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Internal Realism, Religious Pluralism and Ontology

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Abstract

Internalist pluralism is an attractive and elegant theory. However, there are two apparently powerful objections to this approach that prevent its widespread adoption. According to the first objection, the resulting analysis of religious belief systems is intrinsically atheistic; while according to the second objection, the analysis is unsatisfactory because it allows religious objects simply to be defined into existence. In this article, I demonstrate that an adherent of internalist pluralism can deflect both of these objections, and in the course of so arguing, I deploy a distinction between “conceptual-scheme targetability” and “successful conceptual-scheme targeting”.

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Notes

  1. For a detailed exposition of internalist pluralism, see Harrison, V. S. (2006). Internal Realism and the Problem of Religious Diversity. Philosophia, 34(3), 287–301.

  2. For the most sophisticated account of Hickean transcendental pluralism, see Hick, J., (1989). An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent. London: Macmillan.

  3. See, particularly, Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Putnam, H. (1992). Realism with a Human Face. J. Conant (Ed.), Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; first published 1990. The purpose of this paper is not to elucidate Putnam’s views. Hence, here I appeal exclusively, although not exhaustively, to those aspects of his thought which seem particularly salient to the development of internalist pluralism.

  4. “Conceptual scheme” is a term of art within recent Anglo-Saxon philosophy. Most philosophers would agree that a conceptual scheme could be defined as the “general system of concepts with which we organize our thoughts and perceptions.” S. Blackburn (Ed.), (1996). Dictionary of Philosophy (p. 72). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  5. See Putnam, H. (1992). Renewing Philosophy (p. 120). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

  6. The “Polish Logician” is so called because of his debt to the language developed by the Polish logician, and founder of mereology, Stanislaw Lezniewski (1886–1939).

  7. Put another way, one might say that whether or not an entity has been successfully targeted is a fact while whether or not an entity is targetable is a convention. Moreover, successful targeting is not entailed by mere targetability.

  8. Commenting on this example in a recent work, Putnam writes: “Saying that there are three objects in the universe of discourse Carnap was describing is a matter of fact, as opposed to saying that there are four objects in that universe, and a matter of convention, as opposed to describing the situation in Lezniewski’s language by saying that there are seven objects (counting the mereological sums as objects).” Putnam, H. (2004). Ethics Without Ontology (p. 45). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. In other words, Putnam seems to be claiming that what is targetable is a matter of convention, while what is successfully targeted is a matter of fact.

  9. As Putnam explains: “to ask whether mereological sums really exist would be stupid. It is, in my view, a matter of convention whether we say that mereological sums exist or not. But what does this mean? How can the question whether something exists be a matter of convention? The answer, I suggest, is this: what logicians call ‘the existential quantifier,’ the symbol ‘(x),’ and its ordinary language counterparts, the expressions ‘there are,’ ‘there exist’ and ‘there exists a,’ ‘some,’ etc., do not have a single absolutely precise use but a whole family of uses.” And he continues, “there is nothing in the logic of existential and universal quantification to tell us whether we should say that mereological sums exist or don’t exist; nor is there some other science that answers this question. I suggest that we can decide to say either”. Putnam, Ethics Without Ontology, ibid., pp. 37f.

  10. In other words, to use Eli Hirsch’s terminology, internal realism argues for “quantifier relativity”. See Hirsch, E. (1993). Dividing Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  11. Alternatively, imagine that the “Carnapian” and the “Polish Logician” inhabit a world with no sun, no moon, and only three stars, and that they are counting the objects in the sky. Although the “Polish Logician” counts more objects than the “Carnapian” does, it is not because he employs a conceptual scheme that has allowed him, for example, to create more stars.

  12. A critic might object that this amounts to another version of what Putnam disparagingly terms the Cookie Cutter Metaphor. Do we divide up the fundamental stuff of the world (the dough) according to what is targetable by our conceptual schemes? The answer to this seem to be no. As explained above, just because an entity is targetable within some conceptual scheme does not entail that it will be successfully targeted by users of that conceptual scheme. According to the Cookie Cutter Metaphor, the use of a particular cookie cutter determines that part of the dough will take its shape. However, the mere employment of a conceptual scheme in which an entity is targetable does not entail that the entity will be successfully targeted.

