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Religion and Language-games

Is Wittgenstein's method of language-games -- because that's what it is: a method of comparison -- useful for understanding the place of language in religious ritual and speech? If what appears to be a mistake is very big, then it may not be a mistake at all, but something quite else.

Is "religion within the limits of language alone" the subject of the Philosophy of Religion? But the only "limits of language" are the limits of sense and nonsense, of language with meaning and language without. Compare: "religion within the limits of reason alone", but the limits of reason are the limits of all philosophy, because philosophy is "discourse of reason", of what can be put into words and cross-questioned.

Outline of this page ...

[Related pages: Wittgenstein's general definition of the expression 'language-game' (with particular examples of language-games) in the Philosophical Investigations | "Religious language is not metaphorical" | More about religion and primitive language-games | and "Wittgenstein's language-game theory": the word 'game' is defined as 'rules of the game']

The Method of Language-games and the Philosophy of Religion

Query: Wittgenstein, language and religion.

In Wittgenstein's "logic of language" (according to my account), the aim is to give an account of how we distinguish sense from nonsense where language is used. But when looking at language as used in religion, our normal points of reference, our normal techniques of understanding (LC i, p. 55), break down. For example, normally an essentially unverifiable proposition is not accepted as true, but such propositions are commonly accepted as true in religion, and so there is the question of how the word 'true' is used in religion, because it is used there. When trying to give an account of religious belief, Wittgenstein's method is to focus on such differences, e.g. the difference between hypotheses and religious propositions ('Prayer changes things' is not any kind of hypothesis), because such differences make our concept 'religious belief' clearer. (Proposition types as "language-games")

In Wittgenstein's jargon the expression 'language-game' (in German Sprachspiel) is used in at least three distinct ways: (1) 'language-games' in the sense of 'primitive models of language use', and (2) 'language-games' in the sense of 'parts of speech', and (3) proposition types as language-games. But Wittgenstein did not use expressions such as "the language-game of religion", and I don't know what anyone who does use such expressions would mean by them.

On the other hand, there is a sense in which one can speak of "religious language-games", although that is not in the sense of "primitive" language-games (PI § 7), but in the sense of religious-propositions as a proposition type (ibid. II, xi, p. 224). However, even then, is the notion of language-game (or "religious language-games") useful for understanding religion -- I mean the phenomenon of religion?

"Language game" in The Blue Book

In dictation to his students [in 1933-1934], Wittgenstein gave this explanation of the meaning of his concept [i.e. rules for using the word] 'language game':

[Language games] are ways of using signs [i.e. sounds, ink marks, the physical aspect of language] simpler than those in which we use the signs of our highly complicated everyday language. Language games are the forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words.... When we look at such simple [primitive] forms of language ... [we] see activities, reactions, which are clear cut and transparent. On the other hand we recognize in these simple processes forms of language not separated by a break from our more complicated ones. We see that we can build up complicated forms from the primitive ones by gradually adding new forms. (BB p. 17)

Is this the case with the use of language made in religion -- "that we can build up complicated forms from the primitive ones"? But is the use of language in religion simply a more complicated form of non-religious primitive language-games? Or is language used in a very different way in religion? What would an example of a religious "language game" be?

"Language games" -- is this analogy [simile] the best way to approach all philosophical questions? "When we look at such simple forms of language the mental mist which seems to enshrouded our ordinary use of language disappears." (ibid.) What is an example of a religious "language game"? I couldn't say. Is the analogy between language and a game played according to strict rules very helpful in the case of religion? [Remember that describing language-games is only a technique of understanding. The examples Wittgenstein actually gave of language-games have nothing do with religion. See the simple example from mathematics below.] What Wittgenstein compared religion to was not a game but to the various roles certain types of pictures may play in our lives (LC p. 56).

