1 religious lang

Question 1

religious language

Answer 1

language used when religious believers talk about god

Question 2

univocal language

Answer 2

where words are used to mean the same things in all situations where they are used

Question 3

equivocal language

Answer 3

words are used to mean different things in different contexts

Question 4

cognitive language

Answer 4

language described as either true or false

Question 5

non-cognitive language

Answer 5

we cant ask whether a statement is true or false eg prayers, stories, poems

Question 6

apophatic way

Answer 6

the via negativa, the only possible statements that can be made are thorugh negation as words are unable to adequately describe God., he is beyond our ability to describe.
when we say god is good, we are picturing our human version = disrespectful.
all words applied to god are equivocal (the same word is used but has two different meanings)

god is completely ineffable, we can know god but not express god.
eg god is immortal, invisible, incorporeal.

Question 7

biblical backing for how god differs from contingent beings

Answer 7

Numbers 23:19
“god is not human, that he should lie, is not a human being”

Question 8

cataphatic way

Answer 8

via positiva, we can know and understand god by studying creation and revelation, thorugh prayer and religious experience.
god is love, god is good, father, son, holy spirit. bible is littered
1 John 1:5 “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all”

Question 9

aquinas

Answer 9

cataphatic way, we can speak about god using analogy. as god was the creator of the universe, so we can use the world as a frame of reference to speak about god.
= we cannot speak equivocally/unequivocally

Question 10

Pseudo-Dionysius x3

Answer 10

mystic, apophatic way
god is beyond all human understanding and imagination, beyond the realms of sense perception adn rationality - “a cloud of unknowing”.
recognition of the limits of humanity that spiritual progress can be made
people should stop trying to use logic and arguments, and accept that god will remain a mystery.

Question 11

moses maimonides x5

Answer 11

apophatic way
torah was imperfect source for describing god as it was “written by the sons of men”, any attempt to use human language to describe god is anthropomorphic.
“the sun is hidden to eyes that are too weak to comprehend it”
“silence is the best praise”
if you describe a ship by what it is, they will get a deeper understanding.

Question 12

criticisms of apophatic way

Answer 12

makes god too distant, meaningless and abstract. unknowable = undermining relational aspects

Question 13

meister eckhart

Answer 13

god is beyond all concepts and images, we must “empty” the mind of all thoughts adn names (total detatchment).
go dis beyond the idea of god.
union with god comes through letting go of all created ideas
“god is a non-gog, non-spirit, non-person, non-image”

Question 14

popper falsification

Answer 14

when conducting science, the mark of a scientific statement is that it is possible to falsify it.
eg scientists posited that all swans were white, but when they visited australia, there were black swans.
NOT WHETHER IT IS MEANINGFUL, STATUS OF SCIENTIFIC ASSERTION

Question 15

Flew debate

Answer 15

• Theology and Falsification.
• Flew references John Wisdom’s parable of the gardener. makes the point that belief in an invisible gardener is non-rational as both theist and atheist beliefs have equal standing. BUT Flew questions what is the difference between the apparent, invisible, intangible gardener and no gardener.
• for flew, religious language is “vaccuous and bogus assertions”
• also argues the constant rejection of anything that could falsify religious statements means they “die the death of 1000 qualificaitons”

Question 16

RM Hare

Answer 16

• instead of religious beliefs are ‘bliks’
• example of insane university student who believes all uni dons are out to kill him. no evidence can disprove this belief, because the student interprets everything through the lens of his conviction.
  = we all have bliks that affect our lives eg belief an airplane will remain solid despite having no evidence.
  =response to Flew’s challenge that religious statements are meaningless if unfalsifiable
  bliks show what we are doing when making a religious statement - unfalsifiable and non-rational but meaningful as it influences ppl’s worldviews

Question 17

AO2 on Hare

Answer 17

Flew argues Hare is at odds wiht Christian belief and practice - the intention of the believer is to say something about the universe eg god exists, dinosaurs existed == should be falsifiable.

