinks God is needed to account for
certain phenomena – freedom, responsibility, sense of
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holy/sacred. Then there may be disagreement over whether
God is needed in addition to values.
(iv) Can there be real values without God? Values in
sense C above? Or must values be reduced as in B(1)?
Some generally accepted values, sharp human/animal
divide and equality of all humans (not just within one’s
own society) seem to be supported neither by natural
scientism nor by everyday experience.
(v)Values in Position C are not built into the fabric of
the universe (as in e.g.Aquinas), but only into the
human world, the world of our experience. Values are
not super-objective, like electrons. Does Robinson do
the same with God, relativize God to human beings? It
sounds like it – ‘what for you is ultimate reality’, the
‘ground of our being’, etc. This does seem opposed to at
least part of the tradition. God should be as real as
electrons, not just a veneer that we humans cast over
electrons. On this view of God (and values) it’s hard to
see that the atheism-theism dispute is about a hard
factual matter. More like a policy decision: Should we
pray, celebrate Easter, cross ourselves,etc. ?
(vi)Is there something circular about world expansion?
I/we need/want to believe in X’s. Our evidential base,
E1, does not entitle us to believe in X’s. So we just
scale E1 up to E2, and E2 does justify belief in X’s.
So we say: E2 is better than E1 because it reveals X’s
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to us. But why did I believe in X’s in the first place?
Was that because I was already operating in terms of E2
rather than E1 and all I’m doing now is making that
explicit? What are the limits of world expansion?
Suppose someone believes in flying saucers, etc.
(There’s semantic trick here too: they say there are
UFO’s – and obviously that’s true: there are flying
objects that are unidentified because no one has
bothered, or been able to, identify them. But it’s a big
step to saying that some of these UFO’s are flying
saucers.)
(vii)Tragesser says roughly: X’s are objective (or we
regard them as objective) iff our present view of X’s
legitimizes procedures for finding out more about X’s,
which may involve revising our view of X’s. E.g.atoms.
(Perhaps there’s a problem about numbers, which fulfil
the condition but are of doubtful objectivity.) What
about God and values? Do McDowell and co. allow for
moral progress in this sense, finding out more about
values, or do they relativize them to our current world,
so that though we may change our view of them, there’s
no reason to think that the change is an improvement?
And what about God? Aquinas thinks he’s made lots of
discoveries about God and could make more later. But
Robinson’s view of God does not seem to allow for much
future discovery. It all ends with Robinson.
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