Consider two philosophers of religion, Teo and Ateo, who are having a disagreement about the existence of God. Suppose Ateo gives an argument against the possibility of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent being... and suppose that, surprisingly, Teo concedes : « that's true, but God still exists, it's just that he isn't omnipotent ». Ateo is dissatisfied with this move : he says Teo is changing the subject and turning the dispute into a verbal, not a genuine, disagreement.

The classical solution to this problem is to say that, in order to make the debate about God's existence a genuine debate, we need a shared « concept » of God (Morris 1991; Michon 2006; Schmitt 2013).

This solution is too narrow : for suppose that « God », instead of a description, were a proper name, in the sense of a Kripkean direct reference theory (Alston 1988), then the disagreement between Teo and Ateo could still be genuine without there being a shared « sense » or « concept » – this is so because there would still be a shared « reference-fixing mechanism » (though, in that case, it would not be a concept).

In neutral terms, then, the preliminary question for Teo and Ateo is : what could count as a shared reference-fixer for the word « God »?

In this presentation, I will defend that the word « God » is systematically ambiguous between two reference-fixers : one is a Kripkean reference-fixer, which is historically specific to the Abrahamic religions (equivalent to the name « Yahve ») ; the other one – the one relevant for philosophy as a universal enquiry – has to be fixed through the fundamental descriptive concepts of human religious cognition, as they are uncovered by the Cognitive Sciences of Religion (Barrett 2012; Boyer 2015).

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Alston, William P. 1988. “Referring to God.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 113–28.

Barrett, Justin L. 2012. Born Believers : The Science of Children's Religious Belief. New York: Free Press.

Boyer, Pascal. 2015. Et l'homme créa les dieux: comment expliquer la religion.

Michon, Cyrille. 2006. “Il nous faut bien un concept de Dieu.” Critique 704705 (1): 92–104. https://doi.org/10.3917/criti.704.0092.

Morris, Thomas V. 1991. Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology. Contours of Christian Philosophy. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.

Schmitt, Yann. 2013. Qu'est-ce qu'un Dieu? Chemins philosophiques. Paris: J. Vrin.