Abstract
This article applies Hilary Putnam’s theory of internal realism to the issue of religious plurality. The result of this application – ‘internalist pluralism’ – constitutes a paradigm shift within the Philosophy of Religion. Moreover, internalist pluralism succeeds in avoiding the major difficulties faced by John Hick’s famous theory of religious pluralism, which views God, or ‘the Real,’ as the noumenon lying behind diverse religious phenomena. In side-stepping the difficulties besetting Hick’s revolutionary Kantian approach, without succumbing to William Alston’s critique of conceptual-scheme dependence, internalist pluralism provides a solution to significant theoretical problems, while doing so in a manner that is respectful of cultural diversity and religious sensitivities.
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Notes
The need for a political philosophy that is sensitive to cultural diversity and religious differences is, of course, a key motivation behind Rawls, J. (1996). Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
See, for example: Hick, J. (1974). God has many names. Philadelphia: Westminster; Hick, J. (1985). Problems of religious pluralism. New York: St. Martin’s; and Hick, J. (1989). An interpretation of religion: Human responses to the transcendent. London: Macmillan.
See Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
See Lakatos, I. (1970). Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programs. In I. Lakatos & A. Musgrave (Eds.), Criticism and the growth of knowledge (pp. 91–195). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Perhaps it should give us cause for reflection that it took 250 years to apply Kant’s metaphysics to the Philosophy of Religion. And it may well be that the field lags a long way behind developments in scientific thinking. Hence, suggesting another paradigm shift at this stage might be described as working at break-neck speed! On the other hand, it may well be that a paradigm-shift in the Philosophy of Religion is long overdue, given that the Copernican/Kantian revolution within the discipline occurred so late. And we might not be that surprised at the lateness of this revolution if we share Ernst Käsemann’s view of Theology, from where many philosophers of religion are drawn, as an academic nature reserve.
Interestingly, a number of the core features of Putnam’s internal realism were anticipated by the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. See Harrison, V. S. (2000). The apologetic value of human holiness: von Balthasar’s Christocentric philosophical anthropology. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
It should be noted that Michael Dummett has argued that adopting anti-realism in one domain does not commit one to its global adoption. See Dummett, M. (1968–1969). The reality of the past. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (pp. 239–258). Hence, for parallel reasons, it could be argued that adopting internal realism in the religious domain does not commit one to global internal realism. In other words, localized internal realism seems consistent with alternative metaphysical commitments in other domains. In my view, due to the peculiar nature of religious language and religious ‘facts’, the religious domain particularly invites an internal realist analysis.
See Putnam, H. (1992). Reason, truth and history (p. 49). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
The internal realist perspective was advanced by Putnam as early as 1976. In H. Putnam (1976–1977), Realism and reason. American Philosophical Association Proceedings (50, pp. 483–498), he defends the view that all situations have a variety of correct descriptions, and that even descriptions that, taken as a whole, convey the same information may differ in what they take to be ‘objects.’ Commenting later on this view, Putnam writes: “If there isn’t one single privileged sense of the word ‘object’ and one privileged totality of ‘intrinsic properties’, but there is only an inherently extendible notion of ‘object’ and various properties that may be seen as ‘intrinsic’ in different inquiries, then the very notion of a totality of all objects and of the one description that captures the intrinsic properties of those objects should be seen to be nonsense from the start.” Putnam, H. (1994). The question of realism. In J. Conant (Ed.), Words and life (pp. 304f). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
See Putnam, Reason, truth and history, op. cit., p. 49.
“In The Many Faces of Realism I described in detail a case in which the same situation, in a perfectly commonsensical sense of ‘the same situation’, can be described as involving entirely different numbers and kinds of objects (colored ‘atoms’ alone, versus colored atoms plus ‘aggregates’ of atoms).” Putnam, H. (1992). Renewing philosophy (p. 120). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
For a defense of a modified version of the idealization theory of truth, see Wright, C. (2000). Truth as sort of epistemic: Putnam’s peregrinations. The Journal of Philosophy, XCVII, 6, 335–364. But see Putnam, H. (2001). When ‘evidence transcendence’ is not malign: A reply to Crispin Wright. The Journal of Philosophy, XCVIII, 11, 594–600.
Putnam, Reason, truth and history, op. cit., pp. 49f.
See ibid. In so arguing, Putnam is distancing his internal realism from Dummett’s anti-realism. Dummett reduces truth to what one is warranted in asserting. But if ‘truth’ is equated with ‘warranted assertibility’, then because there are some claims that one is neither warranted in asserting nor warranted in denying, they are neither true nor false. This constitutes the basis of semantic anti-realism. See, for example, Dummett, “The reality of the past”, op. cit.
See note 34, below.
