RELIGIOUS PLURALISM 71much about the student’s new love interest. Mediumly Restrictive RP
says that the only properties we can properly ascribe to the Real are
properties that logic “generates.”
The point is worth laboring. It has two parts as follows.
1 A property P is generated by logic if and only if logic applies to X
entails X has P.
2 The only properties that can properly be ascribed to the Real are
properties generated by logic.
This supposedly trivial admission has devastating consequences for RP.
Why the point is not trivial
First, note the properties that RP ascribes to the Real. It is
transcendent.^21 There being the Real is a condition of our existence.^22
There being the Real is a condition of our wellbeing.^23 The Real is what
all religious experience is a response to.^24 Talk of “the Real” with its
various historical associations with features often spoken of with
reference to God should not mislead us here. The Real is not personal,
not conscious, and not God.
Second, note that none of these properties is generated by logic. It
goes against a fundamental rule of Mediumly Restrictive RP to apply
them to the Real. According to this RP doctrine, these properties cannot
be ascribed to the Real. In case the point isn’t clear, if RP is true, the
Real cannot be said to be transcendent, a condition of our existence or
our wellbeing, or what religious experience responds to. To ascribe such
properties to the Real is to cheat at the RP game. No amount of talk
about triviality alters the fact that this is so.^25
Third, note that if none of these properties – being transcendent,
being a condition of our existence, being a condition of our wellbeing,
being what religious experience is a response to – can be ascribed to the
Real, then the explanation that RP offers of religious plurality is
impermissible. That explanation, stated consistently with RP, is this:
(RPE) There is something to which only such properties as having
properties, having only consistent properties, and
other logically generable properties can be ascribed,
which is transcendent, a condition of our existence and
wellbeing, and is what religious experience responds to.