Religious Language - Wittgenstein Flashcards
religious language
propositions like ‘god created the world’ or concepts like ‘heaven’ or ‘sin’
- ritual and emotional and ethical language use may have a different function
what is the problem of religious language for abrahamic religions
- problem for Abrahamic religions as it can undermine them
- they proclaim truths on God in written texts and oral teachings –> speech on God is essential to personal religious faith and organised celebration in these traditions
- without solution to problem of RL, speech on God is questioned –> if you cannot speak about b
main arguments for and against the religious language debate
DOES RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE MEAN ANYTHING
- for: old tradition of the religious that you can speak/write about God as he is a reality
- Against: logical positivists, statements about God have no meaning because they dont relate to anything that is real
cognitive language (and relation to meaning)
- communicates knowledge and facts
- correspondence theory of truth
- bivalent: true or false
- ‘the door is in the corner’ –> factual belief that can be known as true or false
- determines meaningfulness of a statement (more cog more meaning)
non cognitive language
- can be interpreted in others ways
- symbols, metaphors, non-literal
- coherence theory of truth
- non bivalent, could be true or false
- I believe in love, expression of value I hold not known
Summarise a theory of meaning
- constituent parts of a sentence needs to be recognisable for the sentence to be meaningful
- meaningfulness needs two conditions: words are menaingful and are combined in ways that follow certain rules (like the rules of grammar)
- also need to try and communicate something –> cannot be empty of significance, needs to be clearly communicating something
religious language and the metaphysical
- general interpretations of life
- claims on the supernatural: cannot be accounted for by ordinary metaphysical world
- cannot be explained with natural language, science or empirical facts (metaphysics)
challenges with religious language
- religious propositions are often contradictory or paradoxical –> does it means claims like ‘God is omnipotent’ are incoherent and meaningless
- God is transcendent: God is a concept beyond our understanding so our language is inadequate for describing him
- how can we talk about God anthropomorphically if he is a being out of space and time
- how do we interpret uses of religious language –> is it literal or is there another layer of faith
early wittgenstein views on language
- philosophical problems would be solved if the language people used was more precise and limited to statements for which there could be evidence
- language is a picture to the world –> words let us make pictures of facts
- whatever can be shows to correspond to some observable reality cannot be meaningfully spoken about
- approach to language presented as precise but narrowly defined tool for describing the phenomenal world (world we experience)
- ‘the world is all that is the case’
problems with lang:
1. we dont know what we mean, so we confuse others
2. people may take what we mean too literally
what parts of religious language are non cog
- truth claims
- concepts
- supernatural and metaphysics –> do not correspond in reality
what parts of religious language are cognitive
- religious facts
- being able to prove truth claims (if i die then i can know if there is a god)
is witt work cog or noncog
- meaningful lang is cog
- cognitive: believes it should be limtied to statements with evidence
discuss ‘the world is all that is the case’ (early Witt on religious lang)
- all we can talk about is what we can see
- metaphysics is disregarded by witt as we cannot meaningfully talk about it
- this is because they extend beyond the world
- rel lang is non cog, problematic and meaningless
- BUT could have different meaning as COHERENT truth
should we discuss the mystical parts of life
yes –> easier to communicate, cannot affect us as not physical, words are meaningless
- words are not the way to encounter metaP
- gods transcendence is supported by religion
- importance of silence in religion: ‘be still and know that I am god’ in psalms
- early witt against rel texts
no –> limits humans, robotic communications is cognitive fact but loses value, words signpost to the point of metaphysics
- can get new way of thinking with each interpretation
late wittgenstein
- meaningful language is non cognitive
- meaning of language is found in the way it is used and language is a tool for getting something done
- this leads to an internalist account of meaning –> meaning lies in use, not a reference to some external existing entity
- need to view it in context to see which is correct
- we have to pay attention to how religious language functions, not dismiss it as bogus, or outdated science
language games and witt
- language has meaning has a meaning in a particular social context, and each context is governed by a set of rules; in the same way that different games are governed by different rules
- language only makes sense when you understand the purpose of it
- rules for the use of language or not right or wrong, but are useful for the job you intend them to do
- you cannot criticise other people’s use of language without understanding the full intention, context and meaning of that use
language games and rel language
- rel lang is its own language game, with rules such as praying, praising, extolling, blessing, cursing
- contains a multiplicity of language games within its own context, language of believing community
- rel lang regulates the believers life, but can be used or left alone –> I believe in God and I do not believe in God are not contradictory
- not like scientific lang, using evidence is not part of the game –> verification and falsification principle are irrelevant
- their mistake is to take the language game of science and apply to religion
- religious language –> meaningful to those who want to use that game by immersing themselves in the religious ‘form of life’
how do we understand religious language through witt’s language games
- we should not try to separate the meaning of religious beliefs from the community of people who use them and live by them
- ‘God’ is therefore not to be understood as a scientific hypothesis about the possible existence of a being, but a word used within the religious community to denote the creative power within everything
- god is what god means for religious peple