Hick Hare assumes we can distinguish between right and wrong bliks, some as sane and some as insane - if all bliks are unverifiable and unfalsifiable. if experience can never yield evidence or not, there is no basis for religious bliks being right/wrong, sane/insane

Question 18

Basil Mitchell

Answer 18

religious statements are genuinely factural but not straightforwardly falsifiable.
resistance fighter who meets a stranger who impresses him, stranger claims to be the head of the entire resistance. next night he sees the stranger working with the enemy. the partisan persists in his belief that the stranger is who he claims to be.

= to remain sane, the partisan must accep tht ereality of the evidence against his belief. if he does not, he is “guilty of a failure of faith as well as logic”.
= counters Hare.

Question 19

verificationism

Answer 19

made by logical positivists incl AJ Ayer - Language, Truth, Logic
statement is factually significant (meaningful) if it is either analytic (true by definition), or empirically verifiable (can check)
= god is good/ god exists is not verifiable/analytic = loses empiric verifiability.

Question 20

strong v weak verification

Answer 20

by vienna circle
STRONG - the statement’s truth must be conclusively established through sense experience eg mary’s hair is red

WEAK - to address limits of strong
allows a statement to be meaningful if there is some empirical evidence that makes it probable,. eg there are mountains on the dark side of the moon

Question 21

criticisms of weak verification - hick, ayer

Answer 21

Hick argued religious claims eg God exists could be verifiable in principle through eschatological verification, his parable of the Celestial City suggests that making religious claims could be confirmed in afterlife, making them under weak verification

Ayer acknowledged this and admitted it oculd “allow meaning to any indicative statement” even metaphysical (his enemy)

Question 22

strong verification criticisms

Answer 22

too rigid, restrictive - cannot confirm history as we cannot directly observe the past
scientific laws meaningless (eg all water boils at 100*) as we cannot observe every instance to confirm
Ayer acknowledges this impracticality, saying it “has no possible application” due to the corrigible nature of empirical evidence.

Question 23

indirect and direct verification

Answer 23

recognised the flaws in weak verification

DIRECT - statement is directly verifiable if it is an observation (i see a key)

INDIRECT - indirectly verified observations and we know in principle how to verify it, but may not be able to do so (the key is made of iron) we can test with magnets even if we ahvent done so

= religious statements fail as god as a transcendent being lies beyond empirical observation + cannot verify god’s existence in principle

Question 24

st paul criticism of falsification

Answer 24

claimed that if jesus did not rise from the dead then faith is pointless. this means xtianity could be proven false if we find evidence that jesus did not rise from the dead eg body. there are some believers whose belief is incompatible with logically possible state of affairs.
but if they did find the body they would say its the devil or not true (death of 1000 qualificaiotns)

Question 25

John frame critique of falsification

Answer 25

turns it the other way round, where the gardener is visible and the sceptic refuses to believe that despite evidence. flew's approach is also unfalsifiable, atheists dont believe as there isnt sufficient evidence but they cannot say what would prove that belief false = unfalsifiable if god arranged the stars to say god is here then an atheist would qualify that this is chance/hallucination`

Question 26

swinburne attacking falsificaiton an verification

Answer 26

if we understand words in a sentence then this is meaningful, we dont have to know how to test it through experience. we know what toys are and what it would mean for them to come alive, but have no way of testing this - but is meaningful as we understand the concepts involved Physicists use their current knowledge & concepts to create theoretical mathematical models such as inflation theory (how the big bang started), dark matter or string theory. We currently don’t know how to verify or falsify those theories. Nonetheless, they are still meaningful to these scientists.

Question 27

backchat to swinburne

Answer 27

it fails as he confuses understanding with cognitive meaning, the toys being alive is understandable but verificationists can still claim this lacks cognitive meaning as reality = factual, cognitive beliefs represent reality.

Question 28

wittgenstein

Answer 28

NON-COGNITIVE - religious language can be meaningful even if it is not cognitive. - initially agreed wiht Ayer but later changed mind - eords get their meaning by participating in the social reality (different types of social interaction that exist) and every type of social interaction is like a "game" as it follows rules

Question 29

tillich +2 critics

Answer 29

Tillich would also work here. Technically Tillich sees his approach as beyond the cognitive/non-cognitive distinction – because he thinks symbols express participation in a higher spiritual reality, not merely emotions. - doesn’t actually connect us to anything higher and the symbols are just in our mind, which would make them purely non-cognitive. - Alston say it can’t make the right sense of the language of heaven/hell in the bible, which he thinks requires a cognitive reading.

Question 30

trachtatus

Answer 30

trying to set limits on what we can meaningfully say (agres wiht Ayer and influences the vienna circle)

Question 31

W quotes

Answer 31

"that of what we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence" "some things cannot be said but only shown" "dont ask for the meaning, ask for the use" "meaning is use"

Question 32

W when he changes his mind

Answer 32

retracts picture theory and then claims philosophy is not discover but to clarify what we are talking about NOT METAPHYSICAL TRUTHS BUT TO CLARIFY CONCEPTS eg god, soul, free will

Question 33

W book

Answer 33

the philosophical investigations

Question 34

W early picture theory

Answer 34

something is only meaningful if you can picture it in reality

Question 35

example of language game

Answer 35

the body of christ is broken for you drink the blood of christ = means different things to think xtians are cannibals. eucharist is a language game located within xtian tradition of worhsip and belief

Question 36

lang games

Answer 36

W noticed importance of context when using language the rules of language games emerge from wihtin a culture = we have to participate in that form of life (lebensform) to understand all language occurs wihtin a form of life or lang game so is a mistake to prove one to be true against the others + cannot criticise value and meaning are determined within the game eg god is love = meaningful

Question 37

implications of lang games

Answer 37

cognitive within its context as truths are being communicated but non-cognitive as it cannot be verified = non-cognitivist. meaning of something that is not empirically verifiable but truthful to those in that social context

Question 38

Don Cupitt

Answer 38

all language is non-cognitive as true/false have no universal meaning and depends on the form of life which they are used since god only exists wihtin some forms of life, god is not an objective reliaty or real outside those communities. anti-realist position = - risks relativising everything.

Question 39

Phillips

Answer 39

disagreed with Cupitt god was a reality but beyond the scope of philosophy the role of the philosopher is not to comment on truth of rel statements, but to quesiton adn clarify their meaning. = language can be both cognitive and non-congitive. and still meaningful dependent on their context. = returning to W's aim of using philosophy to describe how words are used

Question 40

fancy word for you cant criticise

Answer 40

its a close hermeneutic cannot criticise lang game over another as nothing is true/ false Cupitt moreso but

Question 41

Geach

Answer 41

language game thoeiry is circular as word takes meaning from the game but game takes meaning form the words etc

Question 42

criticism Cupitt

Answer 42

language games show rel lang is non-cognitivist and therefore doesnt have objective meaning outside the lebensform

Question 43

broac critiwue of W

Answer 43

anything is meaningful as long as there is an agreed understanding eg unicorns exist game = meaningful to say unicrons exist, but they do not.

Question 44

AQ is better

Answer 44

+ hick says the teachings and actions of jesus give clearer ideas of what to say about god + aq analogies allow us to say something positive about god -W believers use lang to express truth and reality so W does not align with them, noone would relativize their faith in god - religious language cannot be criticised = dangerous beliefs without reason (FIDEISM)

Question 45

w IS BETTER

Answer 45

+ rel statements have meaning but depends + do not reflect rality but make it, reality is subjective + no criticisms, only different games = pluralist? -A analogy is too vague because we dont know if we are speaking accurately about god. -A analofy makes an assumption that there is a similarity betwen god and humanity. -A uses cataphatic, using non-cognitive way Aq would simply be playing a language game.

Question 46

conclusion about W and A differences

Answer 46

Aq asked how can we use language about god Witt asked how can we use language = asnwering different questions