Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Further Reflections on Theism 233
extra-mental over and above a set of individuals provides the meaning of
a general term. The ‘anti-realist’, by contrast, insists that the world contains
nothing but individuals and that all generalization is the work of the mind.
Depending on how these positions are further developed, one may begin to
wonder whether they might not in fact be contraries rather than contradictories;
i.e. one may suspect that both are false. Suppose one holds that some general
terms, those of natural kinds, answer to objective universal natures but that
others, reflecting specific sensibilities or interests, do not. How is this to be
fitted into the initial opposition? Or suppose one thinks, as did Aquinas, that
natural species terms have a dual semantics, signifying abstracted universal
natures in the intellect and particular individual natures extra-mentally. Where
does this position stand in relation to realism and anti-realism?
The fact is that some formulations of realism and anti-realism overlook
the possibility that, as conceived, both may be false. In other words philosophers’
uses of the term ‘the world’ are not univocal but the expression moves
between two sets of poles. On the one hand there is the contrast between
philosophical and popular uses of the term ‘world’. The latter is ontologically
fairly undiscriminating, the former relatively fastidious. On the other hand
there is the contrast within philosophy between narrow and broader uses. The
first relates to what it is supposed exists universally or singularly, and independent
of our sense and intellect. The second relates to categories fashioned
by us, to which there is no corresponding natural unity.
There is scope, then, for debating whether the original characterization of
realism and anti-realism was adequate. Once it has been settled what the
preferred form of realism should be, however, and so long as the statement of
anti-realism preserves univocality, then the opposition will indeed be between
contradictories. In summary, I take realism to be the thesis that with respect
to some significant specifiable core the world and its basic structure are mindindependent,
and take anti-realism to be the denial of this. What, now, of
premisses (2) and (3), each of which links the metaphysical antecedent to the
existence of God? The move from realism to theism is explored in arguments
from contingency or order to the existence of a first cause of existence or of
design. Such arguments begin, as in Aquinas’s quinque viae, with observation
of some fact or facts taken to be generally evident in experience. Recall that in
introducing the first way Aquinas writes of how ‘it is certain, and evident to
our senses, that in the world some things are in process of change’. Presenting
the second he writes that ‘in the world of sensible things we find there is an
order of efficient causes’. Introducing the third he says that ‘we find in nature
things that are possible to be and not to be’. Presenting the fourth he notes
that ‘among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble, and
the like’. Finally, in giving the fifth way he writes of how ‘we see that things
which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end’ (my emphasis). 11