Abstract
Nihilists cannot square their position with common sense simply by paraphrasing away apparent ontological commitments in ordinary language. I argue for this claim by analogy. Paraphrase atheism says there is no God, but tries to square the truth of atheism with ordinary religious sentences by paraphrasing away apparent ontological commitments. Obviously, paraphrase does not reconcile atheism with ordinary language about God. I discuss two different reasons that paraphrase can fail and suggest that both reasons afflict paraphrase nihilism. Hence, paraphrase nihilism cannot reconcile nihilism and common sense, and so nihilists must look for some other strategy that can evade the force of the Atheism Case.
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Notes
Of course, van Inwagen is not himself a thoroughgoing nihilist since he thinks parts compose a whole when they constitute a ‘life’. Nevertheless he denies the existence of tables and books and water molecules, so I lump him in with the other nihilists for ease of exposition. cf. (Inwagen 1990).
I am indebted to an anonymous referee for pointing out this passage and for the suggestions about how my account could be amended.
Nihilists can appeal to at least four other strategies in order to try to reconcile ni-hilism and common sense as well: the fictionalist strategy (Rosen and Dorr 2002); the approximate truth strategy (Merricks 2001); the minimalist strategy (Cameron 2010); and the non-eliminitivist strategy (Contessa 2014). I thank an anonymous referee for pointing out some of these distinctions and for the helpful labels for the views. For reasons of space I will treat only van Inwagen’s paraphrase view in this paper, although I think similar considerations to the ones I raise against van Inwagen might afflict Cameron and Contessa’s positions as well.
Note here that we could express the ‘weak’ reading of van Inwagen described above by altering the three points as follows:
(a*) Ordinary sentences are false when spoken inside the ontology room.
(b*) It is possible to paraphrase the ordinary sentences into paraphrase sentences that are true in the ontology room.
(c*) The ordinary sentences express the same fact as the paraphrase sentences.
All of the things I will say about the insufficiency of (a–c) below would also suffice to show the insufficiency of (a*–c*) mutatis mutanda.
Not much turns upon my choice of example ordinary religious sentence here. Readers more familiar with Norse paganism are invited to substitute, say, the following sentence: “Odin welcomes the souls of the valiant dead to Valhalla.”
The example of paraphrase atheism might bite other strategies even harder. Both Cameron and Contessa attempt to reconcile common sense and nihilism by saying the ordinary sentences are strictly true and Merricks thinks the ordinary sentences are approximately true. But paraphrase atheism is no more palatable if we regard “God loves you” as strictly true or approximately true, than it is in the paraphrase case where we are considering the ordinary religious sentences pragmatically useful because they express the same fact as the strictly true paraphrase sentence.
“His Eye is on the Sparrow” is a traditional American Protestant hymn, whose title is inspired by Matthew 10:29-30, a passage expressing the doctrine of divine providence. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
Matthew 5:45.
I thank an anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this important objection.
Recollected in: (Steirer 2005).
And, of course, different religions differ in terms of what membership in the community entails. ‘Religion’ is itself a problematically broad category, and although it fits tolerably well for the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, it fits less well for, e.g. Confucianism.
And here I think the moral teachings of a particular religion do not count as “religious.” Passionate indignation at oppression is Jewish, but it does not follow that everyone who is passionately indignant at oppression is a Jew.
It may go without saying that the point here is not to engage in the dubious business of policing theological boundaries about who gets to count as members of which religion. The point is just to get clear about what the individuals in the Atheism Case thought experiment are like.
Of course, one might want to ask the good bishop what he thinks God is like, if not supernatural and why such a being merits being called “God,” but those are not questions we need entertain here.
By “apparent existential commitments” I mean the commitments the ordinary sentences would have if we interpreted them as strictly true. So for example “the book is on the table” involves apparent existential commitments to at least two objects, a book and a table.
“The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved” (Psalm 93:1).
The Galileo Affair is a complex historical incident and no brief account of it such asthe one I offer here could fail to mislead. Readers after the historical details are encouraged to consult the voluminous literature on Galileo.
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the following people for their generous help in improving this paper: Andrew Bailey, Nathan Ballantyne, John Keller, Jack Himelright, Joshua Rasmussen, Amy Seymour, several anonymous referees, and the members of an audience at the 2015 Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association.
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Wilkins, S.M. Why paraphrase nihilism fails. Synthese 193, 2619–2632 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0869-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0869-z