Philosophy of Religion

Phil. of Religion

Wolterstorff

9/7/95: Lecture

The problem: there is not an eternal problems of religion. Rather, a field has its historical career. Philosophy has been different at different times.  So, there are not eternal questions in philosophy.  Historical intersections lead to the posing of different questions. The issues arise historically. Philosophy is shaped by culture.  On phil. of Religion, a particular religious tradition runs into a particular philosophical issue, resulting in a religious philosophical problem at a particular time, having a historical career.  Questions don't just hang out there outside of history. 

Four great episodes(formative periods) of philosophy in the West. The Medieval, the High Medieval (1200s-), the Enlightenment (1700s-1800s), the Romantic, and the Contemporary (1970-1990).  Some questions may still be relevant. 

The Medieval: they dwelled on problems; we move on.  Arguments for God's existence.  Why did they care about God's existence?  Second, the classical conception of God.  This was emphasized in the High Medieval.

Enlightenment: Locke, Hume, and Kant.  Locke was important.  Hume attacks Locke's natural and revealed religion.

Romantic: Schlermacher, Hegel, and Kierkegaard. 

Contemporary: Four developments: the religious epistimology of the enlightenment has been under attack (e.g. Locke); the problems of evil; the classical conception of God has been under attack; issues of religious and theological particularities have been given philosophical attention (e.g. the holocaust).

9/12/95: Lecture

Philosophical and theological issues are culturally and historically situated. Four historical episodes having their own questions will be examined in this course. We need to understand why they were asked then, realizing that we read them from our own cultural and historic context, rather than from an 'ahistoric' perspective which really isn't possible anyway.

The Medievals: what drove them to ask their questions.  They did not have a concept 'philosophy of religion'; rather, they had a field called 'natural theology'.  Thesis: natural theology is motivated in the medievals by four overlapping projects/motivations: a search for happiness, a desire to bring the scientific enterprise to its culmination, interest in 'sacred theology' (distinct theologies), and a desire to turn faith into knowledge. 

On the search for happiness: For Aquinas, shaped from Aristotle, life is goal-oriented, toward happiness. To be human is to live in pursuit of happiness as an ultimate end in itself.  Humans are in pursuit of positively-charged experiences.  Eudiamoneaist. Humans disagree on what will make us happy.  Even the means to such an end, if agreed to, may be different.  Different things make us happy as well as how to get them.  Aquinas: we don't disagree on the deepest happiness: it is in the act of understanding.  The satisfaction of just dwelling on something is that of understanding. For Aquinas, this is Eudaimonia (the good which can't be improved upon).  What act of the intellect gives the greatest happiness?  Knowledge of the most perfect reality: God.  Hence, to know God is the end of any intellectual pursuit. In this pursuit in knowing God, other happinesses will be seen as extras.  How do we arrive at such contemplation (of God)? Aquinas: most people have a confused view of God.  Such knowledge lacks precision.   For instance, a sense of order and thus an orderer.  But what is the orderer like?  There is too much uncertainty around our understanding of God for this to be our deepest human happiness.  Is there some other way of knowing God available to us?  Yes.  A natural scientific knowledge of God.  'Science' comes from the Latin 'scientia'.  Scientia promises to give the deepest human happiness. 

On Scientia: this notion was alive until the 1600's.  Scientia (medieval science): that body of propositions that had been deductively demonstrated from premises that are or were evident to some intellectual being or other.  Later medievals in the 1300's allowed inductive arguments.  Aquinas in the 1200's insisted on deductive arguments.  Scientia does not include the ultimate premises but includes the conclusions thereof.  The notion of self-evident  was important to the medievals.  For instance, a self-evident proposition.  A proposition that is self-evident per se: if it is not possible for there to be some one who understands it and yet does not believe it.  Also, the medievals has propositions that were known to be evident to a particular person: self-evident per se plus that person understands it.  To find out whether it is true, understanding it is not sufficient-- it must be investigated.

So, in scientia, one starts with self-evident and evident-to-the-senses(Aquinas added that one sometimes--to prove God's existence) propositions.  They must be evident to particular persons. People can rely on other's self-evident premises (and the derived conclusions). So, scientia was seen as a communitarian enterprise.  All the self-evident propositions need not be evident to everyone involved in scientia.

Self-evident propositions were thought to be 'better' or more certain than 'evident-to-the-senses'.  So, in a really good scientia, empiricism isn't necessary; one simply deduces conclusions from self-evident propositions.  Self-evident propostions were thought to be fact and certain rather than a matter of belief or faith.  They are not all just analytic apriori propositions; some may be synthetic. 

Scientia as an objective enterprise has a foundational character.  It is also communitarian.  It is rigoristic.  Beginning from observations and making inferences (empiricism) was not considered scientia.

Aquinas and others thought that scientia yielded certain conclusions about God.  So, part of scientia was natural theology.  Such theology was not thought to be of belief or faith in scientia, but fact.  Aquinas saw natural theology as the apex of scientia.  Scientia was thought of as progressive moving from math to God. So, they used math and physics to reach conclusions about God.

So, medieval philosophy of religion developed in the project of scientia which involved rigorous demonstrations about God.  How did this stand with respect to happiness?  Aquinas: a greater certainty in dwelling on God by using scientia, so an enhancement of happiness.

9/14/95: Lecture

Medieval background (cont):

In the 1600's and 1700's in Descartes and Locke, there was a change from scientia (start with what is evident and made deductions) to modern science (which includes induction and empericism).  The medievals thought that a scientia of theology was possible and desirable.  So natural theology was a scientia. It was done due to:

1. the love of learning,

2. the desire for happiness--a sense that dwelling on God will lead to happiness--but not much can be known/proved about God.  To know more about what God is not like, according to Aquinas, look at God's effects and make some deductions.  Wolterstorff: Aquinas does say things about God in a positive sense.  Also, the proofs are complex, so few folks can understand them, according to Aquinas. Also, mistakes can be made in scientia. Happiness is not in the process of finding knowledge of God, but in the product thereof.  So, in this temporal existence, is happiness not really available to us? 

To Aquinas, religious faith was a third way of coming to knowing God.  Faith for the medievals and the enlightenment was the response to revelation.  It is assenting to something that is proposed by God to us for our beliefs. Assenting to it on God's say-so.  A belief in God is presumed (or why would one consider taking God's say-so).  Is faith foolish?  Aquinas: miracles confirm that it is God who says it.  The medievals would not be anxious about the validity of miracles.  The content of faith is more expansive than that of natural theology.  Faith goes beyond what can be proved. Aquinas: the preambles of faith are the things that can be proved using reason. Articles of faith can't be proved using reason.  Wolterstorff: If one is a person of faith, does one do natural theology?  Does the person seeking happiness go for faith rather than natural theology?  Aquinas: both people would still do natural theology.

3. Person of faith.  Faith is accepting God's say-so rather than seeing that something is so.  Generally, one would prefer seeing that something is true rather than taking things on say so.  In natural theology, some of the things said to be so are seen/proven to be so.  That in general makes humans more happy.  So, one seeking happiness would still want to pursue natural theology. 

Faith seeking understanding (insight).  Does this leave faith behind? Aquinas: this does not diminish the value of faith because one would still be willing to take something on God's say-so.  But the content of faith has diminished, as it has been changed into understanding. 

4. Person engaged in sacred theology.  Interested in developing the theology of a particular religion.  Aquinas: certain believers in a particular religion would engage in sacred theology which had two goals: 1. to spell out and teach the contents and implications of one's own faith by taking scripture as premises and then developing arguments, and 2. to defend your views and contest those of those who disagree (the apologetic/defense/polemic).  For such an apologetic, natural theology will be useful because scriptural premises will involve claims that will need to be proved.   Aquinas saw his major works as beginning with natural theology as supporting sacred theology(when explicit appeals to scripture are made).

Aquinas calls sacred theology a scientia.  But sacred theology starts from scripture and scripture is not self-evident. How could he call sacred theology a scientia? Sacred theology has a component in it of natural theology, but this would not make sacred theology a scientia.  Recall: objective scientia and the particular person's subjective participation in scientia; super-ordinate and sub-ordinate scientia.  Aquinas: sacred theology as a scientia is a subordinate scientia because its premises are not self-evident but have been taken from the work of someone else. What then is the super-ordinate science of which sacred theology is the sub-scientia.  Sacred theology is a real scientia because it makes deductions from premises given by God by revelation.  God is a member of the scientific community.  Scientia starts with principles that are evident to an intelligent being. So, the super-ordinate science of sacred theology is God's knowledge. But is it not circular to take God's knowlege as the super-ordinate scientia of sacred theology if the existance of God is part of the project of sacred theology?  It would be a problem only for those who were motivated by the desire to do scientia (prove things). It would not be a problem for a man of faith.  For instance, Anselm.

Anselm:  He already believed in God and sought to transmute what he already believed to understand it.  In Ch. 1, he cites his exile from God, using language of vision.  The exile is the lack of insight about God.  The cause of which is sin.  Sight has been obscured by wrong-doing.   He is a person of faith but in exile.  Proving God's existance is necessary and sufficient to get out of the exile. Faith is necessary but not sufficient: unless I believe, I will not understand. 

9/19/95: Lecture

'Faith seeking understanding' goes back to Clement of Alexandria.  Amselm used it.  Belief transmuted into understanding. Anselm: the first great attempt to prove the existence of God.  See: The Monologium and the Prolslogium.  Demonstrate that God exists and that he exists necessarily.  Arguments for God's existence: the ontological argument. 

Anselm's Ontological Argument for the existence of God:

When a fool hears of a being of which nothing greater can be conceived, he understands what he hears, but does not yet necessarily believe it to exist. To be in one's understanding is not necessarily to believe in its existence.  That in which nothing greater can be conceived can't exist in the understanding alone because then something else could be conceived of and existing in reality, and thus be greater than 'that in which nothing greater can be conceived' which can only be conceived of. So, that which nothing greater can be conceived of can't be limited to understanding but must exist in reality too. It must be able to be conceived as existing in reality too(conceived of as existing in reality or actually existing in reality?)  Key: nothing greater can be conceived.  So, 'it' can be conceived not only in understanding but in reality (or else something greater could be conceived: something existing in understanding as well as in reality). So, God must exist both in understanding and reality.

A whole family of ontological arguments suggested by that of Anselm. 

Classical objections:

Wolterstorff: Gaunilo has a better argument than does Anselm.  Gaunilo claims that by Anselm's argument, the existence of a perfect island could be proved, so something is wrong with Anselm's argument.  Anselm doesn't point to any disanalogy. Rather, Anselm replies that he was referring to the greatest 'conceivable' thing.  An island is not just conceivable but can exist in reality.  An island may lack a perfection, so it could lack existence if existence is a perfection.  This would not be so for the thing for which nothing greater could be conceived: existence as an attribute must be included in the definition of the thing itself rather than being a property of it.  Wolterstorff: this is a weak disanalogy. 

Actually, Gaunilo had undercut Anselm's argument and went further.  He interprets Anselm's argument as holding this principle: anything existing in reality is greater than anything that exists in the mind alone.  But, Anselm doesn't use this principle. Anselm accepts Gaunilo's first statement of his argument.  Gaunilo uses it to criticize Anselm. 

9/21/95: Lecture

Gaunilo's critique of Anselm's ontological argument:

Gaunilo uses the absurd analogue of the perfect island.  He distinguishes between intelligere: to understand(know)  and cogitare: to conceive.  A condition of understanding something is that it exists. Knowledge is a relationship between a person and an object.  Whereas, one can conceive of something without it existing. Anselm's argument is in terms of intelligere.  In intelligere grounds, the argument says nothing new: that which is known is understood to exist, so why make a proof in such terms that the thing exists?   Gaunilo puts Anselm's argument in terms of cogitare. In cognitare terms, we are ready to admit the possibility of conceiving of things that don't exist--so in this sense, an argument for the existence of that which is conceived becomes necessary. In this sense, the claim that something that is conceived must exist is problematic. I can conceive of a perfect island but that doesn't necessarily mean that it exists. So, Anselm's argument doesn't work under intelligere or cognitare.

Anselm's response:  he repeats his original argument. 

If there is something incoherent in the idea of  a perfect island and not in the idea of a perfect being, then Gaunilo's refutation could be refuted.  Wolterstorff: this is not so; his analogue works and Anselm didn't admit it.

In sum, this was a fight about the relation between language and reality. 

Alexius Meinong:  In reality, existance is a subset of being. Fictional characters have being but not existence. The concept of the golden mountain has being but not existence.  Conceptions can have being without existing.  The idea of God can have being without existing.  B. Russell made the same distinction of reality.   G. Frege and Russell adopt the Gaunilonian view that concepts can be without existing, using Meinong's being/existence dicotomy of reality.   Frege: distinguish between the meaning and reference of a word.  To him, Meinong and Anselm had blurred the distinction.  Language has meaning but it does not necessarily have reference to something that exists.

Aquinas' objection to Anselm:  Whereas Anselm starts with thought, Aquinas wants to start from showing that God is a condition in the world.  If you grasp the essence of God, you grasp the existance of God--this is self-evident per se.  But, it is not evident to humans because none of us can grasp God's essence.  Anselm, to Aquinas, seems to ignore this.  Wolterstorff: Anselm would probably reply that we can see that propositions can be necessarily true.   Aquinas states too that something grasped in the intellect does not necessarily exist in reality.  But why?  Wolterstorff: Aquinas is not very successful.

Kant's analysis is in his Critique of Pure Reason which criticizes the medieval project of rational theology.  Kant probably had Leibnez's ontological proof in mind.

9/26/95: Lecture

A family of ontological arguments in the context of scientia in the Medieval era. 

Kant:  He didn't read Anselm, but probably read Leibniz.  Existence is not a property.  Treating it as such may lead one to conclude that this defines the thing into existence.  Adding the 'property' of existence onto the definition of a thing doesn't change the thing.  So, existence is not a property. 

