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Cognitive dualism, ontological dualism, and the question of God
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 June 2019
Abstract
Cognitive dualism offers a defensible conception of theism, and Scruton is right to endorse it. However, he retains a commitment to the ontological dualism it is his purpose to reject, and this leads to a deep tension in his position which leaves him unable to make sense of there being a route to the Divine. I argue that this tension stems from a residual commitment to a Kantian framework, and that this framework is not mandatory. I propose an alternative model which is compatible with much of what Scruton says, but which offers a more consistent and satisfactory theistic picture.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2019
References
1 See my edited collection New Models of Religious Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)Google Scholar, for an approach to philosophy of religion which lends emphasis to the more practical dimension of religious experience and understanding.
2 ‘No Through Road’, Scruton, Roger, epilogue to The Religious Philosophy of Roger Scruton, ed. Bryson, James (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), p.254Google Scholar.
3 God, Value, and Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.
4 Hence Anthony O'Hear: ‘Cognitive dualism is not enough; in the divine case, we need at least ontological dualism, or a realistic hope of such a thing, to found our faith’, ‘The Great Absence’, in Bryson, op.cit., p.51.
5 See, for example, his Encyclopaedia Logic, § 25.
6 ‘No Through Road’, p.254.
7 ‘A Transcendental Argument for the Transcendental’, in Bryson, op.cit. p.23.
8 ‘That Obscure Object of Desire’, in Bryson, op.cit., pp.77-87.
9 The Soul of the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), p.48Google Scholar.
10 ‘A Transcendental Argument for the Transcendental’, p.21.
11 ‘No Through Road’, p.255.
12 ‘No Through Road’, pp.253–254.
13 The Soul of the World, p.34.
14 ‘A Transcendental Argument for the Transcendental’, p.17.
15 There is an important question here of how we are to comprehend the limits of science, and, at the limit, it can seem equivalent to a perfectly sensible form of empiricism. See my God, Value, and Nature, ch 2 for discussion on this point.
16 I am thinking here of ‘expansive’ or ‘liberal’ naturalists like David Wiggins, John McDowell, and James Griffin, all of whom defend an anti-scientistic conception of nature whilst denying that this warrants a move in the direction of theism. See my God, Value, and Nature chs 2 and 3 for the relevant details.
17 ‘A Transcendental Argument for the Transcendental’, p.27.
18 ‘A Transcendental Argument for the Transcendental’, p.17.
19 The Soul of the World, p.8.
20 The Soul of the World, p.8.
21 The Soul of the World, p.10.
22 The Soul of the World, p.185.
23 The Soul of the World, p.11.
24 The Soul of the World, pp.11–13.
25 The Soul of the World. p.13.
26 The Soul of the World, p.14.
27 The Soul of the World, p.15.
28 The Soul of the World, p.24.
29 The Soul of the World, p.24.
30 The Soul of the World, pp.23–24.
31 The Soul of the World, p.24.
32 ‘No Through Road’, p.254.
33 ‘No Through Road’, p.254.
34 Anthony O'Hear objects to Scruton's position on this ground in his ‘The Great Absence’, in Bryson,op.cit. p.53.
35 ‘No Through Road’, p.255.
36 ‘A Transcendental Argument for the Transcendental’, p.17.
37 ‘A Transcendental Argument for the Transcendental’, p.28.
38 ‘A Transcendental Argument for the Transcendental’, p.28.
39 ‘A Transcendental Argument for the Transcendental’, p.17.
40 ‘A Transcendental Argument for the Transcendental’, p.23.
41 ‘A Transcendental Argument for the Transcendental’, p.31.
42 The term ‘transcendent’ is also less misleading than ‘transcendental’ given Scruton's Kantian commitments.
43 Value Judgement: Improving our Ethical Beliefs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp.43–44Google Scholar.
44 This is Anthony O'Hear's objection to Scruton's position. See note 33.
45 Hence: ‘God cannot be a thing, an existent among others. It is not possible that God and the universe should add up to two’, ‘Creation’, in God Matters (London: Continuum Press, 1987), p.6Google Scholar.
46 McCabe again: ‘If God is whatever answers our question, how come everything? then evidently he is not to be included amongst everything’ (ibid).
47 This is how Karl Rahner sums up the objection in his Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. Dych, William V. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1978), p.63Google Scholar.
48 Foundations of Christian Faith, p.63.
49 I am hugely grateful to Akeel Bilgrami for helping me to clarify this issue as it applies to my own position.
50 This view is clearly expressed in Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1986)Google Scholar.
51 I am greatly indebted here to Paul Fiddes. Fiddes has defended this conception of God in his wonderful ‘The quest for a place which is “not-a-place”: the hiddenness of God and the presence of God’, in Silence and the Word, eds. Davies, Oliver and Turner, Denys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 35-60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. His more recent ‘God is love: Love is God. A Cutting-Edge Issue for the Theology of Love’ raises some important issues for the epistemological points I shall be raising. This paper can be found at https://loveinreligionorg.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/fiddes-god-is-love.pdf
52 ‘The Quest for a Place’, p.54.
53 ‘The Quest for a Place’, p.55.
54 The Notebooks of Simone Weil, Vol 2, trans Wills, Arthur (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1956), p.358Google Scholar.
55 I spell out the details of a position along these lines in my ‘Religious Experience and Religious Desire’, forthcoming (September 2019), in a special section of Religious Studies entitled ‘Religious Experience and Desire’ edited by Fiona Ellis and Clare Carlisle.