Philosophy Of Religion II

What are the salient features of the cognitivist and

non-cognitivist debate on the theme of religious
language? Discuss the views of two cognitivist and
two non-cognitivist thinkers.

Submitted by:
Imrat Singh
Roll no- 0800
B.A. (Hons) Philosophy
3rd year
Hindu College
(Delhi University)
INTRODUCTION
The term "religious language" refers to statements or claims made about God or
gods. Here is a typical philosophical problem of religious language. If God is
infinite, then words used to describe finite creatures might not adequately
describe God. For example, is God good in the same sense that Secretary-General
of the United Nations is good? This difficulty challenges us to articulate the
degree that attributes used for finite beings can be used for God and what these
attributes mean when they describe God. The ambiguity in meaning with respect
to the terms predicated of God is the “problem of religious language” or the
“problem of naming God.” These predications could include divine attributes,
properties, or actions.

Speech about God is essential to both personal praxis and organized celebration
in these traditions. Without adequate solution to the problem of religious
language, human speech about God is called into question. 

The problem of religious language also provides a challenge for philosophers of

religion. If there is no adequate solution to the problem of religious language,
large discussions in the domain of philosophy of religion will also be rendered
unintelligible. For example, philosophers of religion debate the nature of divine
foreknowledge and human freedom. These claims about God would be rendered
unintelligible if human speech about God is impossible. Thus, the problem of
religious language is a philosophical problem that must be solved in order to
provide a framework for understanding claims about God in both the house of
worship and the academy.

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. The Logical Positives claim that
statements about God have no meaning because they don’t relate to anything
that is real. 

Non-cognitivism is a variety of irrealism about ethics with a number of

influential variants. Non-cognitivists agree with error theorists that there are no
moral properties or moral facts. But rather than thinking that this makes moral
statements false, non-cognitivists claim that moral statements are not in the
business of predicating properties or making statements which could be true or
false in any substantial sense. Roughly put, non-cognitivists think that moral
statements have no substantial truth conditions. Furthermore, according to non-
cognitivists, when people utter moral sentences they are not typically expressing
states of mind which are beliefs or which are cognitive in the way that beliefs are.
Rather they are expressing non-cognitive attitudes more similar to desires,
approval or disapproval.
Cognitivism is the denial of non-cognitivism. Thus it holds that moral statements
do express beliefs and that they are apt for truth and falsity. But cognitivism
need not be a species of realism since a cognitivist can be an error theorist and
think all moral statements false. Still, moral realists are cognitivists insofar as
they think moral statements are apt for robust truth and falsity and that many of
them are in fact true.
NON-COGNITIVISM
Two negative theses comprise the central common non-cognitivist claims,
although current theories often endorse them only in qualified form. One thesis
might be called semantic non-factualism. Simply put this thesis denies that
predicative moral sentences express propositions or have substantial truth
conditions. Thus semantic non-factualism suggests that their contents are not apt
for robust truth or falsity. Moral predicates do not denote or express properties
and predicative moral sentences do not therefore predicate properties of their
subjects. The second negative thesis can be called psychological non-cognitivism.
This thesis denies that the states of mind conventionally expressed by moral
utterances are beliefs or mental states, which fall on the cognitive side of the
cognitive/non-cognitive divide. Typically non-cognitivists accept both negative
theses, though there are views that accept one and not the other.
Some non-cognitivists have accepted these theses in their strongest form—moral
sentences in no way predicate properties, are apt for truth or falsity, or express
beliefs. But most current non-cognitivists accept these negative claims only in a
somewhat weakened form. For example many non-cognitivists hold that moral
judgments' primary function is not to express beliefs, though they may express
them in a secondary way. Others deny that their contents are true or false in
any robust sense but not that they can be true or false in a deflationary sense
according to which there is no substantial property separating true and false
sentences.
Non-cognitivists deny neither that moral sentences are meaningful nor that
speakers generally use them in meaningful ways. Thus different sorts of non-
cognitivist couple their negative theses with various positive claims about the
meanings of moral sentences and about the states of mind that they express. It is
the diversity of positive proposals that generates the different varieties of non-
cognitivism. Emotivists suggest that moral sentences express or evoke non-
cognitive attitudes towards various objects without asserting that the speaker
has those attitudes. Norm-expressivists suggest (roughly) that the states of mind
expressed by moral sentences are attitudes of acceptance of various norms or
rules governing conduct and emotion, perhaps coupled with a judgment that the
objects or action under discussion comports with those norms. Prescriptivists
suggest that these sentences are a species of prescription or command, and may
or may not offer an account of the state of mind such judgments express.
While non-cognitivism was first developed as a theory about moral judgments
many of the arguments for the position apply equally well to other sorts of
evaluative language. Thus most non-cognitivists today extend the treatment to
normative or evaluative judgments generally.
Non-cognitive refers to a type of language that is not subject to truth or falsity.
Braithwaite rejected simplistic cognitivist theories of meaning such as the
verification and falsification principles. He suggested that religious statements
are meaningful because they are used by believers to express a commitment to a
certain way of life and morality. Braithwaite was an empiricist who differed to
other empiricists like Ayer as he believed observation and experience to be the
foundation of all concepts. He stated that religious statements are like moral
statements because they are an expression of an attitude towards a certain way
of behaving. Braithwaite identifies the statement ‘God is love’ as meaning ‘I will
act in a selfless way’.

