Wittgenstein is not an easy philosopher to understand. And yet, some of us sense something deep in what he says. This can't be said of all, or even most, difficult philosophers, in my humble opinion.
Take (another) recent essay on Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion by philosopher William Vallicella (The Maverick Philosopher). Vallicella briefly and clearly connects Wittgenstein and his philosophical offspring (sometimes called ordinary language philosophers) with logical positivism. Vallicella writes:
Crudely put, logical positivism is just David Hume warmed over. . . .the LP's spoke of two disjoint classes of statements and maintained that every cognitively meaningful statement must be a member of the one or the other. The one class contains truths of logic and mathematics and such analytic statements as 'Every cygnet is a swan' all interpreted as true by convention. The other class consists of statement empirically verifiable in principle.
If every meaningful statement is either analytically true (true by definition) or empirically verifiable, where does that leave religious statements (and ethical and aesthetic statements)? Given the coherence of logical positivism, religious statements are rendered meaningless.
Ordinary language philosophers sought to rescue religion from the logical positivists. They argued that religious statements could be meaningful. However, Vallicella argues, their conclusions were not far from their positivist brethren. Vallicella writes:
The OL boys weren't out to resurrect metaphysics. They took on board the anti-metaphysical animus of the LP-ers. But their approach allowed the salvaging of ways of talking that the LP-ers had no interest in preserving. Religious language is a key example. So what I am contending is that one source of the appeal of OL philosophy is that it allows religious talk and thus religion itself to be saved from the accusation of meaninglessness. But it does this without crediting old-time metaphysics
In other words, religious talk can be meaningful. Religious metaphysics is confused. The Maverick puts it this way:
Wittgenstein’s central idea is that religion is a form of life (Lebensform) and a language game (Sprachspiel), a self-contained language game that needs no justification ab extra. Hence it needs no justification from metaphysics or philosophy generally. It is in order as it is — to use a characteristically Wittgensteinian turn of phrase. By the same token, religion cannot be attacked from the side of philosophy. It is an island of meaning unto itself, and is insofar forth insulated from criticism. (L. insula, ae = island.) Nor can it come into conflict with science or be debunked by science. Religion and science are incommensurable: there is no common measure or standard relative to which they can be judged. Thus one cannot say that science puts us in touch with reality while religion does not.
This view is sometimes called Wittgensteinian Fideism. According to the fideist, religion is without foundation or grounding. One either plays the religious game, or one does not play the religious game. No reasons can be given for or against belief. Religion is a language game, but so is science and all human endeavors. In this way you can see the spirit of logical positivism in ordinary language philosophy.
The Maverick takes a dim view of Wittgensteinian Fideism. He writes:
Taken literally, the Wittgensteinian view, pace D. Z. Phillips, Norman Malcolm, et al., is just preposterous. Surely either some reality corresponds to our God-talk or no reality corresponds to it. Either there is an afterlife or there isn't, in which case physical death is annihilation of the person. These are objective questions about the way things are and cannot be reduced to framework-features of some contingent ways in which we happen to talk and behave. 'Does God exist or not?' is not like 'Does the bishop move on the diagonals or on the ranks and files?' It is senseless to demand proof or evidence that the bishops move on diagonals; this is because the rule about bishops is framework-internal, a rule constitutive of the game of chess. It is not, however, senseless to demand proof, or at least evidence, of the existence of God. It makes all the sense in the world.
Philosopher John Hick made a similar criticism of Phillips. Hick argued that for Phillips, "God exists only as a factor in our religious language . . .God does not answer to any reality beyond human language and human forms of life. . . .God exists only as a factor in our religious language and behavior."
Some thoughts: Phillips argued that this was a confusion of the view he was advocating. If he refers to something in the language we speak, it is not language itself that is his object of reference.
For Phillips the question was always "what does it mean?" For example, Phillips said that in confessing God as our creator, who existed before the mountains were brought forth, he was not making a point about language. You could not say "a factor in our language" existed before the mountains were brought forth.
Phillips put it this way:
I and others recognize that the independence of the reality of God from what a believer believes plays a central role in religious belief, and does so for a number of reasons. Without the distinction, there would be no worry about idolatry, no concern over whether one was really worshipping God, since believing would guarantee the reality of what is believed in.
The emphasis on language was, for Phillips, an emphasis on meaning. Phillips:
The crucial question which separates Hick and myself is not that he asserts, and I deny, the existence of a creator before the mountains were brought forth . . .but the question of what saying that amounts to. . . .Where are we to look to see what these beliefs amount to? Where else but in the direction which Hick resists, to the language and forms of life in which the belief has its sense? This is not to deny God's independent existence. It is precisely to see what talk of 'independent existence' comes to in these religious beliefs.
I don't think Phillips ever wrote or spoke about God-talk. The question, for Phillips, was not "Is God real?", but "What is the reality of God?"
Comments
Post a Comment