Is this relevant to Anselm's argument?  Where did Anselm try to define God by using 'existence' as a property? Wolterstorff: No. Reality comes in degrees, not that existence is a property.  Kant isn't working with degrees of reality. Plantinga agrees. Kant's critique may be valid for the proof offered by Schopenhauer, but not for the one by Anselm. 

Plantinga's ontological proof:

Wolterstorff--it works.

The notion of a possible world, his strategy for getting around Gauntala's objection, and the notion of maximum greatness.  On the notion of a possible world, the notion first appears in Leibnitz.  Plantinga starts with the notion of a state of affairs: 'X being...'.  This floor being made out of wood.  New Haven being cloudy today.  It is a way things could be or a way that they couldn't be.  Of the states of affairs that there are, some hold, obtain, or occur, and others don't.  In other words, of those that are, some hold and others don't hold.  Of the states that don't obtain or hold (but are) or do obtain or hold, some could be (could occur) and some couldn't occur.  Those that could occur are possible; those that could not occur are impossible.  So, a possible world is one which is  (either occurring or not occurring) and could.   Among the possible is the actual.

Definitional relationships: S includes S'.  If S occurs, then S' occurs.  S precludes S': it is impossible to have both.  A possible state of affairs is a possible world if and only if (iff) for every state of affairs, S either includes it or precludes it.  The actual world is the possible world that does in fact occur. 

Plantinga's strategy: instead of thinking of fictional entities (Anselm), think in terms of properties which have or don't have examples.  Think of the property, and then talk about whether it exists or not. 

A being has maximum greatness if and only if it has maximun greatness in every possible world (including the actual world).  

These are the tools which Plantinga uses to prove the existence of God:

He defines what maximal greatness is. It is excellent. If something is impossible in one possible world, it will be impossible in any world.  Alterations in contingency don't change that which is necessary or impossible.  So, if something is impossible in a possible world (that there is not a being of maximal greatness), it must be impossible in any possible world, including the actual world. So, there must be a being of maximal greatness in the actual  because the opposite statement is impossible in this world.

9/28/95: Lecture

Plantinga's proof does not have a self-evident premise. 

Cosmological Arguments: begin with a feature of the world or human life.  What is argued is that a condition of there being that feature is that there being that feature (e.g. that there be a first mover).  There are several such arguments.

Aquinas' Ontological Proof for the Existence of God:

Aquinas gives five ways in his argument. The first three are based on sensable things. The first three: The first starts with what is evident to the senses.  Wolterstorff: this is a weakness.  Use 'change' instead of 'motion'.  In a change, a potentiality is actualized.  For each such actualization of a potentiality, there must be something that brings it about.   That which does so must have at least some actuality (from which to actualize the potentiality in the other).  What can actualize a potentiality?  There must be a first mover of change which does not have to be actualized.  Second, efficient causality: things bringing things into existence, evident to the senses.  Assumed: anything has to have had something else bring it into existence.  There must be a first efficient cause of a series.  Assumed: a thing can't bring itself into existence.  Third, many of the things that do exist might not have, so they are not necessary.  They might not have been.  But if everything were so, then nothing would be. But there is something, so there must be a necessary being which could not have not been.  There may be necessary beings whose existence must be accounted for.  For them, some account for their necessariness is necessary.  Answer: something whose existence belongs to its nature.  That we call God. 

Wolterstorff: these arguments seem more plausable than do the ontological arguments.  Nonetheless, there are problems.  Why?  Does the entity postulated really do the work posited?  Somethings are declared to be true that don't seem obvious. For instance, that which exists contingently can't always exist.  Without proof.  Our hestitations arise in general from Aquina's use of Aristotle's science which seems alien to us.  Aquinas wouldn't like this.  Worlterstorff: science changes across history.  Natural science is a social practice that alters in its goals, values, and criteria for theory acceptance, for instance.  Current goal: prediction.  This was not so in Medieval scientia.  Also, science changes in its methods and what counts as an explanation. Aquinas is extrapolated to God from his science.  For us:  how much of what Aquinas argues merely reflective of science at his time versus how much of what he says has a more abiding significance. 

The Medievals thought of substances as having causal powers.  So, agents were thought to act on patients to bring about alternate changes in those patients.  Laws of nature are generalizations concerning causal powers in reality though few medievals would call those generalizations laws of nature.  Laws of nature referred to moral laws.  In short, substances have active and passive causal powers.  Modern science think differently.  Carl Hempel, a philosopher of science, developed the hypothetico-deductive model for how natural science works.  To explain some state or event (by appealing to a law that covers the case rather than to a cause as medievals would have done), the idea is not that agents change patients but that one event necessitates another event: event causation.  For the medieval, substance causation was at issue.  In terms of the modern view, what accounts for event causation?  The laws of nature, which are not summaries of suce causation but are the account of the necessitation between events.  A medieval would be baffled by such a 'law'.  B. van Fraassen, in Laws of Symmetry, states that to understand medievals, one must look in terms of event causation.  We, on the other hand, are willing to look at correlation as well as causation in determining more general laws.  To a medieval, substances rather than events stand in causal relationship.  The medievals generally and Aquinas in particular, assumed that reality could not have any unaccountability or inexplicity in it.  This is the Principle of Sufficient Reason.  That humans couldn't give a full account does not mean that there is not such an account.  Everything has an account.  Wolterstorff: but the notion of an account contains various meanings.  So, it would be assumed that there is an account for changes, for instance. Moderns would not necessarily assume that there is an account for everything.  An event is broader than a substance.  A medieval would look at substances with powers rather than at laws as being causal.  Medievals also assume that an infinite sequence does not give an adequate account.  Two different understanding of accounting.  Moderns claim that  a law gives the how and why whereas a medieval would deny both of these claims; the power of substances gives the how and why (of a thing's cause) which give an accounting.  For instance, a modern would say that gravity makes an apple fall, whereas a medieval would say that things have to make things happen.  In the medieval scheme, one ends up with an ultimate being with causal powers rather than with a law.  A medieval would say that a law is an abstract thing, so it could not have causal power.  God, to a medieval, was not an abstract being but a person in reality having (or being) a substance.

10/10/95: Lecture

Rowe's Ontological Proof:

The collections at issue for Rowe are sets.  Rowe cites two critiques of his proof.  Russell argues against premise #2: sets don't have explanations; they just are (a rejection of the principle of sufficient reason).  The question of causation is thus off the table.  Hume argues that a collection's existence is its members. So, what accounts for a collection of chairs are the chairs themselves.  If a chair is removed or changed, therefore, a new set exists.  Rowe responds as follows: He agrees with Russell that sets don't need causes or accounts. But, in the case of an infinite set, there is still something not accounted for; namely, why does a particular set have the mambers that it has when it could have had other members?  This needs accounting for.  Why isn't the totality different from the way it is? 

The Medievals wanted explanations. There has to be a necessarily existent thing or else we are confronted with brute fact.

Wolterstorff: Rowe is mistaken in his theory of sets. To Rowe, sets have their members contingently.  In other words, he assumes a set might have had other members.  But sets have their members necessarily. Otherwise, it would be a different set. What defines a set are the members it has.  So, sets exist conditionally rather than necessarily because they depend on having the members which they have.  But, why is there this set when there might have been another?  This is where Rowe's question is legitimate.  Namely, what accounts for the fact that there is this set rather than another?  To Rowe, this can only be explained by the existence of a necessarily existing being.  Rowe assumes that there might have been a different infinite set. What accounts for the fact that it was not?  A necessarily existing being.  This question does not apply in turn to the existence of a necessarily existing being because such a being could not have existed otherwise (i.e. not existed).  But, Rowe's argument is for the existence of a being independent of an infinite set, and this is not necessarily a being that exists necessarily (an independent being could exist independent from an infinite set for some time and then not exist).  So, why this independent being and not another?  Infinite regress. 

The Emergence of the Classical Concept of God:

The three Abrahamic monotheistic religions have had textual as well as cultural interaction, so there was little disagreement among the faiths on this concept of God.  In addition, all three faiths understood theology as a scientia in which the existence of things talked about would be established (such as proving that God exists) and their natures would be described (such as proving various things on the nature of God).  Therefore, natural as well as sacred theology was practiced here.  Their concept of God was very tight.  No assortment.  The Medievals agrued that God is eternal, immutable (not capable of change), a-pathetic (lacking in pathos), omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, immaterial, and is without unfulfilled potentialities.  Contemporary attributes of God include the belief that God suffers (is not a-pathetic), is not outside of time (is not eternal), changes (is not immutable), and responds. 

Wolterstorff: on these attacks, if one of the classical attributes is attacked, the other qualites unravel.  They are locked very tightly together; a very integrated view of God. 

The Medievals of the three Abrahamic traditions shared a philosophical inheritance but differed in their scriptural heritages.  Of the shared philosophy, God was viewed as the unconditioned condition of everything else.  This came from Plotinus in 200 BCE.  What was seen as constituting perfect existence was non-suffering, personal existence, and everlasting happiness.  But how does one then explain the cross?  These philosophical assumptions were applied to the particular scriptures.  The output for the ontological argument:

Aquinas: God's simplicity. This is based on the assumption that God is the unconditioned condition, not conditional in its own existence or in regard to that of anything else.  Wolterstorff: Divine simplicity is the linch-pin.  Divine simplicity means that God has no ontological constituents.  Proof: if God had constituents, he would depend upon them for his existence and character.  But God as unconditioned is not dependent upon anything. So, God is simple.  Implications:  God is identical with His nature, or essence (His being, or esse, is His essence).  Further, God's existence must be identical with his essence.

10/12/95: Lecture

The Classical conception of God.

Aquinas:

There has to be an unconditioned being. God is the unconditioned condition of his own self.  This has implications.  They were worked out by Aquinas as what is now referred to as the classical conception of God.  He used an Aristotilian ontology: analyze things in terms of their constituents.  Different kinds of constituents (eg. matter and form) have different kinds of relations.  Secondly, one of the constituents in anything will be the nature, or essence, of the thing.  Thinking of everything as a nature.  A nature is a what-a-thing-is-as-such.  Everything has a nature.  A thing is its nature.  So, God is His essence.  For Aquinas, God's nature is nothing but his existence.  His being is his existence.  A limiting case of God's ontology: simplicity--having no constituents.  No internal differentiations.  Because God is not dependent on anything.  Implications: no distinction God and His essence.  God is nothing else but His essence, or else He would have constituents.  There is no differentiation between God's being or nature and his existence.  So, God=God's essence=God's existence=God's attributes.  There are no properties in God in addition to His existence.  God can't have constituents because that would condition God, and Aquinas wants to say that God is unconditioned.

Other implications from God's simplicity: God is unchanging.  Why?  For there to be a change, there must be distinct phases.  This could permit the addition of components.  Second, God is eternal (outside of time).  To be in time is to stand in temporal succession relations.  But God has no phases, so God is not everlasting but is eternal.  Third, God in no way responds.  If God did respond to that in the world, then there would be phases: God before and after His response.  Also, God would be conditioned on what transpires in the world.  God is a-pathetic. God lacks passions (emotional response).  A special case: God does not suffer.  If God suffers, He would be responding to something transpiring in the world, which would make Him conditioned (on the world).  Also, God can't have joy in relation to that which transpires in the world.  Consider what constitutes perfect being: bliss.  So, no suffering or joy.  So God is unconditioned and perfect.  Fourth, God is omnipresent.   One could go further. 

The arguments are flushed out with rigour.  Also, the attributes are tightly related.  So, a powerful intellectual conception of God.  Even though the Medievals had some difficulties with it, they kept it as coming out of seeing God and being unconditioned.  Some of their difficulties had to do with language.  Predication: that a thing has a property which can be distinguished from the thing itself. But God has no properties to pick out.  So, what theory of language holds when we talk about God?  This drove them toward a doctrine of predications: when we make attributions towards God, the predicating has to have a different force to it.  Attributions are to be understood in three ways:

1.  negative predications--God is not complex, for instance.  This does not require a picking out of.

2. predications as relations rather than constituents of a thing.  God as benevolent, for instance, is pointing to a certain relation between God and the world.

3. with our diverse predicates, we are not pointing to attributes in God but to our diverse construels of God.  Toss the diversity from inside God to inside the human mind. 

For instance, to say that God is simple is to say that God does not have constituents. 

So, one strand of difficulty was how to construe predication vis a vis God.  Another difficulty: bringing scripture into congruence with this conception of God.  For instance, they believed that God not only knows Himself, but everything.  This seemed to constitute distinct acts of knowing in God.  What makes them distinct is that the knowings have different objects.  Also, God loves not only himself but particulars.  Is this not a diversity of acts of love in God?  How could this be if God is simple?

The Medievals found their conception of God compelling: reality has to contain an unconditioned condition and that had certain ramifications in the forms of attributes.  Even so, the Medievals had some problems with it. 

The Enlightenment:

The two great philosophers of religion were John Locke(English) and Immanuel Kant(German), and between them was David Hume(Scottish) who attacked Locke mercilessly.  Thomas Reid was also a figure.  They worked on the epistomitic questions: how we know.

Locke: 1632-1744.  in 1690, he published An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.  He considers ideas.  The fourth book is most important. It concerns knowledge and belief.   There is a cultural and social anxiety in Locke. 

From 400 to 1500, European humanity had been schooled for the resolution of its moral, religious, and natural science questions in textual traditions.  They thought of the body of texts of tradition as containing a body of wisdom.  These texts were thought to contain a unified body of wisdom.  The aim of the scholar was to extract it.  For instance, which texts should be given priority?  How interpret them--literally, metaphorically...  Recall that Aquinas stated a claim and used traditional arguments as support.   Distinguish between disagreements to make them consistent.  We thrive on finding disagreements, whereas they thrived on making apparent contradictions be consistent.  What you get from this project is probability.  This is less than knowledge, which you get from scientia. 

By Locke's day, nobody thought that the recieved body of tradition contained a unified body of wisdom.  It was then thought that it had always been fractured.  The schooling of consulting 'the' tradition had broken down.  Locke: we can't just go to 'the' tradition because it is mainly false.  Where do we go to instead?  Tradition is being executed.  Locke keeps firing at it.  This was the cultural crisis.

