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Ian Ramsey on Talk about God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Donald Evans
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto

Extract

The relation between I and my bodily behaviour does not provide an apt analogy for the relation between God and I, or between God and any of the many particular ‘mores’ of particular observables. The relation between the one divine ‘more’ and the many particular ‘mores’ needs another kind of analogy if it is to be at all intelligible. Ramsey seems to be hinting at another kind of analogy, another kind of approach to the use of the word ‘God’ as a unifying key word, in his essay ‘Paradox in Religion’:

‘The word “God” is a unique and ultimate keyword dominating the whole of a theistic language scheme, an “irreducible posit” to which the theist appeals as his end-point of explanation.’

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

page 213 note 1 Quine, William Van Orman, From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper, 1963).Google Scholar

page 213 note 2 Ibid., p. 41.

page 213 note 3 Ibid., p. 44.

page 214 note 1 Quine, William Van Orman, From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper, 1963), pp. 1219.Google Scholar

page 220 note 1 Ramsey tentatively says this in some lecture notes (mimeographed but unpublished) on the problem of evil. A somewhat similar position is taken in RL88.

page 220 note 2 God in Modern Philosophy (Chicago: Regnery, 1959), p. 3.Google Scholar

page 220 note 3 Finite and Infinite (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1943). There are many other important similarities between Ramsey, and Farrer, , in spite of their very different philosophical styles.Google Scholar

page 220 note 4 Ibid., p. 51.

page 226 note 1 Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1965.Google Scholar

page 226 note 2 New York: Harper, 1969.Google Scholar

page 226 note 3 New York: Norton, 1969.Google Scholar