  13. Allow me to adapt Alvin Plantinga’s example of the Great Pumpkin to illustrate this point. One may imagine a conceptual scheme that holds the ultimate religious entity to be a Great Pumpkin. A subjective idealist might claim that the world perceived by those subscribing to this conceptual scheme is such that a Great Pumpkin is the ultimate religious entity, and that statements about the Great Pumpkin are true in this conceptual scheme. Plantinga’s example was, of course, advanced as a reductio ad absurdum of such a conclusion. Plantinga believes that something has gone awry with a theory that commits us to taking beliefs about a Great Pumpkin seriously. It would seem, however, that internal realism can provide an analysis of conceptual schemes that avoids Plantinga’s reductio. According to internal realism, the fact that some community subscribes to a conceptual scheme that holds the ultimate religious entity to be a Great Pumpkin does not make it the case that there must be a Great Pumpkin to which the claims of the members of the community successfully refer. Rather, given what the members of the community mean by “Great Pumpkin”, and given what they mean by “ultimate religious entity”, if there is such a Great Pumpkin, and if it is the ultimate religious entity, then the claims of those employing this conceptual scheme could be true. But the fact that some community employs this conceptual scheme does not automatically make their claims true, nor does it define the Great Pumpkin into existence. See Plantinga, A. (1983). Reason and Belief in God. In A. Plantinga and N. Wolterstorff (Eds.), Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

  14. This is not to suggest, however, that it will always be an easy matter to determine whether or not any particular issue is wholly a conceptual-scheme dependent one.

  15. It also suggests that we can choose to discard a conceptual scheme that we had previously employed.

  16. Conversion from one religious conceptual scheme to another is very difficult to explain if one accepts John Hick’s transcendental form of religious pluralism. It is equally problematic for religious exclusivists, such as Alvin Plantinga, as well as for religious inclusivists.

  17. Surely, no one would accuse a person who has learnt to use a fish chart of defining “trout”, “carp” and so on into existence.

  18. If such a difference were judged to be wholly conceptual scheme dependent, would that imply a form of relativism that would constitute a threat to pluralism? I have discussed this potential objection in Harrison, “Internal Realism and the Problem of Religious Diversity”, op. cit.

  19. This appears to have been the understanding of the program board for a British Society for the Philosophy of Religion conference on religious pluralism. A talk on internalist pluralism was scheduled to take place in the “atheism” section of this conference.

  20. Admittedly, if theism is taken to presuppose metaphysical realism, then internalist pluralism is atheist at least in comparison to theism so construed. However, surely the claim that theism presupposes metaphysical realism simply begs the question of the most appropriate metaphysical framework within which to conceptualize theistic forms of religion.

  21. For an account of the form of metaphysical realism favored by Alston, see Alston, W. P. (2002). A Sensible Metaphysical Realism. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press.

  22. This objection was raised by Franz-Peter Griesmaier in response to a paper given at the University of Wyoming in 2004.

  23. This criticism was suggested to me by Jim Cook.

  24. This objection may be in part motivated by the mistaken belief that internalist pluralism is committed to the view that all statements religious people make concerning their faith are true relative to the conceptual scheme of that faith. I have argued against this erroneous understanding of internalist pluralism in Harrison, “Internal Realism and the Problem of Religious Diversity”, op. cit. However, if, contrary to fact, it were the case that all statements made about entities thought to exist within some religious conceptual scheme were true provided only that they were uttered by those subscribing to that conceptual scheme, that would indeed seem to lay internalist pluralism open to the charge of allowing entities to be defined into existence.

  25. The following discussion concerns the dispute between atheists and those who subscribe to various forms of theism. However, it should be clear that the theory outlined could be applied to other forms of religious conceptual scheme–including non-theistic ones.

  26. The following characterization of the “Christian” view and the “Hindu” view are not offered as accurate representations of what all Christians or all Hindus actually believe. Not all Christians subscribe to trinitarianism, just as not all Hindus accept a tripartite characterization of God. Both views are, however, relatively common.