Putnam: “What this shows, in my opinion, is not that the externalist view is right after all, but that truth is an idealization of rational acceptability. We speak as if there were such things as epistemically ideal conditions, and we call a statement ‘true’ if it would be justified under such conditions. ‘Epistemically ideal conditions,’ of course, are like ‘frictionless planes’: we cannot really attain epistemically ideal conditions, or even be absolutely certain that we have come sufficiently close to them. But frictionless planes cannot really be attained either, and yet talk of frictionless planes has ‘cash value’ because we can approximate them to a very high degree of approximation.” Putnam, Reason, truth and history, op. cit., p. 55.
By way of clarification, Putnam has, more recently, insisted that in Reason, truth and history he “proposed to identify ‘being true’ not with ‘being verified’, as Dummett does, but with ‘being verified to a sufficient degree to warrant acceptance under sufficiently good epistemic conditions.’’’ And as he adds in a footnote: “For Dummett, a sentence is, in general, either (conclusively) verified or it is not (apart from vagueness). For me, verification was (and is) a matter of degree.” Putnam, H. (1994). Sense, nonsense, and the senses: An inquiry into the powers of the human mind. The Dewey Lectures 1994, Lecture I, The antinomy of realism. The Journal of Philosophy, 91, 461.
See Putnam, Reason, truth and history, op. cit., p. 56.
Hick, Problems of religious pluralism, op. cit., pp. 102f.
Ibid.
See, for example, Hick, J. (1997). The epistemological challenge of religious pluralism. Faith and Philosophy, 14(3), 281.
Eli Hirsch refers to this as ‘quantifier variation.’
See Harrison, The apologetic value of human holiness, op. cit.
A further implication of this analysis, which I cannot elaborate here, is that the ‘common-core thesis’ of religious experience, which many philosophers of religion subscribe to, is erroneous. For a critical discussion of the ‘common-core thesis’, see Moore, P. (1978). Mystical experience, mystical doctrine, mystical technique. In S. T. Katz (Ed.), Mysticism and philosophical analysis (pp. 101–131). New York: Oxford University Press.
This follows from the claim that what it means for a religious object to exist is stipulated within a religious conceptual scheme. An important example is the way that the existence of God has been variously understood within the monotheistic religions. Debates within the religious traditions themselves about the meaning of ‘existence’ when applied to God strongly suggest that one cannot legitimately impose a concept of ‘existence’ from outside the relevant conceptual scheme. Nor ought one to assume that one understands what believers are claiming without an in-depth study of their respective theologies.
A fuller treatment would clarify the relationship between religious conceptual schemes and the world religions as lived and practiced. Suffice it to say that a subscriber to internalist pluralism is not committed to regarding ‘religious conceptual schemes’ and ‘religions’ as synonymous.
Note: I do not say ‘the’ Christian conceptual scheme, for it cannot simply be presumed that all Christians, merely because they all refer to themselves by the same name, share the same conceptual scheme. The same can be said of all major religions.
What constitutes genuinely entering into a belief system? One is not compelled to become an advocate of ‘the Polish Logician’s’ conceptual scheme in order to understand his claims. Hence, internalist pluralism is not committed to the claim that one must become an adherent of a particular religious belief system before one can understand it. One might achieve a sympathetic understanding of a belief system by, for example, studying its intellectual components, familiarizing oneself with relevant ethnological research, talking to people who subscribe to it, and reading accounts of their experiences, etc. Autobiographies are especially useful for inducting an ‘outsider’ into the thought-worlds of their authors. It would be difficult to read, for example, Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian, without gaining some insight into what it feels like to adhere to the Hopi belief system. See Simmons, L. W. (Ed.) (1942). Sun Chief: The autobiography of a Hopi Indian. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
However, it is also possible for there to be a genuine disagreement. See note 41, below. I am merely pointing out that not all seeming disagreements may actually be substantive.
C.f. Paul Boghossian, who, notwithstanding his strong inclination towards a form of metaphysical realism, nevertheless writes: “our choice of one conceptual scheme rather than another...probably reflects various contingent facts about our capacities and limitations, so that a thinker with different capacities and limitations, a Martian for example, might find it natural to employ a different conceptual scheme. This does nothing to show that our conceptual scheme is incapable of expressing objective truths. Realism is not committed to there being only one vocabulary in which objective truths might be expressed; all it’s committed to is the weaker claim that, once a vocabulary is specified, it will then be an objective matter whether or not assertions couched in that vocabulary are true of false.” Boghossian, P. (December 13, 1996). What the Sokal Hoax ought to teach us: The pernicious consequences and internal contradictions of ‘Postmodernist’ relativism. Times Literary Supplement, 15.
Moreover, once a conceptual scheme is established, it is likely to have a formative effect upon the experience of those who subscribe to it. Thus, those who subscribe to a conceptual scheme in which the Virgin Mary is taken to be an important figure are more likely to interpret an experience, if it is veridical, as ‘an experience of the Virgin Mary’ than are those for whom Kali is more important. Subscription to a particular religious conceptual scheme, then, will incline a person to experience the ‘objects’ recognized within that scheme, if those objects are there to be perceived within it – just as ‘the Polish Logician’ will be more sensitive to perceiving aggregates. This is not to claim, however, that one’s conceptual scheme fully determines the objects that one will experience. It is interesting to note that Hick defends a not-too-dissimilar characterization of the relationship between our beliefs and our experience in Hick, An interpretation of religion, op. cit.
