70 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIONHuman concepts
What should be said about RP depends on which of various emphases
one has in mind. RP makes various claims about restrictions on what
one may properly say about Real. More than one account is given of
these restrictions.
One account speaks of “human concepts.”^13 A human concept is not a
concept that applies to humans, but one that humans use. RP uses this
claim, or one much like it, to deny that such concepts as self-conscious
being and non-self-conscious being apply to the Real. The claim again
comes in two steps:
(HC1) A human concept is any concept humans use.
(HC2) No human concept applies to the Real.
These two claims constitute what might be called Maximally Restrictive
RP. In this mood one finds RP denying that even “exists” and “does not
exist” can apply to the Real. RP denies that number concepts apply to
the Real^14 though it also claims that there is only one item appropriately
designated “the Real.”^15 The result is that Maximally Restrictive RP is
self-destructing. It says about the Real that nothing can be so said.
RP also insists that the Real is transcendent, a condition of our
existence and our highest good,^16 and that to which religion and
religious experience are responses.^17 But of course these too are human
concepts, and the same filter that stops concepts used by actual religious
traditions would also stop them in RP were RP not to cheat on its own
behalf.^18 But on Maximally Restrictive RP it is also a mistake to ascribe
transcendence, being a condition of our existence and wellbeing, and a
contributor to religious experience to the Real.
Another account of the restrictions on what may properly be said
about the Real is that only properties that are “generated” by logic
alone may be ascribed to the Real. I take the notion to be this. Logic
holds in all possible worlds. It applies to anything there possibly is, and
hence to everything there actually is. To deny this is to embrace a self-
contradictory claim. So far, so good.
The sorts of property logic “generates” are those properties that
something must have if it is to be anything at all.^19 “Properties” here
covers qualities and relations. Examples of such properties are having
properties, having only consistent properties, being self-identical, not
being identical to anything different and the like.^20 A letter home from
a college student saying “I’ve met the most wonderful person – she has
properties and has only consistent properties” will not communicate