There was an associated social crisis: people were so sure of their own traditions that they were fighting civil wars over it.  How does a society of religious and moral pluralism continue to exist? 

Descartes: close the books and construct from the ground up a basis for knowing.  The Medievals, on the other hand, went from an open book.  Why this change?  Was it increasing contact with non-European cultures?  Not a big factor, because there had always been some such contact.  They were seen as pagans.  Polo went to China.   Wolterstorff: internal factors were salient.  Luther's move was decisive.  Luther initiated a dispute over faith and justification, arguing from the tradition. But unlike the Medievals, Luther responded by saying that the tradition that is filled with falsehood.  Abelard's apparent contraditions, for instance, were real, Luther argued.  We should scrap human books to get to the Bible.  Luther has powerful political support at the right times, so what would have earlier been snuffed out as a heresy became instead an enduring fragmentation, which in turn fragmented.  Also by Locke's time, a new science had been used. 

So, Locke asked: how do we form our moral and religious beliefs in the face of such a fragmented tradition.  To get over the stalemate, he wanted to rely on the powers of the human mind.  Reason, rather than reading human texts or the Bible, was his authority. 

10/17/95: Lecture

Locke:

He was aware of the fragmentation of the European textual tradition.  For twelve-hundred years until the fifteenth century, unity among the texts was assumed; contradictions were assumed to be merely apparent.  It was assumed that the tradition contained wisdom (not scientia).  Locke had a profoundly different attitude toward tradition.  This led to anxiety: there were questions that they wanted answered, but the tradition was no longer a credible authority.  Locke's big question: how do we settle our religious and moral questions when we can no longer go to textual and biblical sources in the traditions?  Locke's strategy: investigate the power of human understanding.  Start with talking about knowledge.  It doesn't come to much.  For instance, don't use metaphors in Philosophy.  By 'knowledge', today we mean a type of belief which is true and justified.  Locke did not think of 'knowledge' this way; For Locke, knowledge is a special case of insight or awareness; of perception (metaphorically) of some fact of how things really are in a certain regard. Knowledge occurs when some fact of reality directly presents itself to the mind as perceived. Such awareness is normally accompanied by assent or belief, but knowledge is the awareness of a fact, rather than an accompanying assent, or belief.  In short, knowledge is awareness of something as a fact, assented to in beliefs.  This was how medievals viewed knowledge.  The notion of scientia is held by Locke; he considered empiricism as natural philosophy rather than of scientia. 

Of what kind of facts can we have that awareness or knowledge of (that they are facts)?  Mental contents such as ideas and states of the mind such as feelings are the only facts of which we can be aware, and thus have knowledge of.  All else is subject only to belief, based on probabilities of evidence--including testimony and mental contents.  When mental contents are ideas, facts of awareness are a particular content (idea), or a relation of those ideas Further, facts in awareness as ideas are not only of particular ideas, but the relations between ideas as well as the relation between the mind and ideas.  That's it.  Hence, knowledge is the perception of agreement and disagreement of ideas or sense impressions.   Some of our ideas represent non-mental reality, but we can't have direct awareness of things in the world.  I can have direct awareness of a chair image of a chair, but not of the chair itself.  Locke is following Descartes here.  Locke's broader view of knowledge as a perception is from Plato (although Plato also stated that knowledge is the type of belief that is true and justified--this 'minority' view in Plato only became dominant in the modern era).  So, knowledge thus understood is very short and scanty.  We can have knowledge of our existence and that of God (intuitive of our own; demonstrative of God's).  From awareness of one's own existence, Locke set up a cosmological argument for the existence of God.   So, knowledge of my mental contents permits me to have knowledge that I exist and that God exists, but not that anything else 'out there' exists as a concrete circumstance. It follows that we can not have knowledge of another person.  Another person is not a mental image, but a mental image is of another person.  In a nutshell, I am aware of myself and of my ideas, and of the existence of God.  Other than that, awareness is by inference (belief).

Locke thinks that there can be a scientia of math, logic and pure morality(of interconnections of moral concepts rather than of concrete circumstances). 

God has graciously given us the faculty of belief.  Belief is taking, rather than seeing, something to be true--that is, a fact; knowledge is direct awareness of a fact.  Many of our propositions are false when we think them true, so we must regulate our belief-forming faculties with the goal of getting more accurately in touch with the facts of reality.  

Faith is a species of belief.  Faith is a firm belief or assent of the mind which if it be regulated can't be opposite to reason.  So, even in the case of faith, we may be accountable for our errors and minimize our taking for true that which is false.  But if I am aware of a fact, then the belief of it can be held immediately as it comes directly from the perception; beliefs correlative of my mental states can be taken as facts directly.  But, if my taking-to-be-true of beliefs goes beyond this, then I need reasons to take the beliefs as true.  Immediate belief not corresponding to a mental content would be of the latter case.  To not need reason, a belief not held on the basis of other beliefs (an immediate belief) must be perceived directly(i.e. of a mental state, such as a mental sensation or idea).  So, beliefs beyond mental facts directly perceived mentally need reasons.  Knowledge is that which we are directly aware of.  Belief is of the rest that we hold as taken as fact rather than as seen as true. 

But, the method of regulating beliefs takes time and thus can't be used for everything. 

His method: doing one's best to bring about that I believe propositions that come to mind only when they are true.  What is the best way to do this?  Beyond knowledge, what constitutes 'doing your best'?  Everyone is obligated to do one's best for some propositions of maximal concern such as matters of morality and religion.  Beyond this, that which one should do his best on is not universal but depends, for instance, on their career.  It is only a proposition that is of sufficient concernment that one is obligated to put it to the method proposed by Locke. 

The method for taking a belief that is not directly correlative of a mental content and is of maximal concernment to be a fact and thus true:  First, collect evidence for the proposition such that each item taken as evidence is something that I know (a mental fact of which I am directly aware). Make sure that the body of evidence is ample and not distorted.  Second, assess the probability of the proposition on the basis of the evidence.  Third, proportion one's level of confidence in that proposition to its probability on that evidence.  This is a solution to thinking that we are sure about that which is not all that sure.  We are willing to go to war on beliefs which we take to be certain but are not.  This method should be applied on matters of morality and religion and other areas of maximal concernment.

Locke uses the word 'probability' in a sense emerging at about 1650.  Ian Harking argues that previously it meant whether that person was speaking on authority; with Locke, it is to the things themselves, not what people say about the things, but of direct awareness of them.  Reason tells of the probabilities.  Listen to it, rather than to what people say.  This is not to say that we should never believe what others have said.  Rather, just have good reliability--the extent that others have used this method.  So, tradition could be relied upon to the extent that it has relied on this method.  Note that probability toward certainty is not knowledge, but is belief well-taken, which is better than being wrong about something that we think we are right about.

Locke's theory has been called a foundational theory.  Belief is from knowledge which in turn is from direct awareness of mental content.  We can only be certain of our awareness of mental contents.

Religion:  you must have good evidence for your religious beliefs because religion ought to be of maximal concernment to everyone.  Don't believe with too little sureness or too much.  By the use of reason to calculate probabilities from evidence (of knowledge), one's belief can be taken with the appropriate surity to what is true.  Some ideas of morals and religion are so self-evident that they can be taken as facts (knowledge) and thus don't need this method; but most do.

10/24/95: Lecture

Locke:

Bk. II: on concepts of the mind (the content).  Bk. IV: on the process of knowledge (the relationship between concepts).  By Bk. II, Locke is an empiricist; by Bk. IV, he is a rationalist.

Locke's religious epistomology:  There is a demonstrative argument on the existence of God.  We can know that God exists.  A cosmological argument.  I am sure only of my mental contents and their connections.  A condition of my existence is that God exists.  Wolterstorff: this is not a very convincing argument.  Locke's discussion of faith occurs when he is discussing belief rather than knowledge.  Faith is  accepting something on someone's say-so. It is for him a species of belief.  The medievals: faith is between knowledge and belief; Locke: faith is a species of belief.  On Faith: when are we entitled to believe 'P' on the sayso of 'S'?  Independent evidence is not necessary; rather, evidence concerning the reliability of the witnesser testifying on such matters in such a circumstance. 

Divine revelation: evidence is not needed on the content of the revelation or of the purported testifier (God).  We just know that God would not say something false.  So, in this case, evidence is necessary merely for the claims that 1.) it is really God who is the testifier of the revelation (e.g. miracles), and 2.) I have rightly interpreted what God said. 

Miracles constitute the evidence that it is God that is who is the testifier in Divine Revelation.  So, testimony on the occurance of a miracle is salient.  How reliable are the testifiers of a miracle?  Also, was what was reported actually a miracle?  It is here assumed that faith is a matter of maximal concernment; on lots of issues we don't have time to do the Lockian method, but not on matters of religion and morality.  It is irresponsible to hold religious beliefs without following Locke's method. Moreover, we are not entitled to hold religious beliefs without following Locke's probabalistic evidentialistic method.  Locke considers this procedure to be human rather than specifically Christian.  The result of this procedure would be a non-sectarian form of Christianity.  The self-interest of the testifier of a miracle would be considered, but just because something testified to is in one's self interest does not necessarily mean that  it is false. 

Locke would say: out of this method, one's beliefs would be tempered; so folks of Locke's time should not be so sure of their sectarian beliefs to fight over them.  Locke is really trying to get folks to take their beliefs less seriously and be more tolerant of those of others so there would be less fighting over them.  Folks ought to consider for themselves the truth of their beliefs, rather take them as true from what sectarian leaders or teachers tell us (unless they have followed Locke's method).  

So, pertaining to miracles, the salient matter is to calculate the probablility of the reliability of the testifier.  But, there are interconnections between it and the content.  First, if the content is self-evidently false, you must conclude that it is not something you should believe by faith.   Second, if the content is improbable on the evidence given to me, then consider the improbability of the content against the probability of it being an episode of divine revelation(the reliability of the testifier) and go with the stronger probability.  Third, don't believe the content with a firmness in excess of that that with which I was able to believe it to be a revelation.  Fourth, a episode of revelation should be believed with a firmness in proportion to the probability that it really was a case of revelation. 

Locke gives this method, but he does not use it, so we don't know what would be taken as evidence.  Locke's message: you can't take something for a belief just because it is comfortable.  Just as science of his day had given up the fantasy of certitude, so too was the case with religion for Locke, except for the belief that God's existence. 

So, Locke states that an adult is not entitled to hold religious beliefs without good evidence.  Locke is persuaded that unless we follow his principle, 'everything or anything goes' in religion.  Reason must be our last judge and guide in matters of maximal concernment.  Otherwise, it won't be possible to distinguish between truth and falsehood.  So, this is the evidentialist challenge, based on taking only mental content as having certitude.  Implications: the Lockean program could end up in disbelief, in scurring around with evidence, or in taking something as true because evidence is found for its reliability. 

In the last thirty years, it has been seen that natural science does not survive the Lockean method.  This discrepancy was highlighted by Thomas Kuhn.  Since then, Locke has been denegrated but science has gone unscathed. 

In the 1700's, natural religion was distinguished from revealed religion.  Evidences for them were separated.   Cosmological proofs of God were refurbished (e.g. Samual Clarke).  Also, the design arguments were redone.  Hume attacked both parts: the attempts to give evidence for natural and revealed religion. 

10/26/95: Lecture

Hume:

In his Dialogues, Hume attacks the natural religion aspect of Locke's evidentialist method.  There are three main characters in the Dialogues: Cleanthes, Demea, and Philo.  The dialogue is narrated by Pamphilus to Hermippus.  Demea is said to be rigidly orthodox, following natural religion, arguing that rational induction is sufficient to establish knowledge that God exists.  Cleanthes is said to be empirical, arguing from design of the world that there is an intelligent supreme being. It is likely that Demea was based on Samual Clarke

Worlterstorff: Philo's skepticism seems like that of Hume.  Hume may have set out this way--with Philo the intended hero, but it seems that Cleanthes ended up the hero.  Wolterstorff: Cleanthes, moreso than Philo, represents Hume, according to Wolterstorff.  

The main topic of the Dialogues is empirical religion.  Several eighteenth-century thinkers claimed that the new science of empiricism entitled folks to believe that there is an intelligent being who created the universe.  This was 'The Religious Hypothesis'.  It was an argument from design.  Wolterstorff: Hume constructs an empirical religion, not from the design of things, but from the human intuitive tendency to believe in God.  Unlike Aquinas who took actual principles from scientia and extrapolated them to arrive at the existence of God, Hume claimed that the methodological principles of the new science could be used to give an empirical religion which proved the existence of God.   Philo chips away at this in the Dialogues, as Cleanthes makes this argument from design.  Demea gives the cosmological argument and the classical concept of God.  Demea protests against Cleanthes' argument from design on the grounds that the God that emerges is so minimalist and so tentative for there to actually be such a being according to the method.  'Don't be so wimpy', says Demea! 

Wolterstorff: there is a third, subtle, position in this dialogue: Cleanthes' argument is different than what Philo takes it to be.  Philo takes it to be the eighteenth-century design argument whereas Cleanthes' actual position is not quite the design argument, but is Hume's actual position (See parts eleven and twelve of the Dialogue).  This third argument is a thesis: the natural tendency thesis.  There is a natural tendency in being human to believe in the existence of an intelligent being who created the universe.  This belief is stimulated not by observations of design in the universe but by intuition.  But Philo claims that such intuition is only at times of hardship--hardly an enduring, or 'hard-wired', intuition of a supreme being.  Wolterstorff discounts this, taking Cleanthes' argument from intuition to stand for Hume's position, even though Philo shows Hume's general skepticism.

