ABSTRACT

This chapter considers that the ignorance about divine predicate schemas argument against the realist hope is the product of some confusion. The route into epistemic anti-realism dwells on the indeterminacy of the language when talking about God. The chapter objects to the way in which the indeterminacy argument carves up the distinctions between univocal/analogical and equivocal applications of the same word. It offers an alternative way to delineate these categories. It then uses alternative distinctions to defend and even recommend anthropomorphic talk about God. So, in religious contexts, characterizations of God need not be based on a study of the inner configurations of the divine, or by reading off directly from divine behaviour. The epistemic anti-realist claims that words used of not-God have an indeterminately different meaning from those same words used of God. God's nature is radically dissimilar from the nature of anything that is not-God.