384 NOTESan ordinary object strictly goes beyond the experiential information one currently
possesses.
Underdetermination looms larger in scientific theory where there will always be
more than one possible way of explaining what is observed, so that claims that various
sorts of theoretical entities exist are underdetermined by the data on the basis of which
such claims are made. Even religious experiences of a phenomenologically thick sort –
Isaiah in the temple in the presence of an awesome holy being in whose presence he
senses his own sinfulness and need for forgiveness, for example – underdetermine the
claims, for example, that God is omnipotent and omniscient. In religion and theology, as
in everyday sensory experience and scientific theory, conceptual experiences join with
sensory or religious experiences in more fully determining the concepts used to describe
the objects of experience. How this goes in any given case is likely to be complex and
fascinating. The next step would be to ask what reasons monotheism can supply for
claiming that God is omnipotent and omniscient. But that is another story.12 Arguments concerning nonmonotheistic conceptions (1)
1 See, for example, the selections from Ramanuja in Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and Charles
Moore (eds), A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1957) or George Thibaut, The Vedanta Sutras (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890–
1904), vols 34, 38, 48 of the Sacred Books of the East. These volumes contain the aphorisms
of Badarayana with the commentaries.
2 That is, no more than one of the alternatives can be true, and (as we shall see) there are
other relevant views besides these three.
3 A bit more fully: I take dualism to hold that X is a person if and only if X is a self-
conscious being, where X is a self-conscious being if and only if X is sometimes self-
conscious and X when not self-conscious nonetheless has the capacity to become so.
Further, X continues to be a person only if X is a person and X shall be self-conscious in
the future. Dualism, then, holds that being self-conscious is not a physical property, that
persons are self-conscious mental substances whose essence is (or includes) having self-
consciousness, and that no mental substance is a physical substance or an abstract object.
4 Philosophers often talk as if the notion of a mental property is obscure and the notion of
a physical property is lucid. But when one comes to actual definitions of “physical
property” the supposed clarity of the idea becomes shy and hides. Some philosophers
talk as if the notion of being self-conscious were itself somehow deeply obscure. There
are views (and so much the worse for them) on which it is hard to see how anything
could be or become self-conscious, but being self-conscious is a clearer notion than is
being physical.
5 For example, C. J. Du Casse, Alan Donagan, Alvin Plantinga, Howard Robinson, John
Foster, Frank Jackson, etc.
6 Whether X and Y are fully qualitatively identical entails X and Y are numerically
identical is a matter of controversy that we need not enter.
7 If the relationship between qualitative so-called identity and numerical identity are not
clear, one might consider some relevant necessary truths.
It is helpful, in understanding qualitative “identity” and numerical identity to see
how these concepts are related; a bit of reflection should be sufficient to see that each of
the following claims is true (indeed, not possibly false, and so necessarily true).N1X is nearly fully identical to Y does not entail X is numerically identical to
Y. (Identical twins are possible.)