Hume believed that if one took only mental contents as knowable, as Locke had done, then the existence of the external world--including the existence of a supreme being-- could not be known or believed to exist.  This was contrary to Locke's conclusion: that one could hold beliefs about the external world and have knowledge that God exists.  But Hume wants to say that we can still know that the external world exists--just not by rational induction via evidentialist probability.  So, Hume bases his knowledge of the external world and of God on his thesis that there is a natural tentency to know that there is an external world and God.  To Hume, justification has been misconceived.  Hume via Wolterstorff: It is natural to believe in theism without resort to reason and probability of beliefs. 

Book ten comes as a jolt.  Most folks have thought that Philo does not mean what he says.  Wolterstorff claims that Philo attacks the argument from design. Then in book ten, Philo takes Cleanthes' position as not from design but from natural tendency.  If one did not distinguish the argument of design from that from natural tendency espoused by Cleanthes, one would suppose that Philo agreed in book ten with that which he fought against earlier. 

The teleological argument from design:  See Part II, p. 15 (Cleanthes: 'Look round the world...'). Philo replies: this is an argument from analogy, so not much confidence in the conclusion is warranted.  Moreover, the analogy is far off from earth here, so even less confidence should be justified here.   Inductive arguments only yield probabilities anyway. Hume: an argument by analogy is weaker than a straight inductive argument, speaking through Philo (see. pp. 18-19).  Philo (and thus Hume) is arguing against the argument from design. An argument from analogy can be turned into one from induction if the evidence class is expanded.  Philo goes on to give counter-evidence: adaptation of means to ends in animals.  Second, the argument is from the origin of parts to the origin of the totality.  This is shaky logic says Philo(Hume). It is quite a leap.  Reflect on the variety of nature's operations.  How does one know that one's analogy is not merely applicable locally and therefore not at a distant place or time?  Can we extend our conclusions from analogy from earth to what goes on in other planets?  Nature has an infinite number of new principles.  Further, how can one say that what holds now held when the universe was in an early stage?  The laws of an early state may no longer be operational in a mature state.  Experience of the origin of worlds would be necessary.   So, it is incurably an argument from analogy.  This is the first wave of attack by Philo/Hume.  Wolterstorff: further, is there a clear line between analogy and inference.  Key: how the reference-class is described.  This distinction in fact collapses.

10/31/95: Lecture

Hume:

In part II, a general analysis of the argument of analogy is given and attacked.  Wolterstorff: the distinction between inductive and analytical argument is not clear in Hume's work here.   Start with an inductive argument: 1. 'All A's, such that I have determined whether they are B's, are B's.  2. This is an A.  3. Probably this A is also a B.'  The second premise can be modified: This, though not an A, is like A's with respect to R.   Hume has in mind this modification.  In it, he has in mind a reference class.  Something is added to the class because it is like members in it.  So, it is not something that is another A.  Wolterstorff: the problem with this: how do we determine the reference class of A's and B's?  Whether it is an inductive or analogical argument depends upon what the reference class is taken to be.  Key: is the reference expansive enough that it includes that which one wants to argue is like that class?  If so, then it is an inductive generalization.  If not, it is an argument from analogy.  What determines that initial generalization?  How do you decide what is the relevant type?  

Apparently, what guides our generalizations is that humans are wired to make certain types of generalizations.  Or, science may contain in its logic particular ways of making generalizations. 

Was it inference or analogy that is behind the design argument which Hume rejects? What was Cleanthes' initial generalization?  A machine?  All works of artiface (made by humans)?  Wolterstorff:  all entities, which exhibit the property of means adapted to ends (the A's) and were made by intelligent beings, have proved to be such here on earth. So, the universe which exihibits the property of means adapted to ends probably was made by an intelligent being.  But, animals exhibit this property of having means adapted to an end, but they come about by regeneration rather than being made by an intelligent being.  So, paintings and gardens are not sufficient as a reference class to allow Cleanthes to make his analogy.  Further, how do we know that things outside this solar system have these features? In short, there are actual and possible exceptions not accounted for in the reference class which are not made by an intelligent being.  Hume concludes that it is a weak inductive argument.  In a pure design argument, a cosmological argument that God is the first cause of the animals would not apply.

Part IV:  Demea dislikes Cleantes' position.  Demea claims that Cleantes takes the cosmos anthropormophically.  Philo agrees with Demea: Cleantes is thinking of the divine mind as the human mind.  Philo claims that Cleantes does not give an account of order in the mind of God--not just in the created order.  Cleantes replies: often in human affairs, we don't understand what it was in the cause that caused the cause to cause something.

Part. V:  Cleantes can't show that God is infinite and perfect, and he can't rule out the possibility of imitation or trial and error.  Furthermore, it is not necessarily so that it was one intelligent being that created everything.  Further, how do we know that there was no body to this being?  Also, it could have been an infant or a senile deity. Philo: the conclusions that your evidence entitles you to does not permit you can't to have any religious answers.    Sheer religious whimpiness.  Is this preferable to no answer at all.

Part VI: Cleantes' universe is similar to a machine.  So, experience of machines is appealed to.  Philo: but is not the universe like an animal?  If so, then it was generated.  But this is to incert the cosmological argument.

Part VII: A third hypothesis, advocated by Philo (and thus Hume?) against Cleanthes' argument of design from reason: generation as the cause of order; matter orginally moved around in chance patterns of movement until an infinitude of time when there was a swerve and bumping.  Finally, a pattern with a certain stability emerges (by chance).  Philo: means adapted to ends is really to be understood as survival of the fittest.  A generator or a being is not needed; moreover, appeals to reason or design are not needed.  Philo admits that his claim based on generation is to be preferred to Cleanthes' claim based on reason: from our empirical experience, we see that reason comes from generation, but generation does not come out of reason.  So, generation must be closer to that of the cause of creation than is reason. 

So, Philo gives three attacks against the argument of design, and in so doing advocates his own view of generation. Even so, Philo admits that he doesn't have evidence for inductive or analogical argument for  the origin of the universe, so even his own preference is held skeptically.

At the end of Part X and in Part XI, Philo expresses Hume's view.  A new point: Philo suggests that evil in the world makes it impossible to infer that an intelligent being has a moral character.  Philo observes that the existence of an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God is not incompatible with the evil we see in the world.  For instance, God paid a price for there to be free creatures.  Or, in the whole, it is perfect.  But, this is not the argument here.  We are conducting an inductive argument for God's existence rather than looking for God's attributes.  So, suffering and evil must be part of the evidence class.  Mackee: a God which is is all-good... is incompatible with the kind of evil we see in the world.  Plantinga argues that it is not incompatible.  Hume: at an earlier stage, we don't know whether there is a God, so if God is all-powerful and all-good, He is not at that time concerned about the problem of suffering.

The argument at its best shows an intellence, but we have a problem of goodness.  Philo is against the teleogical design argument.  Wolterstorff: but, there is the natural tendency thesis of Cleantes which Philo agrees with. 

11/2/95: Lecture

Hume:

Cleantes' natural tendency position: the instincts of nature can't be denied. There is a theistic impulse that is activited by focusing on the design.  See Book III.  Also consider Hume's general philosophy that is relevant.  Specifically, Hume analyzes the nature of inductive inference.  On the basis of present and past experience, we form beliefs about things that we have not experienced.  Hume considers such inferences to be unjustified though unstoppable.  These inferred beliefs are irresistable.  But, Hume states that such inferences are 'just inferences'; that is, justified.  Hume claims that inductive inferences do not conform with Locke's method.  For such inferences to fit the rationally ideal, how would one know that one's sample were never skewed.  The future does not have to be like the past, for instance.   Locke seems to assume that it will be.  Hume questions this, and in this sense holds inductive inferences to be unjustified.  Wolterstorff: But this doesn't necessarily mean that Hume is saying that the inferences are unjustified per se; Hume is merely criticizing Locke's use of them in his method of probabalistic evidentialism. 

In short, Hume is attacking Locke's rationalism, arguing that we are mostly founded on justified habit and custom even though they don't serve Locke's method.   Locke claimed that his method gives us the best way to get at facts that get beyond our mental contents.  Hume to Locke: how do you know that your induced evidence is not skewed unless you have sampled a very large number of items?  The evidence at issue here is not of knowledge (mental contents which are facts) but of beliefs (propositions given a proabability).  Hume: like the inductive inference impulse, there is an impulse of habit and custom which gives an instinct that is theistic.  

Hume: the yield of this theistic instinct is slim: that the cause of the universe probably bears some resemblance to the human intellect.  What, then, is the positive benefit of it?  The proper function is to undergird our moral existence.  This is like Kant's view.  Morality is based on human sentiment/instinct of sympathy.  Like Adam Smith.  Religion is part of nature's design.  Hume, like Locke, claims that we can only know moral content.  Otherwise, we believe. Morality is of belief.

Hume's epistimology of miracles: he is going after revealed religion here, attacking Locke's view.  Lock's view of revealed religion: He was a Christian who liked the Gospels and Paul's letters.  His focus there:  claims by Christians (in scripture) that God has revealed such and such, especially through Jesus.  He also finds claims as to the occurance of miracles that are said to confirm that it really was revelation.  How does the miracle and revelation fit to Locke?  It was traditionally assumed that God would not confer power erroneously, so if someone claimed to see a miracle, it must be from God's power.  Locke:  first, use probability calculations on N.T. testimony whether the experience of revelation occurred.  Then, using probability calculations on this, calculate probabalistically whether a miracle took place.  Then, calculate whether the miracle confirms that it really was a revelation.  Fourth, if the miracle so conforms, then use probability calculations to figure out what really was revealed.  Then, one believes that God revealed the thing; so believe the content. This is rational revealed religion. 

Hume's claim on miracles is an attack on one component in that Lockean program: that we can believe justifiably on the basis of testimony that a miracle has occurred.  Observation about popular religion has to be added. Hume's argument: recall his view of induction: For Hume, the only thing that entitles us to make inductive inferences is an observation of correlative occurances.  This triggers our habit to induce.  If the correlation is invarient, it is a 'proof'; if not quite invariant, it is a 'probability'; Hume is criticical of the role of probability in Locke's method in general and as applied to miracle testamonies in particular.  Applied to testimony: what accounts for the inference from someone telling me that something happened to my belief that it really happened?  Observation of a regular correlation between what that person has said in the past and what actually happened.  The content of what one reported of the miracle would be independent evidence.  Then, determine the reliability of the truth-content based on the historical correlation and apply it to the content of the miracle (how unlikely it is) to determine the reliability of its truth-content.  There may be 'proof' or 'probability' regarding either of these types of evidence.  Consider, probabalistically, these testimonial and contentual evidences.  A miracle, for instance, is a violation of a law of nature, so testimony of it is in effect against a prior proof that it didn't occur(this prior proof is the law of nature). But the testimony may be reliable.  In this case, the two evidences cancel each other out for Hume whereas for Locke they may not--the probability of the testimony may outweigh unlikeness of the miracle content.  So, Hume is more skeptical on miracles than is Locke.  Hume narrows inductive inference (used in probabalistic judgment) to correlative occurances (so look for them in the testifier).  For Locke, inductive inference, and thus probability, does not require correlative occurances in the testifier.  So, more testimony 'gets in' for Locke than for Hume. 

11/7/95: Lecture

Hume on Miracles:

Crucial is Hume's dichotomy between proof and probability; each rests on your observation of relative correlation.  There can be two proofs in conflict which cancel eachother out.  Applied to miracles.  A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.  A transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the deity or by the interposition of an invisible agent.  Suppose one testifies to an event that contradicts a law of nature.  Prior experience of the law had been of an invariant correlation, which stands as a proof that the miracle did not occur.  On the other hand, the testimony of the miracle may be reliable, which would be a proof. Thus, there would be two proofs in conflict--best case scenerio for a miracle.  A collision of two proofs. So, we should not believe in miracles ideally.  In practice, the testimony may not be so reliable or the correlation of the law not so invariant.  The testimony is reliable if its falsity would be more miraculous than had it been true. So, not only is Hume more skeptical on miracles than is Locke because for Hume probability as well as proof rest on relative correlation and the law of nature is assumeed to have a correlation and thus be a proof, but also because for Hume the testimony is reliable only if its falsity would be more miraculous. Hume, unlike Locke, assumes that the counter to the miracle claim is a proof whereas the testimony on behalf of the miracle is at best (with a tough test) only probable.  For Locke, that of the external world is probabalistic, laws of nature as well as testamony.

The type of speech-act is the type of testimony of the occurance of some miracle.  Test the reliability of that type of speech-act.  Hume: one will find that a good number of this type are false. The testimony-type never amounts to a proof in practice.  Why?  First, some of the circumstances of reliable testamony of a speech-act, such as the absence of self-interest, may be absent.  Second, the more unusual the claim, the more suspicious we are that it happened until it is utterly amazing--when people are no longer suspicious.  Confronted with something wholly awesome, we suspend our suspician.  Thirdly, testimony of miracles is more prevalent among the less enlightened.  Fourth, the evidence of one religion's miracles are evidence against the miracles of other religions, so they cancel each other out. 

So, like Locke, when evidence of the content and of the testimony are contrary, we should rely on any evidence of the remainder, and apply it to popular religion.  But, for Hume unlike Locke, his substraction of the less probable from the more amounts to an annihiation, so no human testimony can prove a miracle and make it a just foundation for a system religion. Note: foundation.   Hume is not denying the possibility of a miracle or of a proof of it on the basis of human testimony, although he is skeptical that it would occur.  Rather, it should not be made the foundation of a system of religion.  

When dealing with religion, there is suspect testimony because there is self-interest involved.  We won't find human testamony that makes a miracle likely enough so to become a foundation for a system of religion.  Hume: a reasonable person who accepts his argument would not believe in the Christian religion (because that religion is based on a miracle). 