  27. But, a critic might object, why talk of adherents of different religious faiths employing different conceptual schemes rather than simply asserting that they disagree about conceptual-scheme independent facts? In response, if one rejects the analysis of religious belief systems in terms of conceptual schemes and hence rejects internalist pluralism, then one will require an alternative theory to address adequately the problems raised by religious diversity. I have argued elsewhere that internalist pluralism offers the best explanation of the diversity of religious belief and practice. See Harrison, V. S. (2007). Religion and Modern Thought. London: SCM.

  28. Similarly, statements made about W1 and W2 may appear contradictory even though they are not in fact contradictory if we take into account that they are governed by the conventions of different conceptual schemes. Put another way, the statements may not in fact be incompatible, even though the conceptual schemes are. One cannot simultaneously employ the conceptual schemes of the “Carnapian” and the “Polish Logician,” just as one cannot, on the account suggested above, consistently employ both the conceptual scheme of a Hindu and that of a Christian.

  29. It might be objected that one who subscribes to internalist pluralism would be committed to applying the theory at the meta-level, and thus regarding, for example, internalist pluralism and transcendental pluralism as incommensurable conceptual schemes to be taken equally seriously. If this were the case, internalist pluralism may well be deemed incoherent (as William Alston has argued with respect to internal realism), because it would seem to imply that conceptual schemes require analysis by meta-conceptual schemes, which require analysis by meta-meta-conceptual schemes, and so on ad infinitum. However, internalist pluralism is a theory about conceptual schemes and the way that they relate to each other. While one could apply it at the meta-level, one does not have to. Thus, as I have argued at length elsewhere, internalist pluralism is not susceptible to this objection. See Harrison, “Internal Realism and the Problem of Religious Diversity”, op. cit. For Alston’s criticism of internal realism, see Alston, A Sensible Metaphysical Realism, op. cit., pp. 32f.

  30. Keith Yandell, for example, points out that the central beliefs of major world religions such as Theravada Buddhism, Jainism, Advaita Vedanta Hinduism and Generic Philosophical Monotheism (which is an abstraction of Judaism, Christianity and Islam), all include ontological claims that contradict the ontological claims made by those within the other three traditions. He argues that if the ontological claims of any one of these traditions were proven to be true, that would entail the falsity of the central beliefs of the other three religious traditions. Internalist pluralism denies this entailment. See Yandell, K. E. (2002). Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Perspective (p. 34). London: Routledge.

  31. Presumably one could regard such claims as possibly true even while conceding that one’s ability to understand them might be limited by one’s ignorance of the conceptual scheme employed by the claimants. This is not to say that the ability to regard the ontological claims of different religious conceptual schemes as possibly true entails that one will regard all these claims as “live options” for oneself, given the conceptual scheme which one actually employs.

  32. A common criticism of Hickean transcendental pluralism is that it portrays morally motivated atheists as responding to the same ultimate religious reality as religious believers are thought to be responding to. This strikes many critics as highly implausible and also patronizing to atheists who, in effect, are being described by Hick as “anonymous theists”. Internalist pluralism’s account of atheists suffers from neither of these disadvantages.

  33. This presumption has been ably defended in Hick, J. (1981). On Grading Religions. Religious Studies, 17(4), 451–467 and in Cohn-Sherbok, D. (1991). Issues in Contemporary Judaism. London: Macmillan.

  34. While there may be no justification for preferring one religion to another that is internal to the religious conceptual schemes themselves, this is not to deny that there may be other, more practical, reasons in favor of commitment to one religion rather than another.

  35. Needless to say, this list is not exhaustive.

  36. Tolerance, of course, may be insufficient as a starting point for inter-faith dialogue. See Schmidt-Leukel, P. (2002). Beyond tolerance: towards a new step in interreligious relationships. Scottish Journal of Theology, 55, 379–391.

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Alan Carter for his comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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Harrison, V.S. Internal Realism, Religious Pluralism and Ontology. Philosophia 36, 97–110 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9089-1

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