Wittgenstein's Language Games Flashcards
What did Wittgenstein say about Ayer and Flew?
They misunderstood religious language.
How did Wittgenstein believe words get their meaning?
Through social reality.
What is social reality?
Social reality is the set off different types of social interaction that exist.
What is every type of social interaction like and why?
A game, it follows rules.
How does this relate to religious language?
Religious language is its own game, meaningful to those who know the rules and are playing the game. It’s not meaningful to those who play the science game.
What is the critique of Wittgenstein which includes science and religious language?
There is an argument that science could potentially prove god’s existence- polkinghorne and swinbourne’s modern teleological arguments.
What is the other critique of Wittgenstein?
Sometimes accused of reducing religion meaning down to faith, unjustifiably excluding the role that religious reason and natural theology play in Christian belief and meaning.
further evaluation
most scientists would argue there is no scientific evidence for god, polkinghorne is not doing genuine science when he poses god as an explanation for the fine tuning of the universe. it is a different game and therefore there isn’t an issue with Wittgenstein’s argument.
How can we use Aquinas to criticise Wittgenstein?
Aquinas didn’t write his cosmological argument to express participation in a social game, he clearly believes that god exists in a scientific sense, we can say he isn’t scientifically correct but we can’t say that he doesn’t believe god exists in a scientific sense. Aquinas would defend the cognitivism of religious language against Wittgenstein.
How can we defend Wittgenstein against the Aquinas critique?
We can argue that Aquinas actually had a religious interpretation of reality. He may have thought he was describing reality with his cosmological argument but arguably that was just the religious view of reality within the religious game.
Why would the scientific language nit recognise Aquinas?
Scientific language wouldn’t recognise the concepts Aquinas put forward like “necessary being”