In Ludwig Wittgenstein’s second half of his career he too approached religious

language from a non-cognitive perspective. Wittgenstein suggests that people
play their own language games. Religious believers and scientists are not playing
the same language game, which is why problems arise, issues stem from a
misunderstanding of language.

Wittgenstein believed that every word we speak is all part of a language game.
For Wittgenstein language games were similar to an inside joke. You would only
get the joke if you were in on the joke. This is similar to language; you will only
understand the language being used if you are familiar with the language. That is
why Wittgenstein believes that Religious language is meaningful, but only to the
religious believers. They are all part of a group that regularly uses that language,
which has a deep meaning to them. Non-believers would not think that religious
language is meaningful, because we are not involved in that 'game'. Wittgenstein
refers to words as 'tools' because we use them to build our houses.

He no longer sought to prove "whether" language refers, but looked at the way in
which language refers to things.

He decided that the best way to determine a word's meaning was to look at how
it is used, and not to come up with a theoretical definition. Wittgenstein said this
was about: "Getting back to the rough ground".

"The individual words in a language name objects - sentences are a combination

of such names. Every word has a meaning, it stands for something." Augustine
Wittgenstein had accepted Augustine's way but later realized that context is
needed to truly understand a word. Wittgenstein said that we restrict words if
we try to define them out of their context. He said: "philosophical problems arise
when language goes on holiday". Essentially, Wittgenstein is saying that taking
language out of context renders it often useless and at the very least, hard to
understand fully. He recognized that words have many different uses in different
contexts.

Words have meaning only in the context of a game. Whilst watching a football
(soccer) match, this philosophical idea occurred to Wittgenstein. If a person with
no prior knowledge of football is watching a game, to him it will seem very
random and meaningless. For it to take meaning, he must first understand the
rules of the game: there are two opposing sides, each has eleven players, each is
trying to score against the other by putting the ball in the opposite net etc. Once
he understands the overall context of the game then the men running around
chasing a ball no longer seem mad but have meaning in the game.

So too, concluded Wittgenstein, is it with language. If one does not understand

the context of the language and the rules that are imposed upon the specific
discourse, then essentially, one cannot understand the words in their truest
form. He acknowledged that people who understand the rules of one game (i.e.
football) can find similarities in other games (i.e. Rugby) but essentially, these
games are inherently different and thus to understand fully, one must
understand the specific rules of that game and its differences from other games.

What Wittgenstein was saying was that language only has meaning in its specific
context. When taken out of that context and put into a different one, it may not
mean the same thing. Wittgenstein was warning us against prescriptivism and
being too stuck in one way of thinking. Wittgenstein thought that one could not
stand outside a game and legislate about it or attempt to impose the rules of
another game - you cannot play basketball as if it's football. So he said that a
player of one game could not criticize the player of another, without first
learning the rules and entering into the game (i.e. people cannot criticize others'
use of language without first understanding their full context and intended
meaning).

For Wittgenstein, language could be used correctly or incorrectly within the

rules of the game, but primarily it is non-cognitive and its primary purpose is not
to make factual statements. All forms of life have their own language and are
therefore separate to each other. For Wittgenstein, language was an anti - realist
truth (one that is a truth held by a particular group and thus is meaningful to
them without requiring verification or falsification).

Today, a growing number of theories treat religious language as non-cognitive.

J.H Randall’s exposition indicates how a view of religious symbols that is very
close to Tillich’s can be used in the service of naturalism. He conceives religion as
a human activity that like compeers science and art, makes its own special
contribution to man’s culture. The distinctive material with which religion works
is a body of symbols and myths. What is important to realize is that religious
symbols belong with social and artistic symbols in the group of symbols that are
both non-representative and non-cognitive. Such non cognitive symbols can be
said to symbolize not some eternal thing that can be indicated apart from their
operation, but rather what they themselves do, their peculiar functions.

According to Randall, religious symbols have a fourfold sanctions. First, they

arouse the emotions and stir men to actions they may thereby strengthen man’s
practical commitment to what they believe to be right. Second, they stimulate co-
operate action and thus bind a community together through a common response
through its symbols. Third, they are able to communicate qualities of experience
that cannot be expressed by the ordinary literal use of language. And fourth, they
both evoke and serve to foster and clarify man’s experience of an aspect of the
world that can be called the order of splendour or the divine.

Randall’s position represents a radical departure from the traditional

assumptions of western religion. The divine as defined by Randall is a temporary
mental construction or a projection a recently emerged animal inhabiting one of
the satellites of a minor star. God is not according to this view the creator and the
ultimate ruler of the universe he is fleeting ripple of imagination in a tiny corner
of space-time.

Randall’s theory of religion and that of religious language expresses with great
clarity a way of thinking which is less clearly defined form is widespread today
and is indeed characteristic of our culture.

COGNITIVISM
Cognitivism is perhaps best defined as the denial of non-cognitivism. Cognitivists
think that moral sentences are apt for truth or falsity, and that the state of mind of
accepting a moral judgment is typically one of belief. They think that typical
utterances of indicative sentences containing moral predicates express beliefs in
the same way that other sentences with ordinary descriptive predicates typically
do. Different species of cognitivist disagree about the contents of moral sentences
and beliefs, about their truth conditions, and about their truth. What they have in
common, however, is that they all deny that an adequate account of moral
judgments can be given consistent with the two negative non-cognitivist theses.
When it came to religious language, Paul Tillich took a non-cognitive approach
as he regarded religious language as symbolic and thought that religious symbols
communicate the values and belief systems of humanity that is often quite
difficult to put into words. Tillich argued that God is the ‘object of ultimate
concern’; humanity strives to become close to God and understand him.
However, our basic human language prevents us from doing so since God is a
transcendent being, our human language limits him and doesn’t allow us to
understand God or the spiritual world around us. Tillich also refers to God as the
‘ground of being’ which cannot be comprehended or known in a personal way,
but can be known through the use of symbols. Symbols can be physical objects
that are used to represent something that is not physical. For example, a symbol
such as fire symbolically represents the Holy Spirit in Christianity. Additionally,
fire can symbolise the fact that Jesus is the light of the world and that Jesus
brought light to the world as Holman Hunt demonstrated in his painting ‘the
light of the world’.

Symbols can also come in the forms of stories such as the story of Adam and Eve
or the Virgin Birth. Some take these stories to be literal and factually true.
However, Tillich suggested that the story of the virgin birth was meant to
symbolise the purity of Mary from Sin. The story of Adam and Eve was in fact
meant to illustrate the condition of human beings and their state of sin.

Tillich also suggested that symbols, unlike signs, participate in the thing that they
point to ‘the function of a symbol as participating in that which it conveys’. For
instance, the crucifix is symbolic because it shows the significance of Jesus’
death; it also participates in that event. Tillich meant that this symbol represents
the event and gives humanity access to a deeper level of understanding of the
event. Tillich took an anti-realist approach and followed the coherence theory of
truth, he believed that things don’t have to exist for everyone as long as an
individual believes it to be true then that is all that is necessary (Similar to
Wittgenstein’s theory of language games).
The statement ‘Jesus is the lamb of God’ Tillich would argue isn’t to be taken
literally. It’s a symbolic statement, the lamb represents a sacrifice that was made,
and this reminds Christians of the sacrifice made by Jesus when he died for our
sins. This type of symbol is valuable and meaningful for Christians because it
reminds them of how much Jesus has done for them and how much he loves
them. This statement and other symbols such as cross ‘open up new levels of
reality which would otherwise remain closed to us’ by this he meant that
religious symbols can evoke many different reactions such as humility, worship,
love, sacrifice etc. that may not have been obtainable without the use of symbols.
Some Philosophers would argue that this symbol is used to illustrate the gentle
nature of Jesus Christ and atonement.

This coincides with one of the functions J. H Randall proposed that religious
symbols serve. Randall suggested that religious symbols are motivational.
Symbols such as the cross are up emotions as it is where Jesus was sacrificed and
inspires people to live a good life like Jesus, because he made such a big sacrifice
for humanity.

The ideas of Ian Ramsey concerning religious language link with analogical
language. He suggested that words and titles applied to God function as ‘models’,
thereby agreeing with Aquinas. By this, Ramsey meant that words tell us
something about God, but not the whole story, just as models in everyday life
help us to understand something. However, models, by nature, tend to be simpler
than the original on which they are based. Ramsey acknowledged this point and
said that models always need to be qualified – he used the word ‘qualifiers’. By
‘qualifiers’ Ramsey meant that every model has some limits; for instance, a
model is not necessarily like the original in all respects, or perhaps does not
communicate all of the depth or complexity of the original.

If we want to understand the workings of the human mind, it could be compared

to a computer. The brain could be likened to the hardware of a computer,
whereas memories and ideas implanted in the mind, for example by education
and upbringing, could be compared to software. We also know that the human
brain processes the light entering our eyes to enable us to see the world. In rare
cases where a person has suffered brain damage (the hardware in the analogy),
the brain fails to function properly and the person sees in two rather than three
dimensions. However, the ‘model’ of the brain as a computer needs ‘qualifiers’
such as: the brain is clearly not made of microchip circuits as is a computer, nor
can the brain be programmed in the way a computer can be. The fact remains
that the analogy can help us to understand something of the functioning of the
brain.

Ramsey suggested that eventually a model could help a person gain real insight
and understand more clearly what is being talked about. Ramsey called this a
disclosure. If one thinks about studying something difficult, when one suddenly
realizes how to solve the problem one sees clearly. Quite possibly models have
been a way to help one see clearly. In addition, when one has solved something
difficult, one’s reaction is that of fulfillment, satisfaction or even amazement.
Ian Ramsey applied his idea of ‘models’ and ‘qualifiers’ to religion to suggest that
when we use language to describe God, the language functions as a ‘model’. So if
we say that the Lord is a warrior, this is a model. However, the ‘qualifier’ is that
the Lord may be a warrior but this is not the same as a human warrior armed
with a sword and shield. Eventually, Ramsey argues, a person comes to
understand by using the model (disclosure) and a new level of understanding is
achieved. So the many titles and images of God function as models that can
eventually lead us to an understanding of God.