Religious language

Religious Language.

Introduction.1) The Problem:• Wittgenstein: ‘where of we cannot know, therefore we

cannot speak’.• Part of the Vienna Circle.• Became known as the ‘debate’/’problem’.• Ayer: ‘no sentence which describes the nature of a

transcendent God can possess any literal significance’. • He claims statements such as ‘God is loving and powerful’

cannot be analytically or synthetically verified and cannot therefore be used and are meaningless because of the conclusions of the Vienna Circle.

2) The debate:• Religious Language is not concerned with

whether or not God exists, or what God is.• It is solely concerned with working out whether

or not religious language means anything because of the nature of the sentences.

• Theists claim God is a reality and can therefore speak of him.

VS.• The Logical Positives claim that statements

about God have no meaning because they don’t relate to anything that is real.

3) Cognitive vs. Non-cognitive:• A major philosophical distinction in language is made

between language which expresses knowledge and language which doesn’t.

• Cognitive language expresses facts and knowledge.• Non-cognitive language expresses meta-physical concepts

(feelings/colours) which we can never empirically prove.• Critics of religion might emphasis the non-cognitive nature

of much religious language.

4) Summary:• Cognitive language conveys facts i.e. things that we can

know or prove.• Non-cognitive language conveys information that is not

factual i.e. emotion, feeling and metaphysical claims.

Logical Positives (Ayer)1) Logical Positives:• A group of philosophers concerned with the truth

contained in the statements that we make (in other words; do they mean anything?)

• Includes Ayer, who claims any statement that has no proof must be non-cognitive.

2) Quote:• ‘a statement which cannot be conclusively verified

cannot be verified at all’.

3) The argument:• ‘Verification’ – checking a statement to see if it is true.• The Verification Principle states that ‘a statement which

cannot be conclusively verified … is simply devoid of meaning’.

• Ayer claims this as statements can only be meaningful if they can be demonstrated, and these can be divided into two types:• 1) Analytic propositions; true by definition, either

because (a) this is required by the definition of used words or (b) it is mathematically certain.

• 2) Synthetic propositions; true by confirmation of senses.

• Ayer thought that religious claims are non-cognitive and impossible to verify, so they are meaningless. He does not say that they are just false; ‘it is more that they cannot really tell us anything at all’.

4) Summary:• Religious language is meaningless because they are

not:• (A) Verification: uses analytic propositions –

statements that contain all the information within the statement that we need to verify them.

• (B) Verification in Principle: uses synthetic propositions – statements that can be confirmed through the use of the sense (i.e. by resource to empirical data).

Ayer’s Verification1) Ayer – Verification:• 1910-89 (still very influential).• Asks if we can prove theists statements.• If yes, must use empirical evidence to make a

statement meaningful (a scientist can prove water boils at 100C).

• States there are two ways to prove a statement is meaningful:• 1) Verification: proving it analytically,

making it empirically testable.• 2) Verification in Principle: proving it

synthetically, can think of a way to prove statements.

2) Verification in philosophy:• Ayer claims religious statements as

propositions are pointless – e.g. Anselm’s claim that God is ‘a being to which nothing greater can be conceived’.

• Because to be a proposition, it must propose something that you can show to be true/false.

• As you cannot do this for religious language, it is meaningless e.g. – ‘God is the unmoved mover’ (Aquinas) is untestable.

• ‘the proposition that he exists is not an empirical hypothesis’.

• His two ways lead to strong/weak verification.

3) Strong Verification/Verification:• An assertion only has meaning if it can be verified according to

empirical information/facts.

4) Weak Verification/Verification in Principle:• States that for an assertion to be true, you need to state what kind

of evidence would verify its contents (think of a way to prove it).• It therefore simply requires that we state what kind of evidence

would be enough to make a statement meaningful.

5) Quotes from anthology:• ‘for if assertions that there is a God is nonsensical, then the atheist

assertion that there is no God is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted. And this means that agnosticism also is ruled out’.

