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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Reacting against philosophers such as Braithwaite, Hare and Van Buren, caught in what not a few would believe to be an essentially positivist rut, John Wisdom and Ilham Dilman forcefully argue that there is more to religion than commitment to a way of life and yet they both are, like Braithwaite and Hare, adamant in maintaining that believers and non-believers need not differ, and indeed will not differ, when they are informed, reflective and philosophically sophisticated, ‘in what they expect by way of a life after death’ and more importantly still – they will not differ in what ‘they infer about what lies beyond the reach of the senses’ (494).1 Moreover, they agree that not only can we not make any valid inferences about what lies beyond any possible reach of the senses, we cannot directly know - encounter, become acquainted with - such a reality either.
page 49 note 1 Dilman, Ilham, ‘Wisdom's Philosophy of Religion’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, v, 4 (December 1975), 473–524Google Scholar. Subsequent references to this article, which is the principal target of this essay, will be given in the text.
page 49 note 2 Wisdom, John, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965), pp. 149–68Google Scholar: and Paradox and Discovery (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965), pp. 1–22, 34–56Google Scholar. Besides the essay by Dilman cited in the previous footnote, see his ‘Wittgenstein On the Soul’ in Vesey, Godfrey (ed.), Understanding Wittgenstein (London: Macmillan Press, 1974), pp. 162–92Google Scholar and his ‘Paradoxes and Discoveries’, Wisdom: Twelve Essays, Bambrough, Redford (ed.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), pp. 78–106.Google Scholar
page 50 note 1 Michael Durrant's alternative characterizations should be contrasted with Dilman's and indeed Malcolm's, Phillips' and Winch's readings here. See Durrant, Michael, The Logical Status of ‘God’ (New York: Macmillan, 1973CrossRefGoogle Scholar) and his Theology and Intelligibility (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).Google Scholar
page 50 note 2 Antony Flew's discussion of the invisible gardener is, of course, the paradigmatic contrast with Dilman and Wisdom. See Flew, A. G. N., ‘Theology and Falsification’, in Flew, A. G. N. and MacIntyre, A. (eds.), New Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: the Macmillan Company, 1955), pp. 96–9.Google Scholar
page 50 note 3 Hägerström, Axel, Philosophy and Religion, translated by Sandin, R. T. (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1964), pp. 175–223.Google Scholar
page 52 note 1 Ninian Smart sets out succinctly the sense of and the import of the traditional conception of transcendence in his ‘Mystical Experience’, Sophia, 1, 1 (April 1962), 19–26.Google Scholar
page 53 note 1 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Note Books 1914–1916, p. 81.Google Scholar
page 54 note 1 Rhees, Rush, Without Answers (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 110–32Google Scholar; Winch, Peter, Ethics and Action (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), pp. 8–49Google Scholar; Winch, Peter, ‘Meaning and Religious Language’, Reason and Religion, Brown, Stuart C. (ed.) (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 193–221Google Scholar; Phillips, D. Z., Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970Google Scholar); Phillips, D. Z., Religion Without Explanation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976Google Scholar); Holmer, Paul, ‘Wittgenstein and Theology’ in High, Dallas M. (ed.), New Essays on Religious Language (London: Oxford University Press, 1969Google Scholar); Holmer, Paul, ‘Atheism and Theism’, Lutheran World, xii (1963Google Scholar); Holmer, Paul, ‘Metaphysics and Theology: The Foundations of Theology’, The Lutheran Quarterly (1967Google Scholar), and Malcolm, Norman, ‘The Groundlessness of Belief’, in Reason and Religion, Brown, Stuart C. (ed.) (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 143–57 and 186–90.Google Scholar
page 56 note 1 What I mean by ‘Godless Christianity’ can be seen from reading Braithwaite, Hare and Van Buren. See Braithwaite, Richard B., ‘An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief’ in Diamond, Malcolm L. and Litzenburg, Thomas V., The Logic of God: Theology and Verification (Indianapolis, Indiana: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1975), pp. 127–48Google Scholar; Hare, R. M., ‘The Simple Believer’ in Religion and Morality, Outka, Gene and Reeder, John P. Jr (Garden City, New York, Anchor Books, 1973), pp. 393–427Google Scholar and Buren, Paul M. Van, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (New York: the Macmillan Company, 1963).Google Scholar