Wolterstorff's reflection: First, Hume's law of nature is such that there can be an exception to it.  Thus, Hume's conception of a law of nature is not as an invariant correlation.  'L' is a law of nature if it is either an invarient correlation or if the only exceptions of the variance are produced by some deity or some invisible agent.  So, one has an experience of a regular correlation and I conclude that 'L' is a law of nature.  There is testimony to an exception to 'L', call it 'E'.  What shall we do with this?  We could judge the testimony inaccurate or at least just suspend all belief.  Or, we could judge the testimony as accurate.  One could conclude that 'L' is not a law of nature, or one could conclude that 'L' is a law of nature and 'E' is a miraculous exception.  So, three possible responses.  Hume: avoid the latter two which take the testimony as accurate (or, if you do take it so, do so with timidity).  So, say 'I don't believe the testimony' or 'I don't know'.  So almost never say that we are mistaken on our belief about 'L'.    Criticism of Hume: he discounts the effect of limited experience when he claims that we can have confidence that we know 'L'.  Hume is attacking Locke's view that one can believe in miracles on the basis of testamony.

Second, Hume assumes that the relevant class to consider testimony is that of miracles.  In other words, consider a testimony only within the class of miracle testimonies which is not a very reliable class.  This seems to discount the miracle testimony aready.  Why not take reports from the testifier in which he was highly confident of what he saw as the class?  Compare one's testimony about a miracle from Jim with Jim's other statements concernings things we have taken to be so.  Finding the relevant class of comparison is difficult, and depending on that decision may rest whether one takes a miracle testimony to be reliable.  What is to prevent putting it in a class of one--the testimony of the miracle in question.  Key: does Hume pick his referent class so he gets what he wants to get? 

Hume is getting at taking miracles as reliable as the foundation of a religion.  It is not rational to do so.  Locke claims that it could be.

Schleiermacher:

Kant and Hegel were in search of the Enlightenment religion: that religion is rational.  Kieraguard: against religion being rational.   Schleiermacher was too.  He emphasized 'religious experience'.  Being a cultured person (with culture within) is a Bildung.  The ideal of becoming a cultured human being.  This, we characterize as Romanticism. This is the first post-modernist movement.  Social analysis was implicit in it; that modernity represents the destruction of organic modes of life, in favour of disconnected, mechanistic ways.  The hope of recovering past unity.  Art plays a role in this. Discontent with the new science, Capitalism, institutional religion (especially Protestantism), abstract political movements such as the French Revolution.  Romantics admired art.  T.S. Elliot: the disconnection in modernity.  M. H. Abrams wrote on the romantics too.  Romanticism held religiousity to be important, although not in institutional forms.  A sense of the sublime; of the infinite.  Schleiermacher plays a large role in emphasizing religiousity.  He claims that it must be included to become fully cultured and fully human.  Religion is grounded in experience.  Schleiermacher: Have religiousity because it is essential to becoming cultured and ultimately human. 

11/9/95: Lecture

Schleiermacher:

He is critical of looking at the manifestations of religion.  He is especially critical of rational religion.  From this critique, he suggests that it is the essence of religion, rooted in human nature, which should be considered.  During the Enlightenment, religion was seen as rational and moral.  For Schleiermacher, even though religion, metaphysics and morality have a structural similarity in that they are all oriented to mankind's relation to the universe, they do not overlap.  Religion has its own domain; it is not metaphysical speculation or moral praxis.  So what is this unique essence that is religion?  For Schleiermacher, it is conceiled.  Note that his question differs from the Enlightenment question: what justifies religion? 

To get at the unique essence of religion, Schleiermacher considers what it is to be a religious person.  It is not necessarily to embrace a theistic metaphysic.  It is not necessarily to be ethically concerned.  It is not necessarily to engage in religious practices. And it is not necessarily to accept religious doctrines and dogmas.  Rather, to be a religious person is to have an experience of a certain sort.  What is this experience?  How is it different from other experiences which are not religious?  What is unique about it? 

Primarily, its structure is that of feeling-laden intuition.  This intuition has an object which is intuited but remains beyond perception.  So it is not just a subjective feeling but is of something beyond that is assumed by Schleiermacher to exist.  Religious experience is awareness of that object.  This awareness is intuitive (i.e. subjective sensation) plus feeling, interwoven.

Rudolf Otto also asked Schleiermacher's question: what is the essence of religious experience?  For Otto, it is of the holy (the numinous) which attracts and repulses us.  For Schleiermacher, the religious experience attracts but does not repulse us.  It is an intuition of the infinite which brings not terror but joy and love. 

This is illusive because it is difficult in general to get clear about what exactly a religious experence is.  In a later edition, he claimed that it is a feeling of being absolutely dependent upon something.  A shift.  It is also to get clear about religious experience because people articulate the experience in different ways.  So, Schleiermacher wants to find the thread of commonality behind the different articulations.

For Schleiermacher, religious experience is sensing the finite things confronting us as manifestations or presentations of a different order.  Things are not seen as just themselves, but as presentations of a different order of reality.  Finite things of perception are seen as having something behind them of a different order.  So there is a sense of there being something more; things as having a depth to them. 

So, Schleiermacher's religious experience is an awareness or sense (intuition) that there is a 'more' and that what I perceive is a manifestation of it.  This sense is intuitive and is thus not a thought.  This intuition is of there being a beyond.  The religious person experiences himself this way; a beyond of which he is a finite manifestation or presentation. 

The effect of this religious experience is joy and love rather than fear.  Sublimity is assumed.  For Edwin Burke, sublimity is a sense of being diminished in the face of something awesome. Otto used this to include fear in his description of the religious experience.  Schleiermacher, however, does not see such a fear that is in feeling diminished.  Rather, he sees joy and love from a sense of the structure of nature and from seeing humanity as one, paying attention to humanity's history.

Four points follow for Shleiermacher:

1. Morality distinguishes and discriminates between actions; religion accepts them all.  So, religion is not morality.

2. Doctrines are abstract expressions of religious feelings of what it is that is beyond.  But that which is beyond can't be known or perceived, so religion is not doctrines.

3. So doctrines about God or immortality, for instance, are merely our attempt to articulate from our imagination that which is beyond.

4. To be human is to be in reality this way--having religious experience.  It is necessary for balance. Otherwise, we apply our categories (us imposing ourselves) on the object of our awareness which is unknown and unperceived.  We need to absorb the other rather than impose ourselves on it.

11/14/95: Lecture

Schleiermacher: The Third Speech.

He emphasizes self-improvement in the world.  Religious sensibility (intuition) can't be taught; you have to have it within.  By being shown the world, it is hoped that this will be seen within.  He has a strong opposition to the practical culture; the mechanics of everyday life. 

Religious intuition: what it is not.  It is not reason or emotion or a vague sensibility.  The intuitions may be different.  There is not 'the' intuition'.  So, differences may not be due primarily to different beliefs or dogmas.  Since intuition can't be taught, we are stuck with this source of difference.  Religious pluralism is both expected and problematic.  He argues for particularism in a noble rivalry in which folks hold to their own sense of religious sensibility.  With reserve, yet with openness.  Everything is divine(the infinite is presented through every finite), so different religious sensibilities (intutions) will be open to each other as well as being particular.  One goes inward to find the infinite within your intuitive spirit and outward into the world to realize that connection.  Others, sensing that the infinite is in every intuitive religious spirit, would respect and be open to this in others, while remaining particular in their own religiousity.

Wanted: a balance of introversion and extroversion.  Important: balance.  On extroversion, share one's intuition of dependence.  When you intuit an object, you are intuiting it as part of the whole.  Implies monism.   Prudent and practical people counter-balance religious people.  Due to the former, religion plays a small role in society.  Children have an innate sense of wonder that is destroyed by society, especially as society is practical.  All humans are naturally religious; naturally of wonder.  So, shed off the effects of the practical world to get back in touch with your religious intuition.  The essence of mankind is the longing for the feeling-laden religious intuition of the infinite 'other'(transcending our own reality--thus an experience of transcendence); the essence of humanity is not reason.   This intuitive longing is squelched by practical society which turns religious experience into moralism. 

So, unveil the real religious intuitive self from the ego, reason, and practical concerns.   Recover our youth and the wonder that was with it.  Shed understanding which kills sense--the religious sensibility.  Understanding is particularistic (relating particular objects); sense is wholistic (seeing the object as a part of the whole).  Taking apart vs. integrating.  Of knowledge is a system of religion (why break down religion into relations between parts rather than seeing the whole?).  Third, strip away the idea that everything has to be practical. 

So, Schleiermacher gives us a way of living.  Don't put all your eggs in the practical basket.  The dominant society replaces religiousity with practiality which squelches it.  What is the spirit of opposition?  What should we do?  Schleiermacher tells us in negative terms what should be gotten rid of.  But, he does say that we should get a sense of self-understanding.  But not by being all inwardness.  If too much in the culture, one is too extroverted--wanting more, more, more.   There seems to be an analogy to the aesthetic.  The artistic sense turns into the religious sense.  Kant's aesthetic unifies reason and intuition, and is an appreciation of the whole.  Did Schleiermacher borrow from this? 

Schleiermacher wanted his audience to bring back religion.   But did he tell them how?  He assumed that hearing his claims would provoke it in them; they would become aware of their own religious sense vis a vis the practicality of the world.  Lose the finite and fine the infinite.  Unity of the human spirit with the infinite The circle is the symbol he uses for this. The disparate will be unified into the whole.  Heaven experienced in a wild-flower.  Infinity in a seed in your hand. 

 So, intuition of an object is not sufficient.  The intuition of everything is tied back to intuition of the self.  So, the sublime does not have the quality of terror.  The self is magnified and unified with the world.  There is not therefore a sense of being dominated by the Other.  So, unlike Buddhists, self-annihilation is not desired. Rather, a sense of the infinite is desired.  From this comes a natural sense of morality. 

Art or poetry, rather than argument, is the method he proposes on religion.  But he was not an artist or poet.   A move on religion from a set of ideas to an experience.  Why?  Fragmentation of the textual tradition during the Enlightenment.  The lessening of community and the rise of the concept of the individual.  This would have been utterly foreign to the medievals but central for Locke, Hume, and Schleiermacher.  With Locke and Hume, the problem is justifying the relation between the self and the world; for Schleiermacher, the self is expanded to the infinite.  Unlike the Enlightenment view of the self, this essential self is other than reason. Schleiermacher's self-formation is thus very different than the sense of self in the Enlightenment.  This difference means that religion will have been seen differently. 

11/16/95: Lecture

Schleiermacher: Speeches 4 and 5.

In general, his purpose is to give an apologitic of religion to its cultured despisers.  He wants to clarify the essence and nature of religion to change their attitude toward that which religion really is: intuiting the universe; intuiting finite objects as manifestations of the infinite.  This intuition is accompanied by feeling toward the object or the intuition, producing in us a sense of joy and love--from a feeling of absolute dependence on the infinite.  Then, he asks how we can develop our religious sensibility in a culture that goes against this.  We can't learn it, so schools won't do.  True piety can't come from descriptions of the feeling-intuition of others (propositional beliefs or moral imperatives, for instance). 

Speech four: humans have an urge to convey our religious feeling-intuition to others.  As such, we are mediators.  So, once there is religion, it must be social.  We can't contain our feeling-intuitive experience of the influence.  It must be communicated.  We are by nature communicators.  Religious books are inadequate to convey the original experience--the vibrations of the mind during the experience; so, it must be virbally communicated. Apprehending and appropriating.   It is the free stirring of the spirit. This is the true church--the city of God.  No distinctions between people there, such as priests and laity.  Anyone can have a religious experience--everyone reflects the intuition of the infinite in particular ways. So, such a church is characterized by a diversity of intuitions of the infinite.  Unity is not in uniformity, as it can be present in diversity; there are manifold ways that the feeling-intuition is present and charished in the communication.  So, no particular dogma.  So, the forms that this communication takes can and should be diverse.  No one feeling-intuition is greater than another; also, one's feeling-intuition accords with one's nature.  So, one should not seek to impose another expression of the infinite on another, but merely to share ones' own expression with another.  So, no prosletising.  Free, mutual communication. 

So, Schleiermacher criticizes the imperial church and defends the true church.  Why does the empirical church fail to be the true church?  First, the imperical church has lost its free inspiration by adopting  a school-mastering mechanical nature which employs creeds and dogma which precede the religious experience.  Youthful fire has been substituted by creeds and dogmas.  The creeds and dogmas describe a past experience.  But the imperial church puts them before current experience.  So, by asserting a creed or dogma as being essential to religion, the imperial church has lost the true religion.  Weber's routinization of charisma.  Problem: the institutionalization or routinization of the free inspiration.  The community breaks down. 

Secondly, the empirical church fails to be the true church due to the influence of the state in coopting the empirical church.  The church can no longer be a free expression.  At that time, ordination was handled by the state.  The state also meddled in marriages and baptisms.  The state introduces its own interests into the empirical church such that it can't be the true church. 

What must be done to return the true church?  Give a secondary role to creed as a requirement for church membership.  Diversity is emphasized rather than eliminated.  Minimize the distinction between priests and the laity.  This distinction can't be totally taken, as any group needs a leader; moreover, priests can provide a good example of a youthful fire.  But if priests cease to be listeners, they impede the true church.  Uniformity is the worst enemy or true religion.  Finally, the true church must not be influenced by anything outside the society.  The family is a good model for the true church.  A family of mutual communication. 

The Fifth Speech:

The question of the plurality of religions.  Against the rationalist view, lay aside loathing of religious pluralism; it is part of the nature of religion itself.  Positive religion exists when one feature of the relation of the finite to the infinite has been elevated to an exclusive place, bearing on the feeling-intuition experience.  For instance, a fundamental intuition on how humanity and the universe are related: God.  This fundamental intuition organizes subsequent intuitions into a religious system.  For instance, Judaism and Christianity.  Judaism: a universal immediate retribution.  All growth and misfortune is interpreted as part of a great exchange between God and humanity, characterized on God's side as rewards and punishments.  This is the fundamental intuition of Judaism.  But is this not a narrow view of Judaism.  Christianity's fundamental intuition: consciousness of sin and our need of redemption.  God intervenes to redeem humanity into new creatures.  This mediation happens through God's embassadors.  Whereas Judaism focuses on God's rewards and punishments, Christianity focuses on the sin of humanity and the need of redemption by Jesus Christ; God mediates, just as ministers do.  Implied: God is always trying to redeem humanity.  Out of this fundamental intuition of Christianity is the idea that we should want to look anywhere for God's redemption, so we should embrace pluralism, appreciating it receptively.

On natural religion of the Enlightenment.  He rebutts this as a synthetic product that takes lowest denominators of positive religions.  Natural religion is a faint echo of positive religions.

On Christ:  He is the teacher of the idea of mediation, so he is the bearer of mediation.  He is the condition of the possibility that we can realize it in our own life.  It is not due to Jesus' character or identity (metaphysical) or his morality.  Rather, it is the phenomenon of mediation that what Jesus taught and practiced.  We are in need of salvation, conscious of our sin.  Jesus Christ, as the mediator, gives that redemption.  Religious consciousness is seen as communion with God.  But it is not denied that there could not be other mediators.  Pluralism is thus to be preferred. 

Tensions within Schleiermacher?  Does he misunderstand the essences of particular religions?  What is the relation of art and religion?  What makes religion distinctive if art can also mediate the relation between the finite and the infinite?  Schleiermacher: religion does something more than art; religion calls forth a loving historical community.  In light of their unique way of seeing the finite as part of the infinite, the true church can produced a loving community which art can't do.  Does religion as a feeling-intuition do as a foundation for a positive religion?  Can he do constructive theology?  He does not link the relation between feeling-intuitions and doctrines.  Also, difficulty in keeping this distinct from metaphysics and morality.

11/28/95: Lecture

The Modern Period:

In the last twenty-five years, there have been particularist discussions in the Philosophy of Religion.  Reflection on issues specific to particular traditions.  For instance, on atonement and original sin in Christian circles.  Secondly, there have been attacks from all three Abrahamic religions on the classical notion of God as simple, immutable, impassible, etc.  Third, there has been wide-raging discussion on the problem of evil.  Fourth, there has been discussion on the nature of religious belief and its epistemology.  We will focus on the latter.

On the nature and epistemology of religious belief:  There have been attempts to carry through the Lockian program with enhanced rigour.  Richard Swinburne.  Also, the Wittgensteinian strain.  Last, the Reformed epistemology.  We will look at Wittgenstein and the Reformed Epistemology.  Each provides an alternative to logical positivism.  This leads them to emphasize certain things and leave out others.  D.Z. Phillips, for instance, charges against Reformed epistemologists but ignores the polemic in the Wittgensteinians.

The Wittgensteinian program. Its polemical partner is logical positivism.  This was the dominant movement from the thirties (begun in Austria) until the sixties in Anglo-American Philosophy of Religion.  It was taken for granted as the context for discussion.  Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an Austrian.  He was religious.  See Ray Monk's biography.  Religion in non-institutional form was part of Wittgenstein's life.  He did not want to trivialize religion.  Frazier's analysis of primative religions, for instance, was seen by him as making religion trivial.  Wittgenstein wrote Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus which was not a positivist document because he did not claim that all grounded knowledge is based on sense-experience and he included some mystical passages.  Even so, the work was seen as furthering positivism.  Ten years later in 1938, A. J. Ayer wrote a manifesto on positivism.   Wittgenstein saw this as an attack on him.  He then wrote Philosophical Investigations.  We will focus on the latter. 

Logical positivism:  a variant on Lockianism, in reaction to the Continental idealism early in the twentieth century.  The positivism held that humanity was progressing and science was an essential component thereof.  Science brought three ideals together.  Science offered not only explanations, but predictions.  Until the Enlightenment, these two had remained separate.  In the seventeenth century, they were joined, making technology possible.  Thirdly, science was well-grounded.  Locke was convinced that his method told us how this new science conducted itself; what made science successful was that it followed Locke's method.  So, adjulation of natural science as humanity's great hope was the salient feature of positivism.  Its logic was thought to have been explicated by Locke, so it could be understood as well as used as a method.  Given these convictions, how was science to be demarcated from other scholastic endevours which were not science?  Those other endevours were called 'metaphysics' by the positivists.  But much of these means to knowledge would not really fall under metaphysics per se.  Science is what was thought to really give us knowledge.  So, how was science to be demarcated from metaphysics?  Use a criterion for meaningfulness by which a claim may be said to be subject to evidence.  Specifically, the sentences of science are meaningful where those of metaphysics are meaningless.  But how do we distinguish the meaningful from the meaningless?  Notice that the demarcation was formulated in terms of language.  Language was at the very center of logical positivism. Language was at the center of much of philosophy in the twentieth century.  Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion is basically a philosophy of language.  The positivists were not saying that the claims of metaphysics were ungrounded; nor were they saying that metaphysical claims could not be found to be true or false; rather, they were saying that in metaphysics, there are not any claims, and thus it lacks meaning.  See Kant's Prolegomena.  It can be read as a positivist work in this sense.  The positivists were not appealing to an ordinary notion of meaning; rather, an utterance or statement is cognitively meaningful iff it is either empirically verifiable or analytically true or false.  Metaphysics is neither of these.  Hence, it is lacking in meaning.  A lot of talk, but nothing is claimed that has any real meaning.  After about a decade, however, most positivists admitted that not all of the meaningless is pointless.  Ethics, for instance.  How verify empircally?  How is right and wrong analytically true or false.  But it is not non-sensible.  This led the positivists to refine their sense of meaning to mean 'cognitive meaning'.  There are thus parts of language which do not have a cognitive role.  A. J. Ayer's view of ethical language: it is expressive language.  It does not make claims but expresses attitudes of affirmation or admonition.  It is like saying 'ouch' or 'cheers'.  It is not empirical or analyitically true or false. 

The positivists laboured over four principal projects.  First, they saw themselves as having to develop an account of empirical verifiability.  Second, they gave an account of necessary truth and falsehood.  How is it explained that we all see a fact as true?  They used these projects in the efforts to establish demarcation criteria.  Third, they displayed the logic of science to show that it has the Lockian structure of verifiability--on sensory reports; that natural science has the logic of the Lockian method. It followed that logic and language was emphasized.  Wanted: to use logic to show the structure of verifiable science.  Also, 'revealing the hidden' was a theme; actual science conceals its logic because scientists have other agendas.  The task of the philosophers of science was to show the logic for the verifiability of science.  Moreover, revealing a hidden structure was an endeavor of society in the first half of the 1900's.  The positivists and modern culture: it is the way it looks; nothing is hidden.  Empirical verifiable became empirically falsifiable. Fourth, show how utterances that don't show meaning function; how non-cognitive language functions.

Why is positivism gone (at least among philosophers)?  Four factors.  Empirical verifiability was not articulated to their own satisfaction.  It was difficult to keep out metaphysics while including theoretical science.  Second, the dinstinction between the analytic and the synthetic was not given sufficiently.  Quine claimed that this distinction could not even be formulated.  Third, the problem that the criterion of self-referentiality (with which to demarcate) was seen as a new class or rule which does not make a claim.  Fourth, historians and philosophers as well as scientists began to look at how natural science really works; rather than looking at its structure, they looked at its historical episodes.  From this, many concluded that science did not have the Lockian structure.  See Thomas Kuhn and Paul K. Feyerabend.  Not that the structure layed hidden; rather, it was claimed that it was not there.  Feyerabend claimed that science is like art.  Kuhn used religious langauge.   But Locke wanted to cut through rhetoric and get to the facts by induction via sensory experience and mental contents connected. 

Natural science does not work as a Lockian method.  The scientist takes as data are already described in the conceptuality of the theory.  This does not mean that there can't be data that disallows a given theory; rather, the myth of the given as opposed to the data as given facts.  Second, more than one theory can be equally probable on a given set of data.  I. Lakatos: a theory is not just a proposition but is complex, so there are many changes that can account for the anomalies rather than throwing the theory out.  So how do we choose whether to throw out the theory?  Introduce values other than truth.  Also, discard simplicity.  Reality is not necessarily simple.  More recently, there has been Marxist/Neitzche/Freudian suspicion that reasons for saying something (such as a theory) may be other than that it is true (i.e. unconscious factors).  So, theories came to be held suspect, as artifacts of the scientist's agenda.

In conclusion, positivism has had a profound effect on our culture.  The Romantics focused on the totality claim of the new science.  They granted that natural science was Lockian; in addition, they said that there was more.  The positivists then said no.  Now, the foundations of science are being questioned. 

11/30/95: Lecture

The Modern Period:

The heurmaneutics of meaning has led social science away from logical positivism.  Needed: new strategies, like those in reading texts rather than doing physics. 

The positivists wanted theology to fall under 'metaphysics'.  But, some theologians claimed that theology is meaningful discourse; that theology is confirmable and falsifiable.  These folks continued the Enlightenment view of religion, using the positivists' criterion of meaningful discourse and counting religion, as consisting of cognitive claims, within it.  Wittgenstein, by contrast, claimed that this debate is ill-founded; that both parties presupposed a mistaken view of religion--that it is like science.  To Wittgenstein, religion is not like science.  Unlike the positivists, he was against the view which held science as the key to humanity's future.  Also unlike the positivists, he was not negative on religion.  He felt that religion is deep in humanity's existence.  For instance, he reacted against Frazier's trivialization of religion. 

Wittgenstein used a range of religious language.  He went for concrete religious language, such as the last judgment.  He wanted to focus on examples, rather than to start with generalizations.

Wittgenstein wanted to understand religion, rather than critique it.

D.Z. Phillips, Norman Melcolm, Rush Rhees, and Peter Wentch have interpreted Wittgenstein as a non-realist.  Wolterstorff will follow them.  An alternative was given by O. K. Bouwsma in which Wittgenstein is interpreted as a realist. Wittgenstein claims that religious language in religious activities is not used to make assertions.  So, the Wittgensteinian is bypassing the positivist criteria for cognative meaningfulness by claiming that religion is not like science.  This goes into the gap in positivism: that there is meaningful discourse beyond cognitive meaningfulness.  To Wittgenstein, religious language constitutes a langauge game, or several thereof.  A language game is the playing, or the using, of the language, rather than focusing on the language used itself.  He claims that it is necessary to understand how religious language games function in its form of life--religious activity and discourse. In the doing of that form of life, people will use that language. What does the doing of it do?  Look at the cases, rather than make generalizations.   The language is functioning expressively, not assertively.  Essentially, it is interpreting and valuing in a certain way what happens in experience.  Doing religious language games is interpreting and valuing that which happens in religious experience. Ordinary, rather than mystical, experience(like Schleiermacher).  For instance, routine and non-routine suffering as punishment as interpreted and valued.  Interpreting and valuing involve each other.   The interpretation and value do not precede the language.  Experience is interpreted and valued in language.  The linguistic component is both expressive of the experience and is part of the experiencing.  Ordinary experience, including worship, is part of the language game.  Schleiermacher: what is the particularity of religion.  Wittgenstein: assumes the religious cases as religious and goes on to look at the language game in expressing it. 

So, interpretation and evaluation are intertwined in the language game.  Less prominantly, language also functions in religous language games regula-tively.  It is so in an expressive sense; it serves to orient one's life in fundamental ways; it shapes one's life; one is not passive.  It plays a guiding function. 

These language games are done by communities with histories; we learn what is right or wrong from them; we learn the grammer of the language game--the rules for how the language should be used.  In learning the language, we learn the particular way of interpreting, evaluating, and valuing of life in that particular religion.  So, for one entering a community, the language functions to teach how to interpret, evaluate, and value in a certain way. 

Implications:  religious beliefs are not explanations nor hypotheses; nor are rituals attempts to gain power over someone or someone.  Frazier, in the Golden Bough, argued otherwise of ritual.  Second, given the function of religious-language games--that this is salient, don't just look at the words, but look at how they are used in religious contexts. The functioning of the language, rather than the words themselves, is key here.  So, look at the words in a religious game.  Third, dissent from a particular religous belief is not to contradict or deny the claims of the religious person because the religious person has not made assertions but used religious language to express rather than claim.  So, saying that Jesus rose from the dead is a claim and is thus not religious.  You don't contradict a means of expression. Wittgenstein: what makes language religious? This is his question.  It is not propositional.  Differences in religion are due to using different language games, rather than calculating different solutions to a proposition.  That would be predictive, rather than religious, discourse.  So, the believer need not have evidence.  The whole Enlightenment calling for evidence misunderstands what religion is.  It is expressive rather than propositional. 

12/5/95: Lecture

Wittgenstein:

Religious language is a game in the religious way of life.  Polemic against the positivists.  Religion is a mode of interpreting, orienting and evaluating one's experience in a deep way not rationally given.  The language is an expression not of feelings, but of interpretations, valuings, and orientations.  Religion deals with abiding things of one's mode of life; feelings are not so abiding. 

It follows that to hold a religious belief is not to hold a proposition to be true.  Such beliefs do not have content that can be taken as true or false.  So, evidence is not pertanent.  Even so, folks in the religious language game refer to evidence and reasons.  This did not come with the Enlightenment.  But the kind of reason and evidence in such a language game is fundamentally different from those which scientists look for.  It is a matter of religious rather than scientific reasonability.  But doesn't one have to justify in the ordinary sense of reason engaging in the religious language game?  No.  A language game is not based on grounds, but is there, like our life.  Religion is language embedded in action--a language game.  It does not stand in need of justification because it is not based on grounds--reason or otherwise.  This constitutes the anti-foundationalism of Wittgensteinian religion.  

On this view, religious forms of life are immune to objections from the outside.  D.C. Phillips rejects this.  To him, religious beliefs are not isolated from cultural factors.   Wolterstorff on Phillips:  religious beliefs may erode, whether from the phenomena disappearing from one, or from a different interpretation being taken.  Bulldozers may destroy the sacred hills of the Lacota Indians, for instance.  Their religious game (language with action) is eroded.  Also, reasons may arise against one's interpretation.  Or, consequences of one's religious beliefs may cause one to give them up.  But the religious person can't offer reasons to others outside of her religious language game for  why she values that phenomenon thus interpreted.  Conversely, the person not of one's religion can't give reasons for the impropriety of another's religion.  So, evaluation takes place only within the religion.  So, a particular religious langage game can change, but not by reasons given from outside of the religion.

