James Baillie

John Hick’s theory of religious pluralism posits the same ineffable spiritual reality, ‘the Real,’ as the source of all major religious traditions. He offers pluralism as the best explanation of salvific parity, the thesis that these religions are equally effective vehicles for salvation. Most criticisms of Hick have focused on the explanans, arguing that the Real cannot play any explanatory role due to its ineffability. I raise two difficulties for the explanandum, the thesis of salvific parity. I call these the problems of bad religion and good secularism.

This self-contained anthology collects some of the most influential primary source contributions to contemporary analytic philosophy, together with introductions and commentaries for each selection. It traces the development of a few central themes in analytic philosophy, in sufficient detail—from philosophy of mind and language, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical logic. Frege, Russell, Moore. Wittgenstein. Logical Empiricism. Ordinary Language Philosophy. Quine. Truth, Meaning, and Interpretation. Reference and Essence. For anyone interested in Analytic Philosophy.

I examine Derek Parfit's claim that it doesn't matter whether he survives in the future, if someone survives who is psychologically connected to him by “Relation R.” Thus, were his body to perish and be replaced by an exact duplicate, both physically and psychologically identical to him, this would be just as good as “ordinary” survival. Parfit takes the corollary view that replacement of loved ones by exact duplicates is no loss. In contrast, Peter Unger argues that we place nontransferable value in the lives of individual persons. I argue that the question of the preferability of Relation R over identity is unanswerable at present, as such hypothetical situations are too far removed from our experience to allow any reliable responses. I contrast cases involving artifacts, where we can make informed judgments concerning whether a given object's value would be transferred to a duplicate.