• ‘the term ‘God’ is a metaphysical term. And if ‘God’ is a metaphysical term, then it cannot even be probable that God exists. For to say that ‘God exists’ is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be proven either true or false. And by the same criteria, no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent God can possess any literal significance’.

MeaninglessView 1

Flews' Falsification Meaningless1) Explanation:• Inverse of verification (works the other way – do they

make sense)• Reason – Flew claimed any positive claim we make

also assumes that we deny its negation (once you say something is correct, you prove its not wrong).

• E.g. – ‘school work is fun’ = ‘school work is not not fun’.

• Language is only meaningful if we can conceive of some evidence which might count against it. It’s only meaningful to say that school work is fun if students show contradictory evidence – e.g. note taking is boring.

• The problem with ‘God talk’ is that it often implies that it could never be falsified (Ayer claims it is ‘non-cognitive’).

2) More detail:• ‘in order to say something which may possible be

true, we must say something which may possible be false’.

• Religious Language is not open to be falsified.• A statement is only meaningful if we accept that

there is evidence that may falsify it.• The statement is not factual if it cannot be falsified

using sense experience.• ‘…if there is nothing which a putative (to exist)

assertion denies then there is nothing which it asserts either’.

3) Criticises:• John Wisdom’s Parable of the Gardener.• Claims it is meaningless; never prove there is no

gardener and therefore no God.

4) Continues:• A statement is also meaningless if we refuse to allow it

to be falsified.• There is evidence that disproves God’s existence;

Problem of evil (the sheer amount of evil disproves God).

• Therefore, God was falsified the moment a child died and still theists will not accept the evidence that allows statements such as ‘God is real’ to be falsified.

• The sentence ‘God is love’ is ‘qualified’ to be wrong ever time someone suffers.

• ‘A death by a thousand qualifications’.

5) Summary:• Take – ‘school work is fun’ – get the inverse; ‘school is

not not fun’.• What makes them meaningful is proving or disproving

the inverse.• The inverse of God is ‘God is not not real’ which is not

testable.• The inverse of God is ‘God is not not all powerful’ which

is falsifiable by the problem of evil which makes the inverse make sense but incorrect.

View 2

MeaningfulHick’s EschatologicalVerification:

Explanation:• Supports that Religious Language is meaningful.• Talk of God might be verifiable in principle.• Convincing evidence is not apparent now, but it

could be in the future.• The whole idea of final judgment implies God will

be seen and known.• Hick calls this future possibility ‘eschatological

verification’.

MeaningfulSwinburne:Explanation:• Argues that there are propositions which no-one knows how

to verify but are still meaningful.• He gives the example of toys which come out of their

cupboard at night and dance around, then returning without a trace.

• No observation could ever establish this as true but it’s not meaningless as it makes sense.

• ‘We can never gather the evidence required to falsify the statement’.

• According to Flew’s Falsification Principle; that analogy shouldn’t make sense but it does

• Fails to disprove Ayer’s Strong Verification – just look up definition of a toy (which will include unmoving).

Brian Davies: Meaningful

Explanation:• The Verification Principle might contradict itself.• The claim that a statement is only meaningful if it can be verified

analytically or synthetically cannot itself be verified analytically or synthetically as Ayer shows his own argument to be meaningless.

• Is the Verification Principle then meaningless?

Basil Mitchell: Meaningful

Explanation:• Objected to the idea that religious claims are groundless ‘bliks’.• They are grounded in some facts if not conclusively verified.• Theists do allow evidence to stand against what they believe. They recognises for example the Problem of evil, which

claims they don’t recognise these problems but they do as they write theodicies.• However, it claims they don’t allow that belief can or should be verified in a simple manner.• Parable of a man claiming to be the leader of a ‘resistance movement’ – it seems that he supports the fight but

sometimes seems to help the enemy.• One could choose to trust him despite the contrary evidence. So with God, one could trust in God while recognising the

contrary evidence; that he allows evil and suffering or disbelief.

Ayer FlewHick If of ‘literal significance’ as it

can be verified when you reach heaven/hell

Cannot falsify ‘I will meet God after death’ as can think of a way; dying.

Swinburne Says there are some statement you can’t verify (toy analogy) but it still makes sense.

His analogy shouldn't make sense as can’t falsify it but it does.

Davies Verification Principle contradicts itself – cannot analytically or synthetically verify meaningfulness.

Falsification in Principle is not up to analytical/synthetically scrutiny – uses unprovable language.

Mitchell Definition of faith is belief without evidence (Verification in Principle) and therefore you can still believe.

Do recognise problem of evil but continue to believe as have they faith it has purpose.

MeaningfulR. Hare(alternative view):

Explanation:• When believers use religious language, they are using it in a

special way.• This is a ‘blik’ – a unique way of seeing the world, which cannot be

proven true or false.• Religious believers use religious language to express beliefs that

are important to them and which make a difference to their lives that can be empirically observed.

• Religious language can be meaningful because it expresses an intention to follow a certain code of conduct.

Meaningful

1) The problem:• Aquinas – there are two types of

language:• Equivocal and univocal language.

2) Equivocal language• Words mean different things in

different situations.• Gay can mean two things – ‘happy’

or ‘homosexual or ‘bad’.• Problem: if we say that ‘God is good’,

it means something completely different from any other ‘good’ then God would be unintelligible/we couldn’t understand him.

• Aquinas argues that we cannot speak of God equivocally as philosophers use un-understandable words to explain things (to confuse the situation).

3) Univocal Language• Means the same thing in all situations.• E.g. – black cat, black hat, black mat; black means the same thing.• Problem: if we say ‘that lesson was good’, then ‘good’ means something

different from saying ‘God is good’, since God is perfect and infinite.• He argues we cannot speak of God univocally.

4) Solution:• Must use religious language that is analogy based as it doesn’t need

verifying or falsifying.

5) Argument:• Religious language is analogy based – it does make sense as it helps a

person compare and therefore understand the concept.• Analogies are proportional similarities which also acknowledge dissimilar

features.

6) Developed - why does he think analogies work:• We are ‘imperfect copies’ (Plato) of a perfect being (Aquinas’ 3rd way).• We are contingent on a necessary.• ‘Graduation to be found in all things’ – everything is working towards

God.• All we can use in human language to talk of God is analogy, to either

prove/disprove him – must use words.• The best way is analogical language (analogy is the use of language in one

context to understand in another)• ‘…is to all being the cause of their being goodness and every other

perfection, and this we call God’.

Analogy AquinasView 3

Continued:1) Aquinas developed:• 2 types of analogical

language:• Analogy of attribution.• Analogy of proportion.

2) Analogy of attribution:• We may speak of someone

having a ‘sickly’ look because his appearance is the result of sickness.

• Aquinas saw human attributes as a reflection of Godly attributes – since God is the cause of them.

3) Analogy of proportion:• A dog is loyal in the way in which dogs are

loyal, humans are loyal in proportion to the loyalty of a human.

• God is all-powerful as we have the human idea of power. God is proportionally more powerful than humans, so although we cannot completely understand the idea of God’s omnipotence we have an insight into Gods power because of our human experience of power.

• We can understand God’s greatness in relation to those parts of ourselves that we know to be great, e.g. – strength, love, knowledge etc.

4) Summary:• Ayer said religious language

doesn’t make sense as you can’t prove it and you should therefore not use it.

• Aquinas said all we have is religious language and we therefore have to use it.

• Look at each scholars argument and judge whether what the argument aims to prove is successful. Don’t reject because of the words used.

• Ideas about God are hard to understand and therefore the best way to understand is to write arguments that use analogies because God is the necessary and so therefore you can compare everything to him (he made it). We use an attribute about God and remember it is not literal (proportional) then people will be able to understand him.

