Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T21:58:38.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Questions about ‘Internal and external questions about God’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2011

NATALJA DENG
NATALJA DENG
Affiliation:
eidos – The Genevan Centre for Metaphysics, Department of Philosophy, University of Geneva, 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article is an evaluation of Le Poidevin's use of Carnap's stance on ontology within the philosophy of religion. Le Poidevin claims that (1) theists need to take God to be a putative entity within space-time in order for their claim that God exists to be meaningful, and that (2) instrumentalism about theology is viable. I argue that although Le Poidevin's response to Carnap's argument is no less problematic than that argument itself, his position is in fact thoroughly un-Carnapian. The upshot is that his discussion provides some support to atheism, but none to either of his two official conclusions.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 257 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bird, Graham (1995) ‘Carnap and Quine: internal and external questions’, Erkenntnis, 42, 41–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carnap, Rudolf (1950) ‘Empiricism, semantics, and ontology’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4, 20–40. Reprinted, with some modifications, in Benacerraf, P. and Putnam, H. (eds) Philosophy of Mathematics, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 241–257.Google Scholar
Chalmers, David, Manley, David and Wasserman, Ryan (eds) (2009) Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology (Oxford: Clarendon Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cupitt, Don (1980) Taking Leave of God (London: SCM Press).Google Scholar
Eklund, M. (2009) ‘Carnap and ontological pluralism’, in Chalmers, et al. (2009), 130–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallois, André (1998) ‘Does ontology rest on a mistake?’, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 72, 263–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haack, Susan (1976) ‘Some preliminaries to ontology’, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 5, 457–474.Google Scholar
Le Poidevin, Robin (1995) ‘Internal and external questions about God’, Religious Studies, 31, 485–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Poidevin, Robin (1996) Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Yablo, Stephen (1998) ‘Does ontology rest on a mistake?’, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 72, 229–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar