Meaning and Saying in Religion: Beyond Language Games

1974 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Raschke
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Perspective

So much commentary and discussion concerning the significance of religious language has been marketed for consumption during the two decades since Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations first altered the grounds of inquiry in contemporary philosophy of religion that any new contribution to the subject is apt to kindle as much excitement as the average Sunday sermon. The progressive exhaustion of the topic, it may be argued, has resulted largely from this shift, inasmuch as philosophers of religion have thereby so narrowed the horizons of their researches in pursuing the “logical” dimensions of religious utterances that, once this side of the issue has been thoroughly charted, nothing substantial is left to explore. It does not require any prophetic cry in the wilderness to contend, therefore, in the manner that I propose here that (1) the “logical” or neo-Wittgensteinian approach to the problem of religious language must be transcended and that (2) any new perspective need not renounce with counter-revolutionary animus the achievements of analytic philosophy in this field, but merely attempt to arrive at a more subtle understanding of how religious language is employed.

Conceptions of Faith

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Continental Tradition ◽  
Belief Model ◽  
Historical Accounts

This entry focuses on the recent resurgence of discussion of faith in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. One prominent position that perhaps runs contrary to the popular-level view of the matter is that faith does not require belief. This—whether faith requires belief—is one of the most discussed issues in the literature, with some arguing that a different, weaker attitude than belief, such as acceptance or hope, is sufficient for faith. Other alternatives to the belief model of faith include imaginative faith in ultimism, faith as doxastic venture, and faith as trust. Additional topics in this entry include whether faith is consistent with evidentialism or whether it inherently requires a type of irrationality, and finally the degree to which skepticism is consistent with faith. In order to keep this entry a manageable size we will not address historical accounts of faith or those found within the Continental tradition. Additionally, we will not discuss non-Western conceptions of faith; the literature we examine focuses on propositional faith as found in the Judeo-Christian tradition (which is the focus of much contemporary philosophy of religion). Finally, given space constraints we focus on work produced after 2000, with the exception of particularly influential pieces.

scholarly journals J.H. le Roux�s philosophy of religion

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaco W. Gericke
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

J.H. le Roux had a passion for philosophy. His writings contain recourse to the history of philosophy in a way that bespeaks a deep underlying interest in the subject. This much is relatively well-known. This contribution, by contrast, aims at reconstructing something hitherto mostly covert: Le Roux�s philosophy of religion. Of interest is what his writings presuppose about the nature of religion, religious language, the nature of God, the existence of God, religious epistemology, the relation between religion and morality and the problem of religious pluralism.

Wittgenstein and Religious Belief

Philosophy ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 63 (246) ◽  
pp. 427-452
Author(s):  
John W. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Language Game ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Language Games ◽  
The World ◽  
Principal Objection ◽  
Recent Idea

I find myself in profound disagreement with Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion and hence in disagreement also with those philosophers who have undertaken to elaborate and defend Wittgenstein's position. My principal objection is to the idea that religion is a language-game (or perhaps that each religion is a language-game) and that because of the kind of language-game it is, religious believers are not to be thought of as necessarily harbouring beliefs about the world over and above their secular beliefs. I reject this position, not because I think that there are language-games and that religion happens not to be one, but because I find the very idea of a language-game to be indefensible. Put another way, I find myself out of sympathy with the recent idea that in philosophy of religion we ought to be discussing something called ‘religious language’ or ‘the kind of language involved in religious beliefs’.

Complexes, rule-following, and language games: Wittgenstein’s philosophical method and its relevance to semiotics

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Torres-Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Reductionist Approach ◽  
Philosophical Grammar

Abstract This paper forges links between early analytic philosophy and the posits of semiotics. I show that there are some striking and potentially quite important, but perhaps unrecognized, connections between three key concepts in Wittgenstein’s middle and later philosophy, namely, complex (Philosophical Grammar), rule-following (Philosophical Investigations), and language games (Philosophical Investigations). This reveals the existence of a conceptual continuity between Wittgenstein’s “early” and “later” philosophy that can be applied to the analysis of the iterability of representation in computer-generated images. Methodologically, this paper clarifies to at least some degree, the nature, progress and promise of an approach to doing philosophy and semiotics from a modally modest perspective that sees in the intellectual products of humanities, and not in unreflective empiricism, the future of scientific development. This hybrid, non-reductionist approach shows, among other things, that semiotic processes are encoded by specific types of complexes in computer-generated images that display iterability in time and space.

Understanding Theism

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Millar
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
Theistic Belief

Much contemporary philosophy of religion is preoccupied with highly general problems about the nature of religious belief and of religious language, rather than with how to interpret, in detail, specific religious beliefs or forms of religious discourse. Among the matters of dispute there seem to be two of overriding importance. The first concerns the relation between religious beliefs and experience and centres on the question, what sorts of experience are relevant to the acceptance or rejection of religious beliefs. The second concerns whether or not religious beliefs have an explanatory function. Discussion of both these themes in relation to theistic belief is still largely dominated by conceptions of God and of his relation to the world which have been developed by natural theologians, particularly, though not exclusively, those who have worked within traditions significantly influenced by Thomas Aquinas. Thus the idea that religious beliefs have an explanatory function is commonly associated with the view that they present answers to questions raised by those alleged traits or features of the world which have been the concern of natural theologians and which have been described by means of concepts of ‘contingency’, ‘purposiveness’, ‘order’, and ‘design’. Consequently, the sort of experience often held to be relevant to the acceptance or rejection of theistic belief is that which is relevant to the application of these problematic concepts.

Whither philosophy of religion?

2015 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-454
Author(s):  
BRIAN LEFTOW ◽  
PAMELA SUE ANDERSON ◽  
J. L. SCHELLENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Ontological Argument ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Deep Defect ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Post War

The post-war expansion of university faculties climaxed in the early 1970s. Since then, there have been more professional philosophers than ever before in history: a startling claim, but sober truth. In analytic philosophy, they have worked with more rigour and better training than even the Scholastics. It would take a surprising lack of talent among us, or perhaps argue some deep defect in the questions we ask, if the result werenotmore progress in philosophy than most periods can boast. And in fact, those who know what progress in philosophy looks like can see a lot of it: just compare Malcolm's 1960 piece on the ontological argument with Plantinga's 1974 treatment inThe Nature of Necessity, and then both with Oppy's book on the subject.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Present State ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right

The Introduction sets the philosophical stage for the volume as a whole by describing the present state of play in contemporary philosophy of religion and situating the authors’ own conception of the subject, and making clear how this conception bears upon the supposed divide between analytic and continental philosophy. It then turns to the naturalistic strand of the authors’ thinking, distinguishing it from scientism, and clarifying its theistic implications. This “expansive” naturalism is seen to be compatible with Cottingham’s “humane” philosophy of religion, and it grants us the right to say that the concept of the divine is already implicated in our understanding of nature. There follows an account of how the different chapters are to be related and distinguished.

Inverse Correlation: Comparative Philosophy in an Upside Down World

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-116
Author(s):  
Mark T. Unno
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Inverse Correlation ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Religious Worldview ◽  
Human Limitation ◽  
Final Work

Kitarō Nishida introduces the concept of “inverse correlation” (Jp. gyakutaiō 逆対応) in his final work, The Logic of Place and the Religious Worldview, which he uses to illuminate the relation between finite and infinite, human and divine/buddha, such that the greater the realization of human limitation and finitude, the greater that of the limitless, infinite divine or buddhahood. This essay explores the applicability of the logic and rhetoric of inverse correlation in the cases of the early Daoist Zhuangzi, medieval Japanese Buddhist Shinran, and modern Protestant Christian Kierkegaard, as well as broader ramifications for contemporary philosophy of religion.

Beyond Perennialism and Constructivism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayon Maharaj
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Common Core ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Cultural Conditioning ◽  
Mystical Experiences

This chapter draws upon Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings and mystical testimony in order to develop a new conceptual framework for understanding the nature of mystical experience. In recent analytic philosophy of religion, two approaches to mystical experience have been especially influential: perennialism and constructivism. While perennialists maintain that there is a common core of all mystical experiences across various cultures, constructivists claim that a mystic’s cultural conditioning plays a major role in shaping his or her mystical experiences. After identifying the strengths and limitations of these two positions, Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna champions a “manifestationist” approach to mystical experience that provides a powerful dialectical alternative to both perennialism and constructivism. According to Sri Ramakrishna, mystics in various traditions experience different real manifestations of one and the same impersonal-personal Infinite Reality. Sri Ramakrishna’s manifestationist paradigm shares the advantages of both perennialism and constructivism but avoids their respective weaknesses and limitations.

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