Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Further Reflections on Theism 229
theism; and fourth, to encourage others to develop the ‘Prime Thinker’
line(s) of thought. Besides the fact that any philosophical claim can be contested,
this argument involves a number of deep and controversial assumptions.
I believe these to be correct, but they are not obviously so, and each line
of the proof calls for detailed support. It is not possible to attempt that now,
but I do wish to respond to doubts expressed about the argument. First,
however, I need to clarify an uncertainty about the general character of the
reasoning, due in part to the spirited ‘Prime Thinker’ title; and this will
provide an opportunity to make good a broader omission in the original
discussion.
Previously I remarked that the ‘linguistic-communitarian’ account of initial
concept aquisition, involving the actualization in a recipient of a potentiality
by an agent that is already possesed of it, instantiates the structure of the first
of Aquinas’s five ways: that from the occurrence of change. I then added that
the particular change in question suggests ‘a more specific proof ’ (p. 104).
Giving an example of a chain of concept-induction involving language learning
among several siblings (Alice having been taught to use ‘cat’ by James
who was taught by Kirsty), I contended (invoking Aquinas) that this could
not go on forever but would only be halted by an intrinsically actual, actualizing
source – this last being provided by God. Finally, I recalled passages in
Genesis and in the Gospel of John where language is associated with human
origins (Adam naming the animals) and with divine nature (the identification
of Christ with the ‘Word’ (logos) of God).
This additional theological flourish may have been a provocation too far,
for it occasioned the question as to whether I literally suppose that God was
the tutor of the first language users, and if so how I would square this with
scientific evidence about the origins of language. It also prompted the observation
that the Genesis passage is one in which Adam is invited to do some
naming of kinds, suggesting that he did not need to have the power of
conception actualized. I confess it would have suited me better had scripture
read that God ‘began teaching Adam the ways of thinking about things’;
but with Genesis we are in the sphere of the mythopoeic, in this case having
to do with man’s place within animate creation. The fact that Adam is
represented as being able to use language marks him out from the animals
and emphasizes the special creation of homo loquens. So far as ‘tutoring’ is
concerned, I believe that God’s efficacy is analogous to (and is the ultimate
source of) that of the linguistic community in realizing the power of conceptual
thought. If I am right in my claim that the latter involves intensional
modes of (re)presentation, the identity and individuation conditions of
which are finer grained than those of properties naturalistically identified (see
pp. 106–7), then the matter of scientific evidence, though relevant to the
question of the antecedents of conceptual language and to such matters as