Most contemporary philosophers do not think that Descartes, even on his own terms,
managed to break out of the circle of his own consciousness. The proof of God's
existence, which is supposed to guarantee even our clear and distinct ideas, depends on
our idea of God being clear and distinct. Nevertheless, the form of Descartes' dilemma
has remained unchanged for the majority of philosophers of religion: How, from my
consciousness, can I make contact with a reality outside it?
First, consider those contemporary philosophers of religion influenced by empiricism. On
this view, we are immediately acquainted only with our ideas. But the ideas come
between us and the world. I cannot step outside my ideas to compare them with the
world. Why should I think that there is a world there at all? Empiricism's traditional reply
is that we infer the existence of such a world from the quality of our ideas. Ideas of
perception are said to have a greater consistency or vivacity than our imaginings. The
logical objection to this view is that no matter how consistent or lively is our idea of, say,
an apple, this is quite consistent with the apple's not being there (Austin 1962, Warnock
1969). Again, a memory cannot be established from the quality of an idea. There must be
a relation between a memory and the actual occurrence of what is remembered (Holland
1954).
There are deeper incoherencies in empiricism. What makes the ideas of consciousness the
ideas that they are? They cannot be self-identifying. There must be a distinction between
“thinking something is so” and its being so. To sever so-called ideas from any wider
reference than themselves reduces them, in the end, to a meaningless concatenation of
sensory data (Holland 1954). In this way, empiricism loses the whole world.
These logical objections to empiricism are often forgotten. But even when they are, the
best empiricism can offer is a probable contact with reality. Its problematic inference
gives us no more than a probable world, probable human beings, and a probable God.^4
Second, consider Reformed epistemologists and others informed by the epistemological
naturalism of Thomas Reid (1843). Understandably, they are anxious to avoid the
problematic inference from ideas to the world found in empiricism. What if there is a
more direct way of moving from one to the other? Reid argues that we do so by way of
suggestion: certain sensations suggest certain beliefs to us. He distinguished between our
original perceptions and our acquired perceptions, saying that the former suggest the
latter. Thus, a sound may suggest immediately a friend's voice. Reid thought he was
simply analyzing everyday experience when, in fact, he robs us of its sureness. Where
there is uncertainty, as there may be when I hear people speaking in another room, I may
think a sound suggests the voice of my friend. But when I hear his voice in the next room,
that is what I hear, not a sound that suggests the voice of my friend. The point is even
more obvious when my friend is talking to me face to face, although Reid's analysis is
meant to apply to this case, too.
What of the original perception, the sound itself? According to Reid, this,
end p.451
too, is suggested by a different sensation perceived by a distinct faculty. The problem is
that there is no such faculty, and Reid had difficulty in locating what he called his
“fugitive sensation” perceived by it, resorting, in the end, to the desperate measure of