Wittgenstein claims that a religious belief that is fully held  is rationally unshakable.  Locke: all should hold their religious beliefs in a tempered way.  Wittgenstein: such is not a religious belief.  Reasons would not be persuasive in a real religious belief (one that is really held).  So, an unshakable belief can be changed, but not by another's reasons--otherwise, it is merely opinion.  Religious belief is held through thick and thin.   It is doubtful that an unbeliever can understand a religious language game and its beliefs, as well as its type of evidence and reasons.  So, such a person could not contradict another's religious beliefs. 

Theology is the grammer of religious discourse.  Theologians don't talk about God, but about God-talk.  What it is right and wrong to say inside a language game.  So, it is second-order discourse.  God-talk can occur in the religious and theological (about the religious) contexts.  It works differently in them.  Evaluating and orienting in the first; talking about the first in the second.  This second-order enterprise could be a 'meta-religious language game' in which religions are compared.   Any talk about that which goes beyond a particular religion (an absolute) would not be talk about an absolute, but would be talk about such talk on an absolute.  So, content of the absolute would not be the aim; rather, talking about absolute-talk.  Structure of the language game, rather than the content of the absolute, would be that which is talked about in the second-order theology. 

Phillips: what the religious person expresses in making a religious confession (inside a religious langauge game) such as 'God created the world' is expressing her belief in the proposition that God created the world, but is merely expressing a certain religious attitude toward the world but not toward God.  It is an attitude expressed, not a claim.  She is not referring to God; nor does she herself take it for granted that she is referring to God.  Adherence to a theistic religion is compatible with atheism.  This is not to say that a theist would say that there is no God in her religious language game; in fact, she would say that the fool says there is no God.  But the same person, talking the philosophy language game, may well say that there is no such being as God.  For instance, an atheist may say "Thank God its Friday".  This is an anti-realist anti-foundation view of religion.  Recall that language is used in a religious game not to refer but to express. 

Wittgenstein: the religious life is about talking to God, rather than about God.  Do you talk about God when He is being expressed as being there?  No.  The referant is not God, but the world.  The language is expressive, so what the referant is not the point.  The realist interpretation of Wittgenstein would assert that talking to God is referring to God; the anti-realist would deny this, saying that is the world that is referred to.  In any case, it is expressive language, so no claim as to that being referred to is being made.

Wolterstorff: can one be a non-foundationalist and yet a realist?  This is the agenda of the reformed epistemologists.  It has been set against the Enlightenment claim that evidence is needed for religious belief.  Locke began the view that the ordinary believer has to have evidence.  Why? It falls out of his general epistemology and tempers folks in holding their religious beliefs.  His general epistemology: classically modern foundationalism. 

12/7/95: Lecture

Wittgenstein:

The positivists claimed that if a statement is to be cognitively meaningful, it must be either analytically true or false, or empirically verifiable.  The Wittgensteinians did not challenge these criteria, but claimed that religious language is not cognitively meaningful(rather, it is expressive), which is not to say that it has no meaning, but is to say that it is not subject to the positivists' criteria for meaningfulness.  Religious language does not make true/false claims.  Ayer had provided this opening in suggesting that language that is not a cognative claim can nevertheless be meaningful.  Reference to God is not at stake either, for the non-realist Wittgensteinian.  Reference to the world, however, is included in religious language games, but because it is used in an expression rather than a claim, it is not subject to the positivists' criteria. 

Wolterstorff: the non-realist theist Wittgensteinian view may not be very plausable; most theists would cease practicing their religions if they really believed that God did not exist; most adherents take God's existence as a given.  Wittgenstein, in On Certainty, claims that we take for granted a certain world-picture which has never been explicitly taught to us.  It is the taken-for-granted background.  A taken-for-granted background for ordinary life.  Belief in God's existence is such for religious theist life. 

A correllary of the Wittgensteinian position is that science and religion can't get into conflict.  Reformed epistemology adopts a cognitive stance toward religious belief, taking it that for theistic religion the word "God" functions cognitively and referentially. This goes against the logical positivist, and thus provides the potential for conflict between religion and science.  A theistic realistic view: the theistic believer will take it for granted that God exists and use the word 'God' referentially to refer to that being (rather than to things in the world). 

The positivist would claim that factual cognitive claims must be subject to evidence to be meaningful; they must be verifiable by such evidence. Evidence is the condition of cognitive claims to have meaning.  Locke: if one holds one's religious beliefs responsibly, one must hold them on evidence.  Evidence is the condition of believing responsibly.  What remained on the scene when reformed epistomology came up was Locke's view rather than the positivist's (in Philosophy).  So, the issue for the reformed epistomology was not meaningfulness but responsibility.  The Lockian evidential stance: that evidence is necessary to hold cognitive claims responsibly, has been daunting.  It came from the Enlightenment.  Schleiermacher and Kierkeggard rejected this stance.  But for the reformed epistemologist, the polemic with Locke has shaped it.  Reformed epistemology 'just is' this polemic.  For instance, that which constitutes religion is not in it. 

Reformed Epistemology and Locke:  Locke claimed that beliefs must be based on evidence to be held responsibly.  Trim down beliefs and or get more evidence so the two are in tow. Reformed Epistemology questions the challenge itself. Locke meant by evidence, other beliefs.  But other experiences could also be used as evidence; Locke rejected this.  So, for Locke, one must come to one's beliefs by other beliefs.  Reformed Epistemology: it is not true that all beliefs must be held on other beliefs for them to be held responsibly.  Why must religious beliefs then be held on the basis of other beliefs?  Locke stresses that this is so particularly for religious beliefs--that they must be held on the basis of other beliefs.

Foundationalism:

Locke was persuaded of a more general thesis out of the Enlightenment about responsible belief: Classically modern foundationalism.  The reformed epistemologist challenges this thesis from which evidentialism follows.  There isn't any one position that is 'foundationalism'; there are 'foundationalisms'.  Wolterstorff: there are propositional attitudes, such as judging, believing, hoping... that pick out truth-relevant merits and demerits.  Locke gives a criterion only for beliefs of maximal concernment.  So, his foundational propositional-attitudes, limited to beliefs, are evidential only for certain kinds of beliefs.  Other foundations have other criteria.  Coherence, for instance. What is the foundationalist pattern behind these criteria?   Lets look at criteria applied to judgments and beliefs to see it.  There are immediate (basic) and mediate judgments and beliefs; those that are mediate are held on the basis of other judgements or beliefs.  There have to be for all of us immediate judgements and beliefs.  This is the basic claim of foundationalism: there must be an (immediate) judgement or belief not arrived at by inference, which is used as the basis for other (mediate) judgements and beliefs.  The foundationalist specifies the conditions under which an immediate judgment or belief possesses the merit in question; and that in relation to mediate beliefs, he singles out a certain support relationship.  In other words, a critierion is given for the immediate belief to have merit (entitlement, reliability...).  A support relation transfers the merit of the immediate belief to the mediate belief. 

Foundationalism has gripped Western epistemology since the ancient Greeks.  The particular foundationalism now gripping the West: Classical Foundationalism: the thesis that an immediate belief or judgment is certain, and thus has truth-relevant merit, due to an awareness of a corresponding fact.  In other words, certitude of basic beliefs is assumed to be based on affinity to a corresponding fact.    This may be called classicalfoundationalism. 

Classical Modern Foundationalism (Locke) takes awareness of mental contents to be salient to the merit of belief.  To him, we are aware of only mental entities.  But what is a mental entity?  An idea becomes a fact, whose correspondence in awareness is necessary for a belief to be immediate. This is based on the representational theory of the mind: only mental contents can have certitude.  Awareness of a corresponding belief makes that belief have certainty as per truth.  Locke assumes that the propositional content of a belief is true if it corresponds to a fact one is aware of (an idea, or interrelationships between).  We are certain only of our own ideas.  Immediate beliefs have certitude to the degree that awareness of an idea is present.  For Locke, religious beliefs are subject to this.  So, beliefs about God, as a matter of maximal concernment, are subject to this.  They are not immediate beliefs because they are not merely ideas.

12/12/95: Lecture

Foundationalism and Reformed Epistemology:

Aquinas had his eye on scientia; he offered a classical foundationalist account of what is necessary for belief.  Specifically, he claimed that the foundation consists of items of which one is certain about.  Locke, a classical modern foundationalist, had his eye on the entitled, or responsible belief, giving criteria for making such.  He wanted it to be that which one is certain of.  Also, in the modern sense, he viewed only mental contents (conceptual truths and reports of state-of-mind) as that which one can be certain of.  So, a classically modern criteria for entitlement.  His criterion only is relevant to matters of maximal concernment to us; this includes religious belief.  Plantiga is also concerned with entitlement.  He has his eye on the classically modern foundationalism as applied to all beliefs (whereas Locke was only concerned with matters of maximal concernment).  Even so, Plantiga is concerned with religious belief, which is included in Locke's matter of maximal concernment.  Plantiga opposes such foundationalism; it does not work for entitlement.  Why?  The representational view of the mind is questionable.  Locke claims that we are conceptually aware directly of mental content. But, nothing is directly present; reality, mental or otherwise, is screened by concepts.  Sellars: the myth of the given.  This is Kantian.  But, second, there are doubts about the criterion that emerges from the representation of the mind.  For instance, are we not aware of objects outside the mind (though not directly).  The criterion yields the wrong results.  Consider perceptual beliefs: certain beliefs about things in the world are shared, so typically perceptual beliefs are formed in us immediately, rather than by mental contents such as an idea.  They are not based on a belief we make about our subjective experience; we just believe that there are chairs in the room, rather than believing so because we have the same idea (an idea of chairs in the room).  That we all agree suggests that it does not depend on personal immediate beliefs. Descarte took a loop through God to say that he is entitled to believe in physical objects solely from mental contents.  But this really didn't work: trying to get from mental facts to a physical world simply doesn't work; beliefs on a physical world are not necessarily inferences from mental content.  So, scrap the criterion of ideas as that which entitles one to be certain about a propositional attitude. 

Secondly, does the criterion of classical modern foundation itself satisfy itself?  Can holding the criterion satisfy the criterion?  A self-referential argument.  The criterion has to be self evident or having good reasons.  Is it self evident?  No.  It can not be understood without being grabbed with its truth: it needs some argument.  So, by the criterion itself, one is not entitled to hold the criterion, according to Plantiga.  Wolterstorff: from Locke's criterion, one can be entitled to believe things that are false.  Locke may have been entitled to hold a false criterion of entitlement.  But then, Locke would be entitled to hold it only if it is false.  So, scrap it.

In general, since Plato, Western Philosophy has been an attempt to ground our beliefs in certitude.  Locke attempted it, as did Descartes.  Wolterstorff: but this has been an illusion.  We can't get to the absolute truth of things, or with certainty. Both that we can know immediate propositional attitudes with certainty and that only mental content apply, are questioned by Plantiga and Wolterstorff.  They use Hume's natural tendency to intuit, and Shleiermacher's intuition as an alternative to the response that if one can't know anything basic for certain, one can't know anything.  One can intuit because we have a natural tendency to.  Hume, against Locke, would say that  this counts for that which we are entitled to believe.  Intuition seems to be Wolterstorff's alternative. There is an immediacy to intuition. 

If this is true, are we never entitled to hold beliefs about God on propositional evidence?  If not, what should the evidence be like?   Can beliefs about God be located in the foundation of a responsible belief structure?  Can they be beliefs that one argues from rather than to?  Can some of such beliefs be properly basic?  Plantiga: yes.  A Schleiermachian intuition that I am absolutely dependent upon God, for instance--why couldn't that be a properly held immediate belief?  But not any belief could be held so.  How distinguish them?  Entitlement to religious belief is a more particularistic phenomena than what the Enlightenment considered. Look at particular things, such as the particular argument, rather than just one thing (e.g. Locke).  Plantiga: it all depends, and on a lot of factors.  There should be something about your situation that grounds your belief, entitling one to hold the belief.  That grounds exists is thus not to say that anything goes.  Its just that the grounds are more particularistic and broader than that posited by Locke.

But, if belief in God is properly basic, then any belief is proper, such as the return of the Great Pumpkin!  Wolterstorff: for any belief, it is probably proper that someone in some setting takes a belief as basic.  Entitlement is situational.  It all depends.  For instance, kids and Santa.  But is this not to say that anything goes?  Plantiga:  the set of basic set of belief to which we are entitled ought to have an expanded ground--not that everything goes.  But: Plantiga has not given a criteria yet to sort out properly held basic beliefs from those that are not proper.  Expanding the basis is not sufficient.  Plantiga:  we should consider how criteria for entitlement are arrived at.  One way:  from above.  Self-evident.  Classical foundationalism did that.  But its criteria is not self-evident.  Another way: from below.  Assemble cases that seem unentitled belief and others that seem not to be.  Use your intuition on these particular cases to devise grounds.  Needed: testing items. Beliefs out of that set.  Test the grounds come up with.  So, start with particularistic intuitions of entitlement from particular beliefs to get criteria and test them.  So, a criterion is not necessary to discriminate between cases; rather intuit a division between cases and from them determine the criteria. 

A second objection to Plantiga: isn't Plantiga's position merely dogmatism, giving religious people permission to believe anything and ignore objections?  Plantiga:  that one can hold a belief properly as entitled thereto says nothing about whether there would be any objections.   Christians, for instance, used to believe that the earth is the center of the universe.  They were entitled to believe it then, but this was not to say that there were not objections that would show it to not be properly held.  Plantiga is really doing a deconsctruction.  What is really needed is a positive account.  This has not been done yet. 

9/21/95: Seminar

Anselm's Ontological proof for the existence of God:

Assp: it is greater to exist both in understanding and reality.  (Leibnetz: better rather than greater).  Is this a true premise?  What does 'greater' mean here? 

