1. Religious Language

2. Why study it?
‘The problem of religious language…has the potential to undermine the traditions of the Abrahamic religions… Without the ability to speak about God and to understand the meaning of what is spoken, the Abrahamic faiths are vulnerable to the criticism that their sacred texts are unintelligible.’
What are the Abrahamic religions?

3. Need to know
Should religious language be viewed cognitively or non-cognitively?
Verification and falsification principles
Responses to challenges – eschatological verification, blik, language games
Other views – symbolic, analogical, via negativa
Strengths and weaknesses of different understandings of religious language

4. Philosophy of Language
Univocal: the word has exactly the same meaning at all times.
Equivocal: the same word is used with two completely different meanings.
Cognitive: Factual statements, proved true of false by empirical evidence.
Non-cognitive: Statements that cannot be proved true or false. Expresses things we could never know and often includes feelings and values.

5. How can we show that religious statements are right or wrong, or meaningful at all if they are not simply descriptions of observed facts?
The religious claims we are concerned with are those that are metaphysical (beyond the physical) e.g. there is a God; miracles happen; there is life after death RATHER THAN the Pope is the Bishop of Rome or Muslims and Jews are not permitted by their religion to eat pork
They are also often about the supernatural (beliefs about things which cannot be accounted for in terms of the ordinary physical world). By definition the supernatural cannot be explained by the language of science or empirical facts.

6. Wittgenstein Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889-1951
Philosophical problems would be solved if the language people used was more precise and was limited to statements for which there could be evidence.
The function of language is to picture the world – so every statement has to correspond to some information about the world itself.
Therefore, whatever cannot be shown to correspond to some observable reality cannot be meaningfully spoken about – ‘the world is all that is the case’

7. Moritz Schlink ( )
The leader of the Vienna Circle and considered to be the founding father of Logical Positivism.
A philosopher and physicist.
 The Vienna Circle was pluralistic and committed to the ideals of Enlightenment. It was unified by the aim of making philosophy scientific with the help of modern logic. Main topics were foundational debates in the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics, the modernization of empiricism by modern logic, the search for an empiricist criterion of meaning, the critique of metaphysics and the unification of the sciences in the unity of science.

8. Logical Positivism
A philosophical approach taken by the Vienna Circle.
The Logical Positivists claimed that metaphysical and theological language are literally meaningless because they are neither matters of logic or provable by empirical evidence.
They took their starting point Hume’s ‘Fork’ – that there is only two sorts of thing that we can have knowledge of. So the LPs claimed that there are only two types of meaningful language…

9. This should be a reminder from the Ontological Argument
Synthetic propositions – propositions that are dependent upon evidence. E.g. ‘the sun will rise tomorrow’ is based on the evidence of seeing the sun rise every day. As we know what that proposition means, we can say that it is meaningful.
Analytic propositions – propositions that are true by definition. These are meaningful because they are self-evident, e.g. all bachelors are unmarried men; frozen water is ice.

10. The key role of ‘Religious Language’ is God-talk, that is, being able to talk about God in a meaningful and coherent manner. The problem arises when we consider ‘what can be said about God?’ I N S U M A R Y
The religious language debate is not concerned with whether or not God exists, or what God is like or why there is evil in the world. It is solely concerned with working out whether or not religious language means anything.
On the one side of the debate, you have the centuries old tradition of religious believers who believe that you can speak and write about God, because God is a reality.
On the other side, are the Logical Positivists and those that they influenced who claim that statements about God have no meaning because they don’t relate to anything that is real.
Some philosophers have argued that religious statements, such as ‘God exists’, ‘God is love’ and so on are neither true nor false, but meaningless. There is no point, according to some thinkers, of even raising these questions, because there is nothing to talk about. Philosophical discussion about meaning often identifies two different ways in which a word or phrase might mean something.

11. Verification Principle
Schlick – the meaning of a statement is its method of verification – this became known as the Verification Principle.
E.g. the meaning of the statement ‘my car is parked on the road outside’ is that if you go outside and look at the road you will see my car – that is the way you can verify my statement as being true.
Verification is by sense experience (in this case sight)
If it is impossible to verify the truth of a statement (you can’t give an account of it with sense experience) then it is meaningless.

12. A J Ayer (1910 – 1989)
Agreed with the theory from Vienna Circle – it was Ayer who officially coined it the Verification Principle
Made the principle popular in his book ‘Language, Truth and Logic’.
‘The sentence expressing it may be emotionally significant to him, but it is not literally significant’

13. Ayer A statement is meaningful if and only if it is:
Analytic (true by definition) or
Empirically verifiable
A statement can be meaningful either in practice or in principle.

14. Verification in practice
When there is direct sense experience to support a statement.
Can you think of an example?
There is a mad axe man next door wearing a clown costume

15. Verification in principle
When we know how a statement can in principle be tested empirically.
E.g ‘there is intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy’ – this is verifiable in principle because we know what sense experience would prove it, and one day such experiences may be possible.
Can you think of another example?

16. Ayer’s Conclusion
The central claim of theism – God exists – is nether true nor false, it is simply meaningless. The same is true of the atheist's claim that God does not exist at all – ALL talk about God is meaningless so the atheist also fails to say anything meaningful.

17. Practical Verifiability Verifiability in Principle (synthetic)
Maths
(a priori)
Tautology
(analytic – a priori)
Practical Verifiability
(synthetic)
Verifiability in Principle (synthetic)
Pure logic
e.g. 2+2=4
A logical statement which we can know to be true by definition.
e.g. ‘Bachelors are male’
This is verifiable as it would be illogical to think the opposite.
Statements which could be tested in reality.
e.g. ‘Liverpool Football Club wear red shirts.’
This is verifiable in practice – we can go and watch a match.
Statements which we cannot verify in practice, but know what observations would lead it to be true.
They can be shown to be probable by observation and experience.
e.g. ‘There is life on other planets in the Milky Way Galaxy’ or ‘All humans are mortal’
In practice we do not have the technology to visit all the planets in the Milky Way. Nor can we kill all the humans in the world. + =

18. A Problem in Verification
The idea of a Verification Principle faces a number of serious problems. How much can we really verify? For example: did King Harold die at the battle of Hastings? We can look at some historical records which say he did, but we cannot (a) observe it ourselves, or (b) subject the hypothesis to any new or further forms of testing. Perhaps a lot of what we take for knowledge defies strict verification.
To get around this problem, Ayer developed the ‘Weak Verification Principle’. Instead of checking every bit of knowledge with our logic or senses, he suggested that we might know things by setting up sensible standards for evidence – eye-witness accounts, multiple sources, etc.
Perhaps Harold did die after all …

19. Two further challenges
1) Some argue that the Bible can supply verification in principle for religious statements, as the Gospels (for e.g.) claim to be eye witness accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Many historians accept eyewitness in principle. This does not show these accounts are true, only that they are verifiable in principle – which is Ayer’s point. If statements about Jesus can be verified in principle as historical statements, the claim that Jesus performed miracles is verifiable in principle.

20. 2) There is a claim that the Verification Principle itself fails its own criteria for deciding what a factual statement is – it is not a tautology and is not verifiable in principle. Therefore, the Principle itself is meaningless and cannot be used to comment on the meaning of other statements.
In response to this, Ayer argued that it is a convention or recommendation and because it does not make a factual claim it cannot be used against itself.

21. A result of the Verification Principle may be that it has forced philosophers to carefully consider use of religious language and encouraged more analysis of religious language.

22. Introduction to Falsification
Karl Popper was a philosopher of science who argued that scientific method was based on falsification not verification
A scientist proposes a hypothesis which is then tested
The scientist knows how to show that his hypothesis might be false i.e. what evidence he would need to count against it
His statement is synthetic so is meaningful
A synthetic statement is one where the predicate is not necessary a part of the description/subject e.g. the woman has long hair (not all women have long hair – this is proved through empirical evidence)

23. Karl Popper
For Popper it was falsification that made something meaningful
Falsification meant you could demarcate scientific statements.
In other words, you could set apart scientific statements which are supported by empirical evidence from unscientific ones
Falsification is then applied by Flew, and various other philosopher to religious statements
if I could sum up my ideas I would think that any theory that is impossible to disprove is not valid

24. So what does this have to do with Philosophy?
Anthony Flew – builds on Popper’s ideas of falsification
Religious believers will not let anything ‘falsify’ their beliefs
E.g. God is good is held true by religious believers no matter what evidence is put before them to prove the contrary
Constant qualifications render religious statement meaningless because they die the ‘death by a thousand qualifications’- for every challenge religious believers face, they change their definition of God so they are no longer making the same claims as they started with
Flew uses the parable of the gardener to explain his view

25. Can you figure out what my criticism of religious language is?
What is falsification?
Can you figure out what my criticism of religious language is?
Anthony Flew
He started 3 days ago!
You won’t see him, he’s invisible
You misunderstand, he’s intangible – we can’t use our senses to detect him. Look at how beautiful the flowers grow.
I’ve already said that he’s invisible & intangible. He comes and works secretly
That gardener you hired hasn’t showed up
I haven’t seen him. I don’t believe you
I knew you’d say that so I installed a trip wire – it’s not been set off so he can’t exist
Perhaps, but they would have grown anyway. There’s still no sign of the gardener

26. What would have to happen to disprove the existence of God??
In the parable both men examine the garden and study what happens to it
The story illustrates that both men had pre-conceived ideas about the garden. Evidence, research and challenging opposing opinions had no impact on their own beliefs.
The believer’s hypothesis that someone cultivates it secretly is tested
Every test fails to turn up evidence to support the believer’s claims
Each modification of the original hypothesis adds a ‘qualification’ so that the believer is able to persist in his claim- this is what leads Flew to the phrase “death by a thousand qualifications”

27. Right or Wrong
Flew argued that religious believers, when confronted with something awkward regarding the existence of God, reply that God is mysterious
For falsification to be applied a statement is only genuine if there is something that could be cited to falsify it
It is not claiming that the statement is factually incorrect just whether you can prove if it is factually incorrect
Flew argues that it is not possible to falsify religious language in the same way as it is with other language
Flew is not raising the issue of whether or not religious language is meaningful, although some philosophers have used the Falsification Principle to show that religious language is meaningless

28. Hick’s View
The Christian concept of God is ‘in principle verifiable’ because it is verified eschatologically.
His claims are:
The claims of religious language ARE cognitive/factual
Those claims are subject to eschatological verification

29. The Parable of the Celestial City
The point is that while the men are making the journey, there is no evidence that there is a Celestial City. However, the fact that one man does believe influences the way he deals with things that happen to him along the way – this is meaningful whether the Celestial City turns out to be true or not.
Eventually at the end of time, it will be shown to be true or false, but that won’t change the meaningfulness of the journey.

30. Blik
Hare defends religion by suggesting that it actually consists of a set of assumptions about the world (he uses the term blik for these assumptions).
Everyone has a blik and they tend to determine people’s other beliefs.
In some ways, the blik is beyond reason and evidence – it is simply the way you see things, a framework for interpreting the world, and it is essentially non-cognitive.
The parable of the lunatic

31. Summary
A religious blik is a common and powerful view and if I have one and am sincere about it, no amount of persuasion from philosophers like Flew will make me think differently.

32. How does Flew respond to Hare?
Flew argues that religious believers DO see their statements about God as cognitive, so Hare can’t argue that they are non-cognitive bliks – what would be the point of saying ‘God will resurrect believers after death’ if you do not really believe it as a matter of fact.
Flew says Christians do intend their assertions to be factually significant, but they are non-falsifiable and therefore meaningless.

33. Wittgenstein Came to reject verification
The meaning of words is in their use
the function they perform = agreed by group/society using them
Language games
Exist within all forms of human activity and life
All activities have their own language – Wittgenstein saw this as a game with it’s own set of rules
Wittgenstein

34. What is a Language Game? Wittgenstein saw language in terms of a game.
To use language is to participate in a game where we know and accept the rules.
This is not to say language is trivial, rather the analogy of a game best highlights the nature of Language.
What is a Language Game?

35. A game of Words
For Wittgenstein, the use of language was like partaking in a game, to use a word you have to first understand how it works.
Wittgenstein’s classic example was the game of Chess, you might be told that a piece was called a “King”, but without understanding the rules of Chess, you could never use the piece.
He also stated that to argue how language is used is meaningless, if you want to play the game, you must accept the rules.
You cannot play Chess if your opponent is trying to play Checkers.

36. If you’re not in the game you are unable to understand the language
If this is you then the language will seem meaningless
Language Games

37. Inside and Outside the Game
Wittgenstein suggested that language, and therefore the rules of that language, can be seen from two sides, those who are inside the game and therefore know the rules and those who are outside the game and therefore do not know the rules.
He offers us the following example: Imagine if you found yourself standing the driver’s cabin of a steam train, in front of you would be a large array of controls that you have no understanding of, while the actual driver would understand perfectly. The only way to engage with these controls is to learn through attempting to drive the train.

38. The primary purpose of language (in general) is not to make factual assertions - we use language in different ways. Hence his rejection of the verification principle.
Religious language is a non- cognitive language game like all others - it has a different theory of meaning in the context of life.
The meaning of words is within their use – the function agreed by a particular group using them, so religious language is meaningful within forms of life that constitute being a believer e.g baptizing, praying, etc.
Religious Language

39. A non-believer will find religious language meaningless because they are not in the religious language ‘game’ – its like trying to play football using the rules of cricket
But an outsider cannot claim that the language used in a particular ‘game’ really is meaningless just because it does not make sense to them
One cannot use one language game (science) to discredit another (religion).
Every language used is appropriate in the context in which it is used. E.g. a rook - a chess piece or a bird? If you know the language and the context you can use it meaningfully
Religious Language

40. Key word recap
Univocal –if it means exactly the same thing each time e.g. if I describe a coat and a lump of coal as ‘black’ then I am using that word univocally – it means the same thing
Equivocal – if it means different things when used in different situations – e.g. we can use the word ‘bat’ to describe something used to hit a cricket ball or a flying mammal.

41. Aquinas argues that language used to describe God should do so analogically
The meaning of a word when applied to earthly things could be extended to be used of God, once it was recognised that it was being used as an analogy and not in a literal or univocal way.

42. Aquinas identifies two types of analogy
The analogy of attribution
The analogy of proportionality
Analogy of attribution is when the qualities we denote to each other are reflections of the qualities of God. Brian Davies uses the analogy of bread, if we say that the bread is good, it must mean that the baker is also good, the bread is the product of the baker and so his goodness spreads to the bread.
Analogy of proportion, the type of properties that something has depends on the nature of the being that possesses the properties e.g. To say that a child is good at maths means that the child is good for their age, and if an adult had the same mathematical ability it would be rather poor.
EXT: Read and summarise Ramsey’s view on analogy – page 30

43. Task 1: The benefits of saying nothing…
God is greater than anything we can comprehend – therefore statements about Him cannot be made accurately!
Language applied to God is equivocal. Saying ‘God is good’ and ‘John is good’ are two very different things. We still don't know what God is...
Instead we say what God is not!
By making a number of negative statements we may arrive at a knowledge , albeit limited, of what God is!
Task 1:
Attempt to write a description of God in negative statements.
Do you think it works?
A priori: Ontological argument
A posteriori: Design and Cosmological Arguments

44. Key idea of the Via Negativa
Language cannot describe God because He is ineffable – too great to be described in words – beyond human understanding
You can say things about God but it doesn’t tell us anything about Him because our knowledge is finite
E.g. God is omnipotent – we cannot
know for certain what it is to be
this

45. Tillich’s view of religious symbol addresses the problems of analogy and the Via Negativa
1. Symbols point to a reality beyond themselves 2.They ‘participate’ in the power to which they point 3. they open up levels of reality which would otherwise be closed to us 4. At the same time they open up levels of the soul which correspond to those realities 5. Symbols cannot be produced intentionally; they grow out of the human unconscious. 6. Symbols are produced and die within a cultural context (e.g. the religious systems of Ancient Greece and Rome)
Read the explanation on the handout – Tillich: religious language as symbolic

46. If we want to discover the true nature of religion, this can only arise from religious experience, and this can only be expressed by symbolic language
Religious symbols fulfil their function uniquely, so nothing else can fulfil that function. They open up a level of reality that otherwise is not opened up at all (influenced by Otto – link back to religious experience)