Faith is confident assurance concerning what we hope for, and conviction about things we do not see.... Through faith we perceive that the worlds were created by the word of God, and that what is visible came in to being through the invisible. (Hebrews 11.1,3)

This may be said to be an example of a religious picture: "that what is visible came in to being through the [essentially] invisible". And we can describe "language games" played with the word 'invisible' (children's make-believe), but will those games make the nature of religion clearer to us?

One of the methods used in the Philosophy of Religion is indeed to investigate "grammar" (e.g. the grammar of the signs 'belief in', 'faith', 'God' and 'gods'), but not as if there were a part-of-speech "religion-word" (as there is a part-of-speech "color-word" and a part-of-speech "number-word" and perhaps a part of speech "superstition-word"). Language may be used in many different ways in religion, and in some cases the language used simply does not matter to philosophy -- not in the sense that the language is meaningless, but because it does not yield any insight into what is happening in a ritual.

Is prayer a language-game?

For example, when Catholics say the rosary, the prayer "Hail Mary" is recited countless times and a person reciting that prayer may not even be aware of the prayer's words as anything more than sounds (bare signs without meaning). The words' meaning is not the "meaning" of this ritual. -- In which sense of 'meaning'?

Does the comparison to a game make the nature of prayer clearer?

A child is taught to say its prayers. This is a version of "make believe" or "pretend" that the adult approaches in a serious way: the child is taught to recite words to an invisible being named 'God'; it is trained to recite a formula the child may not be able to state the meaning of. What can the words "Hail Mary full of grace" mean to a child, particularly if those words are not taught in conjunction with the Gospel story of the Annunciation? Graham Greene wrote of a four-year-old girl who prayed "Hail Mary, quite contrary" (as in the nursery rhyme "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?"; cf. 'holy goats' rather than 'Holy Ghost' and 'parakeet' rather than 'Paraclete'). Does calling this ritual a "language game" make anything about this ritual clearer? (And what if there is prayer without words?)

Someone who is given a Sanskrit text to repeat may not know the meaning of the text. And even if the person does know that meaning -- the meaning of the text that is recited is not the meaning of the ritual (religious practice). Is an investigation of language the key to all philosophical puzzles? The priest gives the believer a text to recite according to strict rules, and the believer obeys. -- That might be called a "language game", but what does calling it that make clearer? What do we call 'understanding a religious practice'?

The "meaning of the ritual." -- In which sense of the word 'meaning'? Not in logic's sense of rules [conventions] of semantic grammar (in Wittgenstein's jargon).

Does the answer to the question of what we want to learn from the philosophical study of religion tell us which meaning of the word 'meaning' we are asking about? Before I wrote mostly about authority in religion ("I would say that the question that concerns philosophy is the question of authority") or more specifically about "sacred scripture" used as authority. However, "How do you know?" is not the only question that is asked in philosophy. (And need someone's belief appeal to an authority to justify it? "God has written on our hearts" is not what we mean by 'justification by authority'.)

Are we looking for a way of looking at [conceptualizing] religion that makes its nature clear to us? But I don't know what that way should look like: we cannot say about religion: "I don't know my way about" -- because nothing is hidden (We are not asking about what the priests do in the holy of holies, about what is behind the iconostasis). It is, rather, that what is in plain view seems somehow unclear [does not make sense] to us. -- Are we trying to make the non-rational in human life appear rational, the non-reasonable in human life appear reasonable? Is that what we really want from the Philosophy of Religion?

The point is that if there were evidence, this would in fact destroy the whole business. (LC i, p. 56)

That is, if religion were rational, if it were what we normally call reasonable, there would be no reason to call it religion, no reason for that category of grammar. So what do we want from the Philosophy of Religion?

Religion: where the meaning is not the meaning

What is the place of language in religion? Is it not a place where the meaning -- in Wittgenstein's sense of the word 'meaning' [or, the relation between grammar and sense and nonsense, or, the public, held-in-common conventions [rules of the game as in "language-game"] for using "signs" [sounds, written shapes (Z § 143)] -- of the language used is not necessarily the "meaning" or "significance" of the ritual in which the language appears? Is it not where we speak instead of the "deeper meaning"? It is place where the "grammatical meaning" of the language spoken need not even be known by its speakers or hearers (as was often the case with the Latin Mass). What did Jesus mean by calling the bread and wine that he gave his disciples his body and blood?