Reality as pictured in that period: from inanimate objects to God. The medievals thought that there are degrees of being.  A human has less being than an angel. God has the most being.  The concept of greater could be understood as a greater degree of being. If 'being' is 'goodness', then the greatest good is God. The concept of God has less being than God existing (as well as being a concept). So evil is the deprivation of being rather than being something. For Aquinas, God's essence is His existence, because God necessarily exists (can't imagine a world with out Him and God as not having a cause).  It is not clear that Anselm assumed this. Aquinas came two-hundred years following Anselm.

For Plantinga (based on Leibniz), things either exist or not; no degrees of being.  Has Plantinga successfully used Anselm's argument in the Enlightenment world-view?

A perfect island can't have perfect being for Anselm because it is not God.  For something to be the greatest possible being, it must not have had a beginning.   A perfect island can be imagined to have had a beginning, so it can't be a greatest possible being (necessarily existing).   So, to Anselm, a perfect island is incoherent.   That which is perfect necessarily exists.   

9/28/95: Seminar

The first paper: have an argument with my premises, reasoning, and conclusion.  Interpret Barth's interpretation of Medieval Theology.  Do I agree with his interpretation?  Why?  In answering 'why?', use the interpretations of Barth and the Medieval theologians.  Pay attention to Barth's first indented section which is on Anselm.

Anselm and Plantiga:

The Medieval view of being.  God is infinately greater than stones, plants, and humans, with respect to the degree of being.    Goodness is identical to being.  An evil being, as having existence, has some good because it exists.  To what degree does Anselm rest on this background.  Being is good.  The source of all being is God.  God is all good.  So, being is good. Faith seeking understanding. Plantinga, being later than the medieval time, uses Kant's view that things either exist or they don't.  So, he doesn't use the medieval background of degrees of being; instead, he uses 'possible worlds' as an ontological background.  Does Plantiga succeed in breaking the medieval ontologocal argument in a modern ontology?

Kant's objections to the ontological argument: 1. existence is not a property.  In saying that something 'is', nothing new is being said about the subject, so existence is not a property.  2. the denial of an existential involves neither contradiction nor inconsistency, for the existence of the thing and the attributes of the thing would both be believed not to exist (having one without the other in one's conception would involve a contradiction). 

Plantinga questions Kant's assumption that if a proposition were necessarily false, it would involve  a contradiction.  We don't have an argument by Kant for his claim that contra-existential propositions can't be inconsistent.  Kant uses this claim to argue that because the conception of God not existing and having the attribute of existence does not involve a contradiction, it is not necessarily false, and so leaves open an alternative not taken into account in the ontological proofs.

Plantinga gets out of Kant's 'being as a property' objection by claiming that existence is implied in maximal greatness.  In other words, existence is built into the concept of God rather than being added onto it. 

The disanalogy between God's existence and the perfect island's existence being of the same kind is against Gonologue's criticism.  Wolterstorff believes that given Anselm's argument, there is no disanalogy but there is given Plantinga's argument.  So, there is a disanalogy on Plantinga's argument: an island doesn't necessarily exist.  Even if we could conceive of a maximally great island, it could be caused. Also, such an island need not exist in every possible world.  God must because it is omniscient, omnipresent, and morally perfect.

Plantinga's argument:

Key: possible that a maximally great being exists.  This implies that if such a being exists in a possible world (if there is a possibility that such a being exists), it exists in every world, and thus in the actual world.  In other words, if such a being is possible, then it must exist in every world because of what maximally great means.  Namely, God wouldn't be maximally great if it did not exist in every possible world.  Necessary existence is inherent in maximal greatness.  A criticism: he should define maximal greatness before asking if we agree with a part of its definition (one of its property).   One either exists necessarily or conditionally.  It is not that something has a degree of being but that there are two types of being.  So, Plantinga does not base his ontological argument on the medieval ontological background of degrees of being. 

So, if you can't conceive of a possible world where no laws of logic are violated where a maximally great being exists, then his argument doesn't work.  This could be if one does not agree with his definition of maximal greatness; that is, the properties which he ascribes to maximal greatness.  For instance, it is necessary being, omnipresent, omnipotent, and morally perfect.  Is it each of these and no other properties?

10/11/95: Seminar

Hume's objection to the Cosmological argument is based on the idea of a set: it is an abstraction.  Rowe: the contents of sets are contingent.  Wolt: no, the contents are essential; rather, the existence of the set is contingent.  What accounts for the existence of this set?  There must be an explanation for why this set.  There must be an independently existing being that is the cause, but this doesn't necessarily mean that a necessary being is that independent being.  Ontological proofs (for the existence of God--that God necessesarily exists) are deductive.  Cosmological proofs(that an independent being is the cause of the set) are inductive. An independent being who caused a set does not necessarily exist necessarily.  In other words, a cosmological proof (inductive) can't be used to prove an ontological proof.  However, an ontological proof can lead to a cosmological proof.  Rowe assumes that because God is independent, He has necessary existence. 

Classical Concept of God:

Aquinas: God's attributes, and  His attributes of his relation to the world.  How can a simple God be Triune.  On God's attributes, simplicity is especially important.  Many other attributes, including those on how God relates to the world, would be lost without it.  Could there be more than one simple God?  No.  If God does not have components, then God's being is his essence; it is in God's nature to exist.  There can not be two such beings whose essence it is to exist because 'existance' would be the essence of both.  But then both would be the same thing (because they have the same essence).  So, there can not be two simple Gods.  Simplicity implies infinitude because if God were finite, a composite could be added to Him and he would no longer be simple.  But that God is simple is to say that God is always simple.  God is outside of time because any being inside of time has a before and after and it could be that a second part is added to Him 'after'.  So, God is eternal.  God can't be changeable if He is simple because there would be a way God is at some time that he was not at another.   This implies being in time, which a simple being (incapable of consisting in parts) can be in.  On God being infinite, God's being is His existence--He is pure actuality.  These are different ways of understanding God's simplicity.  Aquinas is critical of an ontological argument but he uses God's necessary existence to argue that God's essence is his existence and that God is simple (and thus that there can't be another simple God).

In the modern thought, that God is simple has been rejected because moderns find some of the other attributes necessary if God is simple untenable, such as that God can't change or suffer. 

10/26/95: Seminar

Pailey and Clarke embraced the Lockian epistemology.  Clarke's proof: starts with self-evident principles and dedcutions are made from them.  The existence of God can be known, according to Locke, so His existence can be demonstrated.  God's existence is the possibility or cause of me having ideas.  So, we can know that God exists because we can know that we have ideas.  So, Clarke's argument is cosmological: God is the cause of my ideas.  Outside of my ideas and that God exists, I have beliefs based on probabilities.  The attributes of God that can follow deductively from an ontological argument and inductively from a cosmological argument can not be known but can be believed on account of probabilities of evidences(mental contents).  So, tolerate views that follow our method.  Toleration should be broad because religious belief is based on probability.  Most philosophers of Locke's time based toleration on survival or moral concerns; Locke's view of toleration is based on his epistemology(that religious beliefs are based on probabilities).  Also, Locke's toleration does not include atheism and not using his method.  Other beliefs would be tolerated if they are believed by use of Locke's method. 

What counts for Lockean evidence for divine revelation?  Reliability of the testamony and of the source there of.  For instance, the probability of the resurrection is based on the reliability of John who testified to it.  John suffered for it, but folks suffer for things that were not so.  Look to other historical records.  But, it is not in my experience. But God exists. But only his followers saw it and it was in their interest to believe it, but they suffered for it. 

So, at some point, the probablities pro and con are weighted and one decides whether to believe something. 

The historical critical method was founded on Locke's epistemology.  Form and redaction criticism came from the historical method.  These other methods made what counted for evidence for a miracle that much more difficult to ascertain and to rely on. 

Locke went on to tell which doctrines of Christianity were probabible (the resurrection, Jesus as the Son of God and the Redeemer) as the essence of Christianity, using his method.  He also wrote on the type and degree of toleration that comes out of his method.

Pailey's argument of the watch-maker was used later by the Deists.  God makes this watch which runs on its own, according to the Deists but not to Pailey.  To Pailey, God is active in the world.  Pailey describes this activity as like making a watch.  Deists limited this involvement to the beginning of creation.

11/8/95: Seminar

Hume:

On the Dialogues: Traditionally, it has been held that Philo speaks for Hume.  Hume is critical of both the argument of design from experience and the (apriori) natural religion.  Wolterstorff: by Books 9 and 10, Philo's position changes; Cleantes may be near the truth according to Philo. Wolterstorff claims that here Cleantes changed from his argument of design (which for Philo and thus Hume suffered from the drawbacks of being by analogy) to an 'irregular' reasoning that humans have a natural intuitive tendency to believe that God exists.  Philo seems to like this claim. This led Wolterstorff to conclude that Cleantes' final argument is really Hume's position.  What is that 'irregular argument' of Cleantes?  The argument from natural tendencies: We are made with a deistic impulse or mental faculty.  This impulse is in our daily habit or custom rather than in our reason.  But reason can be used to refine this impulse.  Hume's skepticism: why assume that by knowing the relation between ideas, I have justified belief of that which is in the external world?  Locke made this claim.  Locke claimed that knowledge is limited to ideas, plus of God outside.  We have justified belief of the external world by inference based on (correlations) of ideas.  Hume doesn't think we can get out of our head. Locke claims that we can in regard to knowing that God exists. Hume questions not only our having knowledge of God's existence, but our having justified beliefs on the causality of the world too.  Hume questions the use of inductive reasoning in giving rise to justified belief.  Correlation of ideas in the mind (knowledge) does not necessarily imply a justified belief of causal relationships in the world.  The correlations are based on our experience, so we can't make assertions based on our inferences on causality (relations in the world).  Wolterstorff: Hume is saying that we have an impulse upon which initial premises can be gained and used by reason to draw inferences from our observation.  It is the knowledge of cause and effect, rather than merely inferences, which is questioned by Hume. 

For instance, we observe order in nature.  We have an impulse that tells us that it was created by a Deity.  This impulse is thus behind our knowledge of cause and effect relations.  Hume believed that there is an essence to human nature (an essential nature, rather being the product of socialization).

Reed: knowledge can be direct awareness of the external world; Hume's knowledge sphere does not go far enough.  Hume needs a positive epistomology based on his impulse.  What can we know and believe based on the impulse?  Needed: an entire theory of justification based on how we are 'hard-wired'.

Plantiga: Because we have an impulse to believe in God, the atheist has the burden of proof to show that God does not exist.  In contrast, the foundationalists of the medieval and enlightenment believed that the burden of proof is on the one who seeks to prove that God exists.

12/12/95: Seminar

Summary of the course from the Enlightenment to Reformed Epistemology:

Locke's evidencial strategy, concerning how miracles function and how determining probabilities operate in his method.  Evaluate it.  How does this project relate to the logical postivist's evidential strategy? 

Hume: his criticisms of Locke.  Clarke and Palley: how they relate to Locke, and how Hume criticizes them.  Hume finds it problematic that inferences rely on analogy.  Know the various interpretations in the dialogue.  Know Wolterstorff's view of Hume's 'irregular argument'.  Consider Hume's criticism of Locke's use of miracles.  How does Hume view miracles.

Schleiermacher: how does he argue against the Enlightenment view.  Locke has a cogntive view of religion (propostions). Hume has a 'doing' view (the irregular argument has a regulatory function).  Like Kant and Hegel, respectively.  For Schleiermacher, religion is a feeling thing (intuitive) as opposed to a moral and metaphysical thing.  For Schleiermacher, religion can't be taught but is innate in human nature.  Why does he bring in the social  element?  Like reformed epistemology, the social content is salient.  Why does Schleiermacher favour positive over natural (a generic account of religion rather than a particular religion) religion?  How does this influence his view of religious pluralism.

Consider Wittgenstein and reformed epistemology as two alternatives to logical positivism.  Logical positivism: 'P' is meaningful cognitively iff they are verifiable empirically (either true or false)--so a false statement can have meaning!  Or, it is meaningful if it is an analytic statement.  Scientific statements can have meaning under this criteria.  Metaphysical statements generally don't.  For instance, God exists.  It is not an analytical truth because its existence is not self-evident analytically (ie. the ontological argument claims it is).  So, religious language does not have meaning here.    For instance, Jesus' resurrection is not an analytic truth or empirically verifiable (Like Locke, human testimony is unreliable).

Logical positivism has a broader view, whereas for Locke it was just on matters of maximal concernment.  Further, Locke allowed for probability whereas positivism does not.  So, Locke might have claimed that the resurrection occurred was true. Further, Locke was not concerned with meaningfulness--he assumes meaning and asks if the statement is true or false.  Postivists: one must ask whether a claim could have evidence before one considers whether it is true or false.  So, an additional requirement to Locke's method.  Both were fundationalists.  Locke: only mental content are immediate.  Through inference based on probability (which Hume criticized), we can have beliefs about the extended world.  Positivists: only certain claims are immediate.  Less of a role for probability--in the evidence, but not in the foundation itself. For Locke, religious claims can be true or false (but not in the foundation) whereas for positivists they can not because they are not subject to evidence (are not meaningful). 

Two responses to positivism: Wittgenstein and reformed epistemology.  Witt: postivism has misunderstood the nature of religion (a Schleiermachian stance: what is religion). The criterion for religious statements' meaningfulness is consituted within the religious language game.  Religion can't make metaphysical or cognative claims--the cost here: non-realist.  No relation to reality can be claimed--such that God exists.  But freed from the positivist criterion.

Reformed epistemology: the positivist criterion is not empirically verifiably or analytically true, so positivism does not stand with regard to itself.  Also, foundationalism itself is ill-founded. Continentalists question the Kantian representational theory of the mind: that we are directly aware of only mental content. They are questioning the positivist foundational criterion.   We are rational to have religious claims because we are made to believe so. But then does anything go?  But this view is realist--that there is something out there.   What we thought were certainty may not be, but there is something objective out there which we can intuit.  Evenso, there may not be certainties.   There are regulative beliefs--an expanded foundationalism?