Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons Flashcards
Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons - Analytic statements
A statement of definition, tells us how words are being used. Does not need any evidence to support it.
Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons - Synthetic statements
Adds something to our knowledge, and experience can be used to support it
Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons - Cognitive and non-cognitive uses of language
> Cognitive - involves things that can be known and can be either true or false
Non-cognitive - not about things that can be known, but instead work in other ways
There are questions about whether religious statements should be understood as cognitive or non-cognitive
Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons - Logical positivism
> Began in early 20th century - discussions among the Vienna Circle
The VC wanted to clarify the kinds of statements that have meaning and the kinds which are ‘empty’
LP’s presented a challenge to religious believers by claiming that religious language isn’t true or false but meaningless
Ayer led the challenge in his book ‘Laguage, Truth, and Logic’ (1936)
A proposition is only meaningful if it is analytic or can be tested by one of the 5 senses (verification principle)
Religious language is dismissed as meaningless by LP’s as claims such as ‘God made the world’ can’t be tested empirically and aren’t analytic
Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons - LP’s verification principle
> Dismissed by many because it fails its own test
Classes more than just religious statements as meaningless
Weak versions of the VP have been suggested
Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons - Wittgenstein and language games
> Aimed to work out the limits of what can be known, conceptualised, and expressed in language
Eplored ways in which language can have meaning
Earlier work inspired the VC
We can think about how language can be meaningful if we think of it using the analogy of a game
Language is meaningful to people who use it when they are participating in a ‘language game’
A ‘lebensform’ or ‘form of life’ is a context in which language might be used - has meaning in context
Within the lebensform there are rules of language
Meaning is subjective
RL can be meaningful to those in the lebensform of religion
Religious language could be non-cognitive
Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons - Flew and the falsification principle
> Presented at a symposium in Oxford in a paper called theology and falsification
Wanted to take the debate about the meaningfulness of language into new territory
Used a parable by John Wisdom to illustrate his argument - a sceptic and a believer have different beliefs about a gardener who visits a clearing in a jungle because the gardener can’t be detected using the five senses
Nothing the sceptic offers against the existence of the gardener will convince the believer who keeps qualifying his statements about the characteristics of the gardener
Religious believers believe in the same way - refusing to accept counter-evidence
Religious truth claims end with a ‘death of a thousand qualifications’
Statement must be falsifiable for it to be meaningful
Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons - Responses to Flew
> Hare - bliks - a way of framing and understanding the world - theism is unfalsifiable but so is atheism
Hare - story of paranoid ‘lunatic’ to show that we all have subjective ways of viewing the world
Religious belief and claims are non-cognitive expressions of preference
Mitchell - commitments to trust even when the evidence is ambiguous or lacking
Mitchell - Story of Partisan in wartime - sometimes it is necessary to have faith
Mitchell - Religious language is cognitive even if people don’t have readily available facts to support their beliefs
Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons - Comparing Wittgenstein with Aquinas
Both take the position that does not dismiss the possibility that religious language has meaning
>Aquinas - tackled issues raised in 13th-century of how RL could be meaningful without making God too small
>Aquinas - thinking in terms of analogy
>Aquinas - cognitve approach to religious language
>Wittgenstein - tackled issues raised in 20th-century of whether RL could be meaningful without being empirically verifiable
>Wittgenstein - thinking in terms of language games
>Wittgenstein - non-cognitive approach to RL
Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons - Influence of non-cognitive approaches on the interpretation of sacred texts
> Instead of interpreting the Bible as factual accounts it’s more useful to understand them in other ways (tools for learning, personal decision etc)
Bultmann - demythologising the Bible
Others - seeing the Bible in other non-cognitive ways, emphasising the decisions and attitudes people might take in their lives
Books such as ‘Honest to God’ and ‘The Myth of God Incarnate’ caused controversy with beliefs that Jesus as God incarnate don’t need to be understood as factually true
Cognitive approaches continue to be more popular amongst Christians
