Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

78 J.J. Haldane
do not exist unless and until, and only so far as, they are ‘delineated’ by some
classificatory scheme.
There are some things for which it is plausible to make this claim. Imagine,
for example, an artist, ‘Graphico’, who chooses to depict in his work only
objects within certain arbitrary ranges of shapes, sizes, sources and surface
textures. Perhaps he operates other criteria also, so that his work portrays a
very wide variety of items that are not otherwise significantly related to one
another. Engaged by his unifying vision we might then refer to the depicted
objects – pieces of stone, bundles of leaves, table tops, patches of grass, cloud
formations, sections of human skin, etc. – as ‘Graphics’. Here, then, we are in
the position of being able to say that ‘Graphics’ do not exist independently
of human beings. We can be anti-realists about ‘Graphics’; but, of course,
what we mean by this is that they do not exist as Graphics independently of
our classification. This identity is an artefact of human interests, in particular
those of Graphico and his admirers; and we might add, therefore, ‘but of
course the things in question may, and in most cases do, have a prior identity
that is not of our making, a mind-independent nature’. What the metaphysical
anti-realist maintains is that there are no such prior natures; everything
is a practical or theoretical artefact in one way or another. Alpha particles,
beech trees, cats, diphtheria, electrons, fish, et cetera ad infinitum, are all in
this philosophical sense ‘mind-dependent’ entities.
This is what Smart and I are united in opposing. 1 Contemporary antirealism
comes in a variety of forms many of which make their claims about
mind-dependence not in terms of concepts but in terms of truth. That is to
say they hold that what ‘depends on us’ is whether something is true or not;
truth being understood epistemologically, i.e. in terms of what is knowable
through empirical confirmation or reasoning. A typical version of this formulation
of anti-realism might have it that a claim is true if and only if it is, or
can be, confirmed. Truth, therefore, is immanent within and not transcendent
of actual and potential enquiry. Setting aside what are certainly important
issues about how anti-realism is most aptly expressed, and related issues about
the best formulations of realism, Smart and I maintain that the world and
truth are not in general of our making, and further hold that reality is a
possible object of practical, scientific and philosophical investigation.
Set against this background of significant agreement, however, is our
opposition over the question of whether there is a God; and this difference is
made more interesting, I believe, by the fact that we would each connect our
realism with our perspective on the theism/atheism issue. Smart has made
clear his view that understanding of the world as it is in itself does not call for
and indeed is at odds with theism. My belief, by contrast, is that reflection on
various matters, including the existence of the world and of minds that can
comprehend, appreciate and act within it, leads to the conclusion that there is