PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: A contemporary introduction

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NOTES 389

21 Ibid., chapter II, sections 7, 8, 29; Sourcebook, p. 254.
22 Chapter II, section 10.
23 Samayasdra, 325.
24 Atmanusasna, 174.
25 Sourcebook, p. 547.
26 G. Thibaut, trans., The Vedanta Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja (Delhi:
Motilal Barnasidass Reprint, 1962; originally published by Oxford University Press,
1904), pp. 48, 55, 56.
27 Ibid., p. 56.
28 Ramanuja also takes self-awareness to occur in sensory experience – a view that
Jainism and (with qualifications) Descartes share.
29 Thibaut, I, i, 1; Sourcebook, p. 547.
30 Ibid., p. 58.
31 Ibid., p. 43.
32 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book One, Part IV, Section VI, “Of Personal
Identity,” p. 252.
33 Anguttara-nikaya, iii, 134; Sourcebook, pp. 273, 274; the text is Theravadin.
34 Visuddhi-magga xviii; Sourcebook, pp. 284–5; the text is Theravadin.
35 Sangutta-nikaya iii, 66; Sourcebook, p. 280.
36 Substantivalists nonetheless have two advantages in the dispute. Hume admits that
we believe that there are enduring substances and has to offer a painfully distended
account of our having that belief. There is reason to take the substantivalist report
form as the natural one – the one we in fact use in describing such experience.
Further, even if it were to be proved that the non-substantivalist report form should
be used, this – because of Locke’s point – would not establish, or even provide any
evidence for, the non-substantivalist point. So if there is a way around the objections
offered here to appeals to introspective (etc.) experience, the advantage lies with the
substantivalists. Still, the weight falls on the results of asking which view can explain
memory, responsibility, self-consciousness, and the like. Appeal to enlightenment
and meditative experience is made by both sides, as we have noted.


14 Religion and morality


1 Or the moral principle if there is but one.
2 An Anselmian theist could do this too, but it is hard to see what the motivation
would be.
3 Other than God.
4 Strictly, one needs to add here “without morally sufficient reason.” It is left to the
reader to consider the relevance to the argument of adding this needed qualification.
5 Except, if you like, that God exists and has the nature that God has.
6 Indeed, any two necessary truths mutually entail one another. Further, since each
truth about Tess’s thoughts, by hypothesis, follows from a necessary truth, it is
necessarily true, and so entails every truth about every thought that God has. So
construed, God’s existence, nature, and thought seem as much determined by Tess’s
as the reverse.
7 One need not put logical fatalism in somewhat monotheistic dress; it is the doctrine
that all truths are necessary and all falsehoods contradictions, and God exists, for all
logical fatalism cares, can be among the latter.
8 This is metaphysical libertarianism, to be distinguished from political views that
use the same term.
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