In Fiona Ellis (ed.), New Models of Religious Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming)
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Abstract |
Drawing an analogy between modal structuralism about mathematics
and theism, I oer a structuralist account that implicitly denes theism in
terms of three basic relations: logical and metaphysical priority, and epis-
temic superiority. On this view, statements like `God is omniscient' have
a hypothetical and a categorical component. The hypothetical component
provides a translation pattern according to which statements in theistic
language are converted into statements of second-order modal logic. The
categorical component asserts the logical possibility of the theism struc-
ture on the basis of uncontroversial facts about the physical world. This
structuralist reading of theism preserves objective truth-values for theistic
statements while remaining neutral on the question of ontology. Thus, it
oers a way of understanding theism to which a naturalist cannot object,
and it accommodates the fact that religious belief, for many theists, is an
essentially relational matter.
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Keywords | structuralism theism truth-value realism God a priori realism |
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References found in this work BETA
Mathematics Without Numbers: Towards a Modal-Structural Interpretation.Geoffrey Hellman - 1989 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Thinking About Mathematics: The Philosophy of Mathematics.Stewart Shapiro - 2000 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
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