Is religious language a "language-game" in the sense of 'Part of Speech'?

If the expression 'language-game' is taken in the sense of parts of speech, then would it be useful to invent a category or part-of-speech "religion-word"? Then for example, 'gods', 'God' would belong to the part of speech religion-word, as presumably would 'faith', 'belief in', 'ghost', ... I don't know whether something worthwhile might be done with this rather vague notion or not. What I do know is that Wittgenstein did nothing with it. And it is not clear to me what can be done with it, because the language of religion appears to me to be entirely derived -- i.e. misderived -- from non-religious speech.

Grammatical analogies are followed, but then the original grammar is crippled. For example, the grammar of 'ghost' derives from the part of speech [belonging to Wittgenstein's "logic of language"] name-of-object-word -- but then many of the rules of that category are negated: e.g. an object is visible, touchable, sense-able, but ghosts are not: they are "disembodied minds" with the shape, if it were possible to see them, of human bodies. By grammatical analogy, if a spleen can be removed from a body, then mustn't also a mind be removable [disembodiable]? (In this case, a grammatical confusion that also arises from non-religious speech is taken up and repeated in religion, namely, mistaking the word 'mind' for a name-of-object-word.)

Religious language looks like what Wittgenstein once called "running against the limits of language", but would later perhaps have called "nonsense" (although not in a contemptuous way)

I write "nonsense" above in quotes because religious language is at the very least suggestive of things, e.g. in the case of 'ghost' and 'gods' and 'demons' we can draw pictures of these "beings". It would be dogmatic -- and false (unless we are using logic's jargon) -- to call this suggestive language "nonsense" (PI §§ 13, 282) ... although if it were introduced into a philosophical argument would we not dismiss it as just that: undefined signs (sounds, ink marks)?

[Note: there would be a problem here with saying "either nonsense or grammar" (G.E. Moore, PP iii, p. 312) as in "Theology as grammar" (PI § 373: we talk about eyebrows in the case of gods, but not in the case of the "eye of God" (LC iii, p. 71)), because religious language upon investigation only shows you a grammar [one that derives from ordinary language] -- it does not create one. (Nor does it aim to create one; rather it tries to have it both ways: e.g. "Belief-in really just is belief", despite the fact that part of the grammar of 'belief' has been stripped away from 'belief-in'. "'God' really is a proper name", and so forth.)]

Similarly, with 'belief in' and 'faith'. Where we speak of 'believing' something, we also speak of grounds or reasons for believing something; and if we say that someone believes something without some such justification, then we condemn that person as "unreasonable" or "irrational". In the case of "belief in", however, there are "by definition" [again this is a case of "crippled grammar"] no grounds for believing anything, and yet the "believer" behaves [lives] as it there were -- indeed as if there were nothing more justified than their unjustified [i.e. unjustifiable] belief.

Where we speak of having 'faith' in someone, we also speak of the betrayal of faith. But in the case of "religious faith", the "believer" trusts in God's goodness despite any evidence that God may not be trustworthy. [The God of Nature versus the Ethical God]

[The notion of "autonomous language-games" is foreign to Wittgenstein's logic, if by 'autonomous' is meant '(somehow, I don't know how) independent of any test of grammar and sense and nonsense'. Wittgenstein does not suggest that notion by including "praying" in his list of examples of "the multiplicity of language-games" -- i.e. activities involving language -- for immediately after he speaks of "the multiplicity of tools in language and the ways they are used" (PI § 23). -- Note: that a tool is used; it is not like a "gear that is idling" (ibid. §§ 132, 88): a game not played according to rules ["grammar"] is not what we call a 'game'.

You cannot say that the concept 'sense and nonsense' does not apply to language as it is used in religion -- or you could say that, but if you did, then there would be nothing for logic of language to discuss; language in religion would be sounds without sense, as is "speaking in tongues" or the song of birds in the eyes of a human being.]

Language-games and Maths and Sciences and Art

Note: Words marked "Query" are Internet searches that were directed, or often misdirected, to pages of this site.

Query: Wittgenstein, language-games, science.

The Philosophy of Science, on the other hand, may usefully be approached with the technique [method] of "language-games"; there are questions about how words like 'electron' and 'energy' are used -- e.g. defined by measurements, and here it might indeed be helpful to "describe the use of a word as if it were a move in a game" -- in our various "games" of measuring e.g. -- in simple, primitive ways. And we can call theoretical-construct-words (e.g. 'atom') a part-of-speech, which is something else Wittgenstein called a language-game ("families of language use").

Query: religion as a form of life.

Why never the query "science as a form of life"? For is it not both a way of life and characteristic of the human life form?

Mathematical Language-games

Query: mathematical language-games, Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein gave examples of what can be done with numbers in primitive language-games: We can picture that in a family of builders a child is taught to recite the numbers 'one' to 'five' ... then when the adult calls out "Fetch four blocks!" the child recites the numbers one through four and picks up a block as it says each number. The comparison between using mathematics and playing a game is clear here (and, indeed, if the child is treated with kindness, this work may be nothing more than a game to the child), and therefore Wittgenstein's meaning [application] of 'language-game' is clear in this example.

But the application of the remark "The kind of certainty is the kind of language-game" (PI II, xi, p. 224) is not so clear, because although the game described is a game played according to the strictest of rules (There is a one-to-one correlation between numbers and the objects they are used to count), note that maths is not unique in this respect: Consider the proposition 'A book is on the table', for the rules for verification are also of the strictest. (For both cases: in normal circumstances, not every set I can imagine.)

On the other hand, it could be said that the block-counting game is not an example of a mathematical language-game because it does not involve mathematical propositions such as '1 + 4 = 5'. But although it may be useful to compare some mathematical propositions to rules of a game, is it helpful to compare the use of those rules, as when making a calculation, to playing a game -- i.e. does that make anything that was previously obscure clear? The point, after all, is not simply to make the comparison.

"... previously obscure clear?" Although the meaning of mathematical language may be clearer if we focus on the calculus rather than on mental processes said to accompany it, either way that is still only one way of looking at [or, "understanding"] mathematics, still only one meaning of the word 'meaning' (the one Wittgenstein chose), still only a comparison, not an exposed hidden truth, not metaphysics.

Wittgenstein's expression 'language-game' should not be used carelessly. It was a tool -- although not a universal tool -- in Wittgenstein's work in philosophy. It was invented to make the way we use language clearer to us: it should not be alluded to in a vague, metaphorical way. (In philosophy metaphors must be restated in prose.)

[Philosophy of Mathematics (What are numbers?) | Philosophy of Geometry (What is a geometric point?)]

Barren seeds of jargon and careless metaphor

Query: art as a language-game, Wittgenstein.

Now this is the precisely the sort of thing Wittgenstein did not want: "The only seed that I am likely to sow is a certain jargon." (Malcolm, Memoir 2e, p. 53) This really vague sort of allusion to his concept (tool of logic) 'language-game'. What might this query intend?

Query: works of art classed as Romantic have a family resemblance.

Not "have a family resemblance" but rather "have family resemblances". But what does the word 'family' make clearer than the word 'resemblances' alone does? The query's form of expression is a miss-sown seed of Wittgenstein's "jargon", in this instance, of his metaphor (comparison or simile). Because the word 'family' suggests an underlying "blood relationship" -- and therefore, if Wittgenstein's meaning is not explained, it misleads, suggesting the very opposite of what Wittgenstein intended.

