First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Epistemologists have not usually had much to say about believing ‘in’, though ever since Plato's time they have been interested in believing ‘that’. Students of religion, on the other hand, have been greatly concerned with belief ‘in’, and many of them, I think, would maintain that it is something quite different from belief ‘that’. Surely belief ‘in’ is an attitude to a person, whether human or divine, while belief ‘that’ is just an attitude to a proposition? Could any difference be (...) more obvious than this? And if we over-look it, shall we not be led into a quite mistaken analysis of religious belief, at any rate if it is religious belief of the theistic sort? On this view belief ‘in’ is not a propositional attitude at all. (shrink)

The subject of my lecture is an appropriate one for several reasons. The first is purely chronological. Hume's first and greatest work, the Treatise of Human Nature, was published in 1739, two hundred years ago. Its illustrious author was then quite unknown in the world, and as he tells us himself the book “fell dead-born from the press.” But by the end of the eighteenth century its reputation was securely established, and it has long been regarded as one of the (...) masterpieces of European thought, and as the classical statement of the Empiricist Philosophy. It is true that, like other classics, it has had its ups and downs. During the Absolute Idealist period, which ended early in the present century, Hume was the great bogey-man, and the duty of all self-respecting philosophers was to refute him. In our own day things are different. Empiricism, despite many obituary notices, is very much alive again. And this time it is in close alliance with Natural Science, and has equipped itself with all the technique of modern Symbolic Logic; it is more vigorous in construction and more formidable in criticism than it has ever been before. Consequently Hume is no longer the bogey-man. People now read the Treatise not as an awful warning, but as a source of stimulus and illumination. Incidentally, we can now enjoy his admirable style without any qualms. It is no longer thought that if a philosopher writes in clear and entertaining English, what he writes must therefore be either superficial or false. We regard obscurity and turgidity as demerits, not as signs of profound thinking. Moreover, we have learned to appreciate the eighteenth century, of which Hume was one of the most characteristic products. (shrink)

The founder of Psychical Research, though he has not yet received the honour due to him, seems to have been King Croesus of Lydia, who reigned from 560 to 546 B.C. He carried out an interesting experiment, recorded in detail by Herodotus,2 to test the clairvoyant powers of a number of oracles. He sent embassies to seven oracles, six Greek and one Egyptian. They all started on the same day. On the hundredth day each embassy was instructed to ask its (...) oracle, “What is King Croesus, the son of Alyattes, now doing?” The answer was to be written down and brought back. The oracle of Delphi replied as follows, in hexameters, as its custom was: “I know the number of the sands and the measures of the sea. I understand the dumb, and I hear him who does not speak.” Then it went on: “There comes to my mind the smell of a strong-shelled tortoise, which is being cooked along with lamb's flesh in a brazen vessel; brass is spread beneath it, and with brass it is covered.” As a matter of fact, this answer was perfectly correct. Herodotus tells us that “having considered what would be the most difficult thing to discover and to imagine,” Croesus “cut up a tortoise and a lamb, and himself boiled them together in a brazen pot.” What happened afterwards illustrates the difficulties of this sort of investigation, difficulties which still perplex us to this day. Croesus argued, reasonably enough, that if the Delphic priestess had clairvoyant powers, she probably also had the precognitive powers, she probably also had the precognitive powers which she claimed to have. But when he consulted the oracle later about his forthcoming expedition against the Persians, he received two answers, one of which was ambiguous—“When Croesus crosses the Halys he shall destroy a great empire”—and the other correct, but too obscure to be easily interpreted. (shrink)

In ordinary life everyone assumes that he has a great deal of knowledge about other minds or persons. This assumption has naturally aroused the curiosity of philosophers; though perhaps they have not been as curious about it as they ought to have been, for they have devoted many volumes to our consciousness of the material world, but very few to our consciousness of one another. It was thought at one time that each of us derives his knowledge of other minds (...) from the observation of other human organisms. I observe that there are a number of bodies which resemble my own fairly closely in their shape, size, and manner of movement; I conclude by analogy that each of these bodies is animated by a. (shrink)

May I first say, Mr Chairman, that I regard it as a great honour to have been invited to take part in this Conference? I speak to you as a philosopher who happens to be interested both in religion and in psychical research. But I am afraid I am going to discuss some questions which it is ‘not done’ to talk about.

Dowe (1996) argues that the success of the backward causation hypothesis in quantum mechanics would provide strong support for a version of Reichenbach's account of the direction of causal processes, which takes the direction of causation to rest on the fork asymmetry. He also criticises my perspectival account of the direction of causation, which takes causal asymmetry to be a projection of our own temporal asymmetry as agents. In this reply I take issue with Dowe's argument at three main points: (...) his claim that the backward causation hypothesis in QM is incompatible with my perspectival approach to the direction of causation; his defence of the fork asymmetry approach against a general criticism of mine based on the time-symmetry of microphysics; and his application of his preferred account of the direction of causal processes to the relevant cases in QM. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is the relation of Logical Positivism to Theology. By “Logical Positivism” I mean the doctrine originated by Dr. Wittgenstein and expounded more at length by Professors Carnap, Schlick, and other members of the Viennese Circle in the periodical called Erkenntnis . The clearest account of it in English is that given by Mr. R. B. Braithwaite in the volume called Cambridge University Studies.

Professor Ayer's lecture is not only a most auspicious inauguration; it is also an important contribution to philosophy. It is perhaps the best and the most exciting work he has written, and that is saying a good deal. There is a certain theory about thought and its objects which is often hinted at in the utterances and the writings of contemporary empiricist philosophers, but so far as I know it has never before been stated in print. Mr. Ayer has stated (...) it, clearly and in detail, with all his well-known force and felicity of style. It is a strange and rather shocking theory, very different from the one which most philosophers hitherto have believed. But if we are shocked by it, the shock will be salutary. The dragon has at last come clearly into view. If we resolve to accustom ourselves to it and treat it kindly, we may hope that it will transform itself by degrees into a nice gentle domestic pet, as other philosophical dragons have before. (shrink)

I am very grateful to Professor R. W. Sleeper for his critical comments on my article, as also for the kind way in which he has expressed them. I should now like to make a few comments on his comments. May I first say that I have no objection to being metaphysical? I do not like the word ‘metaphysics’ very much, and wish that we could find a less provocative one. But still, I do think that the difference between the (...) reducible and the irreducible belief-in is a difference which there really is . Moreover, I fully admit that when we believe in God we are making a factual claim. It is, of course, a factual claim of rather a special kind. If it is a fact that there is a supreme Being, ‘The Lord of All’, this is not just one fact among others. It is not quite like the fact that there is a stormy north-westerly wind this morning. One could not just give a list of facts and add at the end, ‘There is also another fact which I had forgotten to mention: there is a God’. All the same, this factual claim, like others, does need to be justified; and how is it to be justified? I am afraid that the brief hint which I offered elsewhere on this subject is indeed ‘not good enough’ as it stands . To be even half good enough, it needs much more elaboration, and I agree that there is much force in Mr Gunderson's criticisms. (shrink)