For as Putnam makes clear in the Preface to Reason, truth and history: “I shall advance a view in which the mind does not simply ‘copy’ a world which admits of description by One True Theory. But my view is not a view in which the mind makes up the world, either (or makes it up subject to constraints imposed by ‘methodological canons’ and mind-independent ‘sense-data’).” Putnam, Reason, truth and history, op. cit., p. xi.
Although it is a logical possibility, it seems most unlikely that a long-lived religious conceptual scheme (such as the conceptual schemes of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.) would contain only false claims. Within a conceptual scheme the interaction of belief and experience would seem to stack the odds against that scheme being entirely constituted by false beliefs.
This might seem indistinguishable from the view defended by Joseph Runzo. See, Runzo, J. (1986). Reason, relativism and God. New York: St. Martin’s. However, Runzo’s goal is to explain how it is that religious believers are entitled to absolute certainty about their religious beliefs, even though they recognize that all of those beliefs are conceptual-scheme dependent. But a realist holds that one can have a justification for feeling certain about the truth of a proposition without the proposition in question being true. In other words, even though Runzo holds that religious beliefs are conceptual-scheme dependent, his position, unlike the view I am here advocating, is not realist. And whereas internal realism is not a form of ‘metaphysical realism,’ it remains a form of realism.
This is also the most common criticism of D. Z. Phillips’ revisionary account of the Christian belief system. Thus, given the argument that follows, internalist pluralism would seem to offer a more persuasive account of religious belief systems than does Phillips’ account. For an example of Phillips’ approach see Phillips, D. Z. (1986). Belief, change and forms of life. London: Macmillan.
Keith Ward’s rejection of Hickean pluralism revolves around just this criticism. See Ward, K. (1994). Religion and revelation (pp. 310–313). Oxford: Clarendon.
The abundance of literature within the world’s religious traditions concerning the divers mechanisms of divine–human communication would thus seem to add weight to the view that the notion of revelation is itself conceptual-scheme dependent.
This criticism is developed by Kenneth Surin in his critique of Hickean pluralism. See Surin, K. (1990). A politics of speech: Religious pluralism in the age of the Macdonald’s hamburger. In G. D’Costa (Ed.), Christian uniqueness reconsidered: The myth of a pluralistic theology of religions (pp. 192–212). New York: Orbis Books.
Peter Byrne criticizes Hick’s theory on these grounds. See Byrne, P. (1982). John Hick’s philosophy of world religions. Scottish Journal of Theology, 35, 296.
Harold Netland offers such a criticism of Hick in Netland, H. (1991). Dissonant voices: Religious pluralism and the quest for truth. Leicester: Apollos. Netland also advances the first four criticisms noted above.
I say ‘in part’ here because there is a sense in which objects are conceptual-scheme dependent and a sense in which they are, what we might inadequately call, ‘world-dependent.’ That a world comprising three atoms only contains three objects depends upon one’s employing the Carnapian’s conceptual scheme as opposed to the Polish Logician’s. But there is also a sense in which the fact that there are only three objects does not. For it equally depends on there not being four or more atoms.
For Rahner’s notion of the ‘anonymous Christian,’ see Rahner, K. (1969). Anonymous Christians. In K. Rahner (Ed.), Theological investigations (Vol 6, pp. 390–398). Baltimore, Maryland: Helicon.
Hick criticizes Rahner’s theory for being both patronizing to adherents of non-Christian faiths and epistemically unjustifiable. Hick, J. (2000, January). Is Christianity the only true religion? (Paper presented as part of the Horizon Lecture series delivered at Birkbeck College, University of London).
See Alston, W. P. (2002). A sensible metaphysical realism (pp. 32f). Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press.
Furthermore, according to Alston, internal realism is committed to two claims that together give rise to a petitio principii. First, all objects are dependent upon some conceptual scheme. Second, conceptual schemes are dependent upon human minds. But these two claims entail, in Alston’s view, both that conceptual schemes are dependent upon human minds, and that human minds are objects conceived within conceptual schemes and hence are dependent upon them, which seems circular. Ibid., p. 33. But the internal realist can easily respond that the ‘dependence’ is not of the same sort, and hence the objection rests upon an equivocation. Conceptual schemes are dependent upon human minds in the sense that human minds create conceptual schemes. But the internal realist does not hold that conceptual schemes create minds. Rather, conceptual schemes determine what ‘the human mind’ means.
Note: internalist pluralism does not rule out the possibility of a being that is transcendent to our experience. It only rules out a being that is transcendent to all conceptual schemes. For the notion of ‘transcendent to our experience’ has to be understood within a conceptual scheme.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Alan Carter and William P. Alston for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Harrison, V.S. Internal Realism and the Problem of Religious Diversity. Philosophia 34, 287–301 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9029-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9029-5