5) Aquinas’ own example:• ‘The Ox and the Urine’.• ‘The medicine is healthy’ and ‘the urine is

healthy’.• The medicine being healthy is the cause of

the urine being healthy.• Healthy is used in similar but not quite the

same way in both cases.• Urine is only healthy as the health came

from the medicine, while the medicine is healthy in itself.

• Analogy of attribution – Urine’s health is attributed to the health of the medicine.

6) For example:• ‘God is good’.• God’s goodness is the cause of

human goodness, while God has goodness in itself.

7) Summary:• For Aquinas, religious

language is verified by the rules of analogy it is clear that analogies are meaningful and for Aquinas are the most successful way of using religious language.

• Use as essay conclusion.

MeaningfulIan Ramsey:1) Explanation:• Use as supporting Aquinas as a

modern version.• Analogical language is non-

cognitive.• It helped the theist think of

God’s goodness in greater and greater depth until eventually they have a better insight into Gods goodness, and so respond to this insight with awe and wonder.

2) Developed/how to write an analogy:• Ramsey refers to ‘models’ and

‘qualifiers’.• A ‘model’ is an analogy to help

us express something about God.

• The ‘qualifier’ is what acknowledges that we are not being literal (God isn’t a shepherd/shield/thunder (from anthology))

3) Example:• ‘God is good’ – lead by ‘John is good’

then ‘Mother Teresa is good’.• The model is the word ‘good’ (used in

all)• We have human understandings of

‘good’ and when applied to God it is a model for understanding God’s goodness.

• He states that if we want to understand God’s goodness, we need to adopt the model, to qualify it, so we realise that it is not literally what God is like.

• To the statement – ‘God is good’ – we need to add the qualifier ‘God is infinitely good’.

4) Summary:• For Ramsey, religious language

is meaningful and allows the theist not just to understand more about their faith but to act upon it.

• Use as conclusion is essay.

Strengths:

1) Paul Tillich:• Shows that religious language

allows people to have a relationship with God/understand their faith.

• Analogy allows this to develop as it ‘opens dimensions of the soul’.

3) Wittgenstein:• Analogy like religious

language is part of a ‘language game’.

2) R. Hare:• Analogies are ‘bliks’, not factual

claims but influential the way people think/unite communities.

Meaningful

Weaknesses:1) Dawkins:• Criticise Aquinas’ claim about

proportionate analogy.• Asks are humans really created ‘in

the image and likeness of God’? May be because of evolution.

• Makes the assumption that analogies work because we are graduating towards God – which is not true.

2) Hume:• Evil in our world is also an

analogy to God = then might make a perfectly good God impossible.

3) Swinburne:• Criticises Aquinas for producing an unnecessary

theory.• Claim that we can speak of God and humans as ‘good’

‘univocally’, it is just that God and humans possess goodness in different ways.

• People naturally understand the difference in ‘good’ in the context they are in unneeded theory.

What Aquinas claims

Ayer Aquinas – analogies give us an understanding of God.Ayer – how can you understand something you haven’t prove?

Flew Aquinas – use analogies to understand God’s ‘goodness’Flew – ‘goodness’ isn’t open to falsification-proven with problem of evil which the theists just ignore.

Dawkins Aquinas – all analogies/beliefs about God are proportional to God as he is necessary.Dawkins – when was it proven he was necessary? Could just be evolution.

Hume Aquinas – help us understand about God.Hume – might just help us understand about how he is bad because of evil.

Swinburne Aquinas – people get confused about contextual words.Swinburne – they don’t get confused and the theory is therefore unnecessary.

MeaningfulView 4

Myth/Metaphor and Symbol:Created by Paul Tillich

1) Terminology:• Myths – express claims

through symbols, metaphors and imagery in a story format to convey concepts that are other worldly (e.g. the creation myths and Moses living to 800 having deeper meanings).

• Metaphors – figures of speech. A word/phrase is used to denote/describe something entirely different from the object/idea with which it is usually linked in order to suggest a resemblance of analogy.

• Symbols – things that stand, or are used in the place, of other things (e.g. Jesus’ cross).

• Symbolic – a view of RL which sees the words used representing the reality to which they point, and in with they participate, but which they cannot describe

2) Tillich explained:• Stated that it is possible to speak

meaningfully about metaphysical concepts (disputing Ayer).

• RL is symbolic in nature, and has a profound effect upon humans.

• Through metaphors and symbols, RL communicates RE (e.g. links to James’ ‘ineffability’).

3) Developed:• People don’t understand that RL is closer

‘to poetry than prose [scientific text]’ as it allows us to understand thins about religion.

• Often things that a mythical, heroic and imaginable.

• Evocative of the experience it seeks to describe.

• RL is symbolic because it ‘opens up’ new levels of reality (e.g. the use of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats allows theists to understand Judgment Day).

• Symbols go beyond the external world to what Tillich describes as their ‘internal reality’ (e.g. helps the soul understand its faith).

4) Explained:• For Tillich, the purpose of RL

is to evoke the nature of God, rather than make statements of facts about God; hence RL is non-cognitive (which Ayer has claimed all along) but meaningful.

Meaningful

Strength – J. R. Randall:1) Explained:• Discusses the significance of symbols.• RL is a human activity which makes a special contribution to human

culture; symbols have shaped modern society.• As soon as a symbol has more than one meaning, it is therefore non-

cognitive.• RL has a unique function; it is able to stir emotion and bind

communities together through a common response to faith.• E.g. – psalms, prayers, parables, sermons all use stories that are not

real but remain important in uniting communities.

2) Summery of symbolic language:• Both scholars (Randall and Tillich)

state that analogies use sentences which use metaphors/symbols.

• Symbolic language is used when writing about the metaphysical ideas (theists use metaphors like poetry).

• Symbols and metaphors by definition are pointing towards other realities that are hard to understand, and help up to ‘open up dimension’.

• Both admit RL remains non-cognitive; RL does not need to be verified/falsified as a statement but as an argument (e.g. Hume and Paley).

• For Tillich, RL is about understanding faith and responding to it.

• For Randall, who agrees, but adds that RL has had a massive impact on society and continues to do so (e.g. as modern justice systems are based off the 10 commandments) and therefore, if we stop understanding RL, we stop understanding religion.

Weaknesses:

1) John Hick:• Stated that symbols can mean

different things.• Argued that the idea of

‘participating’ in a symbol is unclear as their full meanings cannot be verified to everyone.

• Take the flag example: in what sense does it really do anything? Is there really a big difference from signs?

2) William Alston:• Objected that symbolism means

that ‘there is no point in trying to determine whether the statement is true or false’ because Tillich’s symbols are not literally true.

MeaningfulView 5

Language Games:Created by Wittgenstein

1) Wittgenstein:• Wrote ‘Philosophical Investigation’.• Proposed the question that started the

debate and was a logical positive.• However, after thinking about it, solved

it with language games.

2) Function of Language:• ‘Don’t ask me for the meaning [as that

doesn’t make sense], ask for the use’ – Don’t ask for proof, meaning that arguments remain non-cognitive, but ask why it was created.

• You should focus on the use of language.

• Less concerned with the truth or falsity of language.

• Argues that words have no objective reference points; they simply reflect systems of behaviour (and therefore cannot be proven a priori).

• For example; the ‘Hail Mary’ is objective as you cant explain the meaning as it reflects your inner need to pray.

• For RL, he thought that function might be more important than meaning.

3) Language games:• He argued that all

language works through a series of ‘language games’.

• Have to know what ‘game’ the terms are participating in to then know its purpose.

• Problems with RL occur through the misunderstanding as people think words cannot be used in different language games.

• The problems are not really inherent in the words themselves.

• Meaning is all about observing convention – just like in a game. There’s a right and a wrong way to do things.

• Learn the rules of the different branches of philosophy and the language will make sense.

4) Example:• ‘The spirit of the game’ – ask what we are

using it for (would mean a different thing coming from a PE teacher rather than a RE teacher and therefore has different meanings).

