★Religious Language: 20th Century Perspectives and Philosophical Comparisons

empirical

available to be experienced by the five senses

cognitive

• having a factual quality that is available to knowledge, where words are labels for things in the world

• cognitive uses of language involve things that can be known and that could either be true or false

non-cognitive

• not having a factual quality that is available to knowledge; words are tools used to achieve something rather than labels for things

• non-cognitive uses of language are not about things that can be known, but instead work in other ways

• for example, they might express emotions, give commands or make associations

logical positivism

• a movement that claimed that assertions have to be capable of being tested empirically if they are to be meaningful

• logical positivism began in the early 20th century, with discussions amongst the Vienna Circle

• the Vienna Circle wanted to clarify the kinds of statements that have meaning and the kinds which only sound meaningful but are in fact ‘empty’

• the logical positivists presented a challenge to religious believers by claiming that religious language is not true or false but meaningless

• AJ Ayer led the challenge in his book ‘Language, Truth and Logic’

verification

providing evidence to determine that something is true

falsification

providing evidence to determine that something is false

analytic statement

a statement of definition; it tells us how words are being used. it does not need any experience to support it e.g. 2+2=4

synthetic statement

adds something to our knowledge, and experience can be used to support it e.g. it is raining

verification principle

• according to logical positivists, a proposition is only meaningful if it is analytic, or if it is capable of being tested using the five senses (empirical testing). this rule is known as the verification principle

• religious language is dismissed as meaningless because logical positivists because claims such as ‘God made the world’ cannot be tested empirically, and are not analytic

criticism of the verification principle

• many people reject the verification principle because it fails its own test - it cannot be tested for meaningfulness using the five senses

• the verification principle classifies as meaningless a lot more than religious language - ethical statements, for example, cannot be verified empirically

• weak versions of the verification principle have been suggested

Wittgenstein and language games

• Ludwig Wittgenstein was a 20th century philosopher who aimed to work out the limits of what can be known, conceptualised and expressed in language

• he explored the ways in which language can have meaning

• his earlier work inspired the Vienna Circle

• Wittgenstein thought that we can understand how language can be meaningful if we think of using the analogy of a game

• language is meaningful to people who use it when they are participating in a shared ‘language game’ such as chess or a foreign language

Lebensform

• a Lebensform or ‘form of life’ is a context in which language might be used. language has meaning in a context, and people outside that context might not understand it to easily

• within the Lebensform, there are rules for language usage and everyone understands them

• propositions are not simply meaningful or meaningless to everyone, they can be meaningful to some but not to others - meaning is subjective

• religious language can therefore be meaningful to those who are in the Lebensform of religion, even if it is meaningless to those outside it

• later thinkers have adopted aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought to suggest that language could be non-cognitive

Flew and the falsification principle: parable of the gardener

• Flew used a parable by John Wisdom to illustrate his argument

• a Sceptic and a Believer have different views about the existence of a gardener who visits a clearing in a jungle, because the gardener cannot be detected using the five sense

• nothing the Sceptic offers as evidence against the existence of the gardener will convince the Believer, who keeps qualifying his statements about the characteristics of the invisible gardener to accommodate each challenge

• Flew argues that religious believers behave in the same way, refusing to accept any counter-evidence to their claims about God

• Flew says that religious truth claims end with a ‘death by a thousand qualifications’. the assertions are modified until they assert nothing

• he says that a statement must be, in principle, falsification if it i to be meaningful. we have to know what evidence, if any, would count against our assertions if they are to be meaningful assertions at all

criticism of Flew and the falsification principle

• the problem of evil: religious believers can doubt the existence of God through the problem of evil, but choose to continue believing in God. hence, religious believers can falsify their beliefs. therefore, religious language can be meaningful cognitively

responses to Flew: RM Hare - parable of the paranoid lunatic

• RM Hare responded to Flew by saying that we all have unfalsifiable ‘bliks’. ‘blik’ is a word he made up to mean a way of framing and understanding the world. theism is unfalsifiable but so is atheism

• Hare gave a story of a paranoid lunatic who believes his professor is going to murder him in order to illustrate his argument and show that we all have subjective ways or understanding the world

• Hare is suggesting that religious belief and religious claims are non-cognitive expressions of preference

• non-cognitively meaningful

responses to Flew: Basil Mitchell - parable of the stranger

• Basil Mitchell responded to Flew by saying that we have to make commitments to trust and believe in things even when the evidence is ambiguous or lacking

• Mitchell told a story of a partisan in wartime to illustrate his point and show that sometimes it is necessary to have faith despite the existence of some counter-evidence

• Mitchell argues that religious language is cognitive even if it is possible to not have readily available facts to support their beliefs

• cognitively meaningful

Hick - parable of the celestial city

• two men are travelling together along a road. one of them believes that it leads to the Celestial City, the other that it leads nowhere

• but since this is the only road there is, both must travel it. neither has been this way before. therefore, neither is able to say what they will find around each corner

• during their journey, they meet with moments of refreshment and delight and with moments of hardship and danger

• all the time one of them thinks of his journey as a pilgrimage to the Celestial City. the other, however, believes none of this, and sees their journey as an unavoidable and aimless ramble

• yet, when they turn the last corner, it will be apparent that one of them has been right all the time and the other wrong

• eschatological verification

• cognitively meaningful

comparing Wittgenstein with Aquinas

• Wittgenstein and Aquinas are similar in that they are both addressing problems of religious language

• both take a position that does not dismiss the possibility that religious language has meaning

• Aquinas tackled issues raised in the 13th century of how religious language could be meaningful without making God too small

• Aquinas proposed thinking in terms of analogy

• Aquinas took a cognitive approach to religious language, believing that religious refers to factual truth

• Wittgenstein tackled issues in the 20th century of whether religious language could be meaningful without being empirically verifiable

• Wittgenstein proposed thinking in terms of language games

• Wittgenstein took a more non-cognitive approach to religious language, concentrating on how it is used in context

the influence of non-cognitive approaches to religious language on the interpretation of sacred texts

• non-cognitive approaches to religious texts became more popular in the 20th century

• they suggest that instead of interpreting texts such as the Bible as factual, historical accounts, it is more helpful to understand them in other ways, as tools for learning and coming to a personal decision about spiritual matters

• Rudolf Bultmann suggested demythologising the Bible, by which he meant looking past stories with magical or miraculous content and seeing the Bible as calling people to make a personal decision

• other thinkers have suggested seeing the Bible in other non-cognitive ways, emphasising the decisions and attitudes people might take in their lives

• cognitive approaches to biblical texts have continued to be more popular amongst Christians than non-cognitive approaches

To what extent can Wittgenstein’s theory of language games help to resolve the issues raised by religious language?

‘A non-cognitive approach to religious language provides valuable insights into the interpretation of religious texts’ Discuss