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

1

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

2

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

3

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

4

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

5

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).

6

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

7

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.

8

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.

9

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

1

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.

1

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

1

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

1

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

1

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

1

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.

1

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.

1

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

1

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.

1

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

2

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

2

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

2

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

2

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

2

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

2

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.

2

(viii) Perhaps two questions: Is the expansion of nature

to God legitimate? Even if it is, what’s the point of

it? The hard question is: Do POs and/or values

presuppose God? If they do, God obviously has a point.

If not, not clear what the point is.

2