It suggests: "Works of art are classified as Romantic because they resemble one another just as the members of a family do because of their underlying blood relationship." And that would be a grammatical "because", the logic of language's justification for applying the word 'Romantic art' to any particular work of art. But in this case, that common bloodline is a grammatical myth, a false account of the classification system.

To not be misleading it has to be carefully explained what Wittgenstein meant by his metaphor, as I tried to do with family-likenesses among games, following his directive: Don't try to guess -- but look and see if there is one thing that is common to all. And even then, if you use the word 'family' rather than simply 'resemblances', it must be explicitly stated that by 'family' is not meant a metaphysical theory about an underlying common blood line or common nature regardless of whether anyone is able to say what it is (cf. Plato's Forms and the "theory of abstraction").

Just as Wittgenstein does not have a "theory of language-games", he also does not have a "theory of family resemblances"; the first is a method of comparison, the second a metaphor. His metaphor is simply intended to contrast classes where there is "no one thing in common" with classes where there is a common nature (essence). And if that is not made clear, then what does the addition of the word 'family' add to your proposition? Nothing at all. Thus rewritten:

Query: works of art classified as Romantic resemble one another in various ways, but there is no one defining characteristic common to all.

That is far clearer than any vague allusion to Wittgenstein's "family resemblances" metaphor. Wittgenstein did not intend by that expression to suggest a red thread of blood running through all the members of a particular family. Thus to use his "family" metaphor as he intended you must explain exactly what you mean by it: "This, this, and this are examples of the various ways in which Romantic works of art resemble one another, but, as these examples show, there is not one defining feature that is common to all of them."

There is no essence of Romantic art, but there are resemblances among works so titled. Whether anyone finds those resemblances compelling enough to justify the common title 'Romantic' -- i.e. to use that classification system -- is another matter. In this the word 'Romantic' differs from the word 'game', because it does not belong to our natural history, but was instead invented by historians of art.

Limits to Wittgenstein's game simile (Summary)

Query: Wittgenstein, all philosophy is language-games.

Given that any use of language can be compared to playing a game in some way or other, and that the medium [of the art] of philosophy is language, that may be correct, but it is nothing more than a tautology. If, however, the claim were made that, according to Wittgenstein, "All philosophy is a misunderstanding of our common language-games", that would be a difficult thesis to defend. Again, "language-game" is simply a comparison -- a comparison intended to be used as a tool for making the logic of our language clearer. -- However, it is not a universally useful tool in philosophy. For example, in Wittgenstein's Aesthetics as in his Philosophy of Religion it is not.

Query: is religious language a game?
Query: Wittgenstein: what does it mean to say that language is a game?

Wittgenstein makes a comparison, but then the "is like" is changed to "is". This is a serious problem (and not only in philosophy, for such "savage-like" behavior (PI § 194) goes on everywhere), a profound hindrance to the human understanding. A metaphor becomes a thesis, a thesis a dogma. I don't know what "it would mean" to say that language is a game; Wittgenstein only said that it is like one: a comparison can be made. (Otherwise, the statement that language is a game is simply false: there is no such category {volleyball, skipping rope, language, whist, rugby} e.g. in our common language.)

"Religion as a language-game." Do you mean by that, that you think that all the statements made within religion have a common grammar (i.e. rules for their use)? Cf. "Games, a family of cases." Religions, a family of cases. But what kind of family? That is the problem with Wittgenstein's metaphor -- the word 'family' is undefined; there are merely resemblances, similarities, to point to; but why these particular things should be classified as a family -- there is no "why" (no essence, as it were); it's simply what we do, how we learned to classify things when we acquired language.

Even to state a general rule such as: The statements made in religion are not verifiable (for if they were we would not call them 'religion') -- do you want to call that a "language-game"? But that rule by itself is not enough to define religion's language-game-type. For statements are made that are not religion but are unverifiable (e.g. when conjecturing about motives in psychology, or saying about one's own pain, e.g. toothache, that one has such pain).