• Ask the context of the word being used.• To use a word you have to first

understand how is works. You don’t verify it – you look at the context.

• Game of chess (another example) – you might be told that a piece was called a ‘king’ but without understanding the rules of chess, you could never use the piece.

• Therefore, you wouldn’t try to prove or disprove God without knowing the rules of a priori. Do not discredit arguments on their use of the word ‘God’ .

• The claim that how language is used is meaningless is unhelpful; cant play chess without knowing the rules. You cannot play chess if your opponent is playing checkers.

5) A rule which could be used::• The theory of LGs could be important

because of the connection it has with the ‘Coherence Theory’ of truth - the view that statements are true if they fit with other truths that are internally consistent.

Meaningful

Strengths:1) D. Z. Phillips:• Religion is a LG as it cannot be either

grounded or criticised in reason, it is a system all of its own.

• The ‘reality’ of God or religion does not lie in the abstract issue of whether he exists, but instead is located in the words/practices of religion.

• We will never prove/disprove God, so instead should look at religions part in society and accept that that is the era we live in.

• What God is is defined by the LG of faith (linking to Basil Mitchell).

• Just as in general games of life, we do not require an abstract justification (e.g. need no proof to say ‘my mom/dad loves me’) to work out ‘what they are all about’, so too with religion we have to take part to find out (need to try marmite to know if you like it).

• ‘if a philosopher wants to give an account of religion he must pay attention to what religious believers do and say… it is not the task of a philosopher to decide whether there is a God or not, but to ask what it means to affirm or deny the existence of God’.

2) P. Tillich:• Shows that RL allows people to

have a relationship with God.• LGs allow this this to develop –

‘open dimension of the soul’ (allows relationship with God).

2) R. Hare:• Words are not factual claims but

influence the way people think and unites communities (‘bliks’).

Weaknesses:

1) A. J. Ayer:• LGs may help people to understand

about God, but it does not help them to prove God.

• Certainly does not prove anything.• ‘Propositions which are empirically

unverifiable can not be said to symbolise anything’.

2) A. Flew:• ‘Death by a thousand

qualifications’.• Whereas Wittgenstein claims

that RL cannot be falsified, Flew states that it has been because of the problem of evil.

Level 4 examples:1) Reason:

For level 4, answers must include examples of the four criteria of RL.

2) Analogy:• Dog’s faithfulness and its analogy to

human faith in God.

3) Symbolic:• ‘I am the light of the world’ – Jesus. He was not actually the sun, but brought

hope.• ‘God is my fortress and my high tower’ – just symbolises human faith in God.

4) Myth:• Noah’s Ark – world did not really flood, but represents God’s belief in

humans.

5) Language Games:• Rules of science to understand

English, E doesn’t always mean E=MC2

Discuss the view that RL is devoid of meaning:

Part B:A. J. Ayer:

People do like empirical evidence, and it is generally accepted that for propositions to be believed as fact they need empirical proof.Write up Ayer.Use Hume’s fork analogy.

A. Flew:

Claims the PoE disputes RL.It could be argued that Flew’s evidence offered to falsify propositions such as ‘God is benevolent’ is successful and so therefore RL used in support of God is meaningless.Use Mackie’s inconsistent triad.

No empirical evidence:

The alternative and attempts to solve the RL issue by stating that everyone has accepted RL is non-cognitive.In doing so, also admit it has ‘no literal significance’.Uses Wittgenstein – ‘of what we cannot know we cannot speak’.

R. Swinburne:

There are sentences used in all disciplines that we know are unverified, yet are still meaningful.Use his analogy of toy in the box – there is no proof the toys are sentient but the statements makes sense.

Needed:

RL is the only way theist/philosophers can communicate information.We should be judging the arguments not only on words used but on the merit of their evidence.Use Randal, Wittgenstein and Tillich – why they argue

More:

There is more to RL than just trying to offer arguments for/against God’s existence.Use Randal – its about models/qualifiers, not proving God.

Meaningless: Meaningful: