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Minds, Persons and the Unthinkable
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
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In a series of lectures on minds and persons, I am going to take advantage of the occasion to ask what kind of person should one be if one has a philosophical mind. I ask the question because it is itself a philosophically contentious issue. Indeed, I shall be offering answers in a climate which is generally hostile to them. I want to aise the issue in three contexts: first, in relation to questions which have been treated epistemologically, but which I think belong to logic; second in relation to miracles; and third in relation to moral convictions. I shall spend most of my time on the first context.
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References
1 See‘On Continuity’ in Discussions of Wittgenstein (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970)Google Scholar. Rhees is not defending the notion of ‘the philosophical mind’ I am propounding. His sympathies are with the comments I make in the next paragraph.
2 For further discussion see Rhees, Rush, Wittgenstein's On Certainty, Phillips, D. Z. (ed.) (Basil Blackwell 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 SeeRhees, Rush, ‘Unanswerable Questions’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. XL (1966)Google Scholar, a symposium with Renford Bambrough. A discussion of the response to scepticism in these terms was the basis of my Introducing Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996)Google Scholar, where I try to show how this issue applies to every branch of philosophy.
4 In attempting to do so, I shall draw on a discussion of this topic at the 1992 Claremont Conference on the Philosophy of Religion surrounding a paper by Winch, Peter on that occasion called, ‘Asking Too Many Questions’, published in Philosophy and the Grammar of Religious Belief, Tessin, Timothy and von der Ruhr, Mario (eds.) (Basingstoke: Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, 1995)Google Scholar.
5 This paragraph repeats, more or less, one found in ’Voices in Discussion’ in Philosophy and the Grammar of Religious Belief.
6 I was stimulated to think further about such responses by papers read at a Research Colloquium in October 1997 (now published as Identity and Change in the Christian Tradition, Sarot, Marcel and van den Brink, Gijsbert (eds.) (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999Google Scholar)) and by informal discussions of my introduction to the Plenary Session of the Colloquium, especially a discussion with Peter Helm. The first version of this paper was written in 1997.
7 I owe this example to Cavell, Stanley, The Claim of Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.
8 Gaita, Raimond, A Common Humanity (Melbourne, Australia: Text Publishing, 1999), 172Google Scholar.
9 ibid., 174.
10 These arguments are found in Beardsmore, R. W., ‘Hume and the Miraculous’ in Religion and Hume's Legacy, Phillips, D. Z. and Tessin, Timothy (eds.) (Basingstoke: Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, 1999)Google Scholar.
11 SeeHolland, R. F., ‘The Miraculous’ in Against Empiricism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980Google Scholar); ‘Lusus Naturae’ in Wittgenstein: Attention to Particulars: Essays in Honour of Rush Rhees, Phillips, D. Z. and Winch, Peter (eds.) (London: Macmillan, 1989CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and ‘Naturalism and Preternatural Change’ in Values and Understanding: Essays for Peter Winch, Gaita, Raimond (ed.) (London: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar. See also Phillips, D. Z., ‘Miracles and Open-Door Epistemology’, Scottish Journal of Religious Studies (1993)Google Scholar.
12 See Beardsmore, op. cit., 142–3.
13 The importance of emphasising this point was brought home to me by a discussion of a version of this paper at a Philosophy Research Colloquium at Swansea in November 1997.
14 For a detailed discussion of these points see Winch, Peter, ‘Ceasing to Exist’ in Trying to Make Sense (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987)Google Scholar. See also Phillips, D. Z., ‘Waiting for the Vanishing Shed’, in Wittgenstein and Religion, Basingstoke: Macmillan 1993CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Rhees, Rush, ‘Miracles’ in Rush Rhees, On Religion and Philosophy, Phillips, D. Z., assisted by von der Ruhr, Mario (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 326Google Scholar.
16 See Rhees, ibid.
17 Rhees and Winch emphasize this point.
18 See‘On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power’ in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Theological Writings, Chadwick, Henry (ed.) (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1956)Google Scholar.
19 See Winch, ‘Asking Too Many Questions’.
20 Gaita, opcit., 177.
21 ibid., 182–3.
22 ibid., 181.