The principal reason not to the call religion a "language-game" is that calling it that makes nothing much clear -- although it makes it look as if it made everything clear.

On the other hand - Proposition types as language-games

Note that Wittgenstein also uses his expression 'language-game' to refer to "types of propositions" or "proposition types". But what criteria can be used to distinguish religious propositions from other types of propositions, as e.g. the propositions of ethics, natural science, mathematics, psychology ("The kind of certainty is the kind of language-game" (PI II, xi, p. 224))?

So then by this note am I negating what I wrote on this page about "the method of language-games"? Not at all. But we have to be clear about how we are using the expression 'language-games'. If we want to contrast proposition types, we may be able to do that -- but if we speak of religion itself as a language-game, it's not clear what we would mean by the word 'language-game'. The notion of "autonomous language-games" with the language of religion itself one of these -- its use of language employing a different standard of sense and nonsense from all other uses of language, is a non-Wittgenstein notion. To blithely accept without thorough explanation that notion is an example of "a stupid way of thinking" in philosophy.

Query: religious language, tool in a tool box.

"I have often compared language to a tool chest ..." (LC p. 1). But now, what exactly are we calling the tools? It seems proposition types as language-games, because does not religious language seen as a tool consist of particular types of propositions, propositions having a distinct grammar from many other kinds (e.g. statements of empirical fact, ethical propositions, mathematical propositions, and so on). A statement of religious belief is not a Potemkin empirical proposition, for example. That 'God is a father who loves us, his children' is in nowise an empirical proposition (for it is not put to an empirical test); it has a quite different grammar, but how is that grammar to be compared to a language-game? By there being "rules of the game", rules that are different from the rules for propositions (hypotheses) that are to be tested by experience.

Query: are religious beliefs a language-game?

Apropos of "sowing jargon", but maybe you could say that the expression of religious beliefs -- i.e. the language they are expressed in -- is a language-game, or, rather, various language-games in the sense of proposition types as language-games: but then you have to fully explain what you mean by that, not just make a general statement.

For example, does the notion of "proposition types as language-games" apply to prayer that is mere babble of words to the one who recites the prayer? Do many Christians know eschatology's meaning of the language of the "Lord's Prayer" (Matthew 6.9-13, Luke 11.2-4), which puzzled even Saint Jerome ("Give us this day our daily bread")?

With respect to prayer none of three meanings Wittgenstein assigned to 'language-game' makes the meaning of language in religion clearer. Certainly logic's tool of "primitive language-games" doesn't seem to make how language is used in religion clearer -- that is to say, it isn't clear how that tool is to be applied as a method of understanding the phenomena of religion through the use these phenomena make of language.

[See also the discussion Declarative sentences, commands, and logical form (Russell's "philosophical grammar").]

"For a blunder, that is too big" (It is not a blunder)

If you compare it with anything in Science which are called evidence, you can't credit that anyone would soberly argue: "Well, I had this dream ... therefore ... Last Judgment". (LC ii, p. 61-62)

That remark ("soberly argue") is made within a community of ideas ("Science"), for in "the wonder world of the New Testament" people argued -- or, rather, took for granted -- just that: a dream was a form of prophesy in the world-picture of that community, and not to be stifled (1 Thes. 5.19-20: "Quench not the Spirit! Despise not prophesying!"). And that is why Wittgenstein goes on to say:

You might say: "For a blunder, that's too big." If you suddenly wrote numbers down on the blackboard, and then said: "Now, I'm going to add," and then said: "2 and 21 is 13," etc. I'd say: "This is no blunder." (LC ii, p. 62)

Wittgenstein means that you can't say about language as it is used in statements of religious belief that it is a mistaken use of language -- i.e. a misunderstanding of our language's grammar, e.g. about how propositions are verified. Something else is happening here. If someone says that he believes that God is both all-powerful and all-good, despite that proposition's contradicting our experience (which is a very general fact of nature), that is not a matter of conceptual confusion, but of something quite different (which we call 'religious faith').

