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The Intelligible Universe pp 68–103Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Explanation for Intelligibility

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Part of the book series: New Studies in the Philosophy of Religion ((NSPR))

Abstract

The relevance of the foregoing discussion to establishing a case for theism may be summed up in the form of the following two arguments.

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Notes

  1. Cf. A. G. N. Flew, God and Philosophy (London, 1966) 3.16: ‘The other, when what is not the other is the universe, is hard to identify as anything but nothing.’

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  2. See above. A failure to make such distinctions seems to underlie the following remark by Stuart Hampshire: ‘If you think of the fact of existence itself as a mystery, then you will soon find yourself looking for an explanation of the universe outside of the universe itself; in other words, you will look … for something beyond all existence which explains why anything at all exists’ (‘Metaphysical Systems’, in The Nature of Metaphysics, ed. D. F. Pears (London, 1957); cited Munitz, The Mystery of Existence, 8 –9).

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  3. N. L. Wilson, ‘Existence Assumptions and Contingent Meaningfulness’, Mind (1956) 343.

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  4. See J. J. Shepherd, Experience, Inference and God, 26.

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  5. Kai Nielsen, ‘On Fixing the Reference Range of “God”’ Religious Studies (October 1966) 26–7; cited Shepherd, Experience, Inference and God, 19).

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  6. For this reason, the move to explicitly materialist metaphysical positions by some recent analytic philosophers is to be welcomed. Cf. J. J. Smart, Philosophy and Scientific Realism (London, 1963);

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  7. D. M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind(London, 1968);

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  8. A. Quinton, The Nature of Things (London, 1973).

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  9. C. B. Martin, Religious Belief (Ithaca, 1959) 152–6; cited Shepherd, Experience, Inference and God, 42 –3.

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  10. F. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, second part; ‘On Self-Overcoming’, in W. Kaufmann (ed.), The Portable Nietzsche(New York, 1954) 225. Kaufmann remarks, as well he may, that this passage raises many philosophical difficulties (193).

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  11. See J. Mepham, ‘The Theory of Ideology in Capital’, Radical Philosophy (1972) 12–13.

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  12. See Armstrong, Belief Truth and Knowledge (Cambridge, 1973) passim.

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  13. Bertrand Russell said, ‘You have to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire to do what you want, and that we can’t do’ (B. Russell and F. C. Copleston, ‘The Existence of God. A Debate’, in P. Edwards and A. Pap, A Modern Introduction to Philosophy (New York, 1973) 478.

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  14. On the mere pretence of doubting, see C. S. Peirce, in P. P. Wiener (ed.), Values in a Universe of Chance (Stanford, 1958) 40, 99.

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  15. For the claim that it can be fruitful, cf. Donald M. Mac Kay, Science, Chance and Providence (Oxford, 1978);

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  16. W. H. Thorpe, Purpose in a World of Chance (Oxford, 1978). See also pp. 110–15 below.

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  17. See D.J. Allan, The Philosophy of Aristotle (London, 1952) 45–7.

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  18. A. C. Ewing, Value and Reality (London, 1973) 156–63.

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  19. Duns Scotus, Reportata Parisiensia, 1,2,2,6; cited J. F. Ross, Philosophical Theology (Indianapolis and New York, 1969) 174.

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  20. Anselm, ‘Reply to Gaunilo’ (Anselm of Canterbury, ed. and tr. J. Hopkins and H. W. Richardson, vol. i (London, 1974) 123–4). ‘That than which a greater cannot be thought can only be thought to exist without a beginning. Now, whatever can be thought to exist but does not exist can be thought to begin to exist. Thus, it is not the case that that than which a greater cannot be thought can be thought to exist and yet does not exist. Therefore, if it can be thought to exist, it is necessary that it exist.’

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  21. See N. Rescher, The Philosophy of Leibniz (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965) 66–7.

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  22. Die Philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, ed. C. J. Ger- hardt (Hildesheim, 1965) iv, 359, 406; cited Rescher, Philosophy of Leibniz, 67.

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  23. M. Schlick, ‘Meaning and Verification’, Philosophical Review (1936) 352; cited Munitz, Mystery of Existence, 8.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Philosophy and of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds, UK

    Hugo A. Meynell (Senior Lecturer)

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  1. Hugo A. Meynell
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© 1982 Hugo A. Meynell

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Meynell, H.A. (1982). Explanation for Intelligibility. In: The Intelligible Universe. New Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05195-3_4

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