Language and God as the Father

"God is a father to us," Jesus taught. "But," one replies, "that statement is not consistent with our experience of the world. It is obviously false." Yes, it is obviously false -- but too obviously false, and therefore it is not a blunder (mistake): "For a blunder that's too big." But if it is not a blunder, then? I don't know. (Cf. Wittgenstein: "a picture that we are never told how to apply." Nor can we imagine how it is to be applied to a world which is so different from what we would expect it to be if God is a loving father to us.)

Wittgenstein: the statement has a different role in the life of the religious person from that of an empirical proposition which may be true or false. Do I understand Wittgenstein's account? Then would I say that 'God is the father' is a false statement? No, but neither would I say that it is a true statement. I simply don't know what to do with it (Well, but there are many possibilities, if, that is, trying to rationalize the meaning of that proposition doesn't show a fundamental misunderstanding. As if to say: No, that's not the point, but rather saying that God is the father is an expression of faith in the one who taught his followers to think of God as their father, and the rejection of that picture of God would appear to be the rejection of its author, namely Jesus himself). Would Wittgenstein say this shows that I am out of my depth? (There is much discussion of this topic elsewhere on this site, e.g. Our Father and the kingdom of God and Fr. Copleston's "But it does exclude something". But the important thing to say is that: if we want to understand religion -- i.e. the phenomenon of religion (as well as, maybe, our concept 'religion') -- we must avoid setting up a straw man and knocking it down, using the wrong yardstick -- i.e. grammatical model -- to measure our subject.)

Whether a thing is a blunder or not -- it is a blunder in a particular system. Just as something is a blunder in a particular game and not in another. (ibid. i, p. 59)

Note: the second sentence is a particular comparison (i.e. it compares some ways of thinking to game-playing). It does not, however, assert that every way of thinking is comparable to playing a game where what characterizes a game is its rules.

If rather than 4 x 5 = 20, someone wrote 4 x 5 = 4545, that would not be a mistake; it's too big for a mistake. If he is following a rule at all, it is a different rule from our normal one.

Query: Plato wrote about Apollo's worshipers speaking gibberish.

I don't know what that is an allusion to. But an example, not from Greece, but from the New Testament: If "speaking in tongues" is one example of language in religion, this in itself (although not beyond itself) shows that the comparison of language in religion to rule-bound game playing is not a helpful comparison. "It might even be gibberish" (cf. "nonsense verse" of the type that is nothing more than sounds that rhyme). But that is not the religious view of this: In 1 Cor. 14.2, "speaking in tongues" is said to be "speaking to God alone", because it is not a language understood by men, but Paul does not call it mere "sounds without sense" either. But if it is sounds without sense "for man", then it is sound that does not have a grammatical sense -- i.e. it is not comparable to a game if what defines a game is its rules.

"The Father is all-powerful and all-good"

Or is it the Son who is all-good, the Father all-powerful? But there is only one God.

[Friedrich Waismann asked Wittgenstein if the "existence of the world is connected with the ethical", and Wittgenstein answered] Men have felt a connection here and have expressed it in this way: God the Father created the world, while God the Son (or the Word proceeding from God) is the ethical. That men have first divided the Godhead and then united it, points to there being a connection here. (LE/Notes p. 16)

Waismann's notes are dated 17 December 1930. (Cf. Albert Schweitzer's contrast between God the Creator and God as an Ethical Personality.)

It isn't a question of my being anywhere near him, but on an entirely different plane ... The difference might not show up at all in any explanation of the meaning. (ibid. i, p. 53)

I.e. in any explanation of the meaning of the language. For Wittgenstein and the religious believer might speak the same combination of words but the difference would not show up in how they defined that combination of words -- i.e. in "grammar", in a grammatical explanation.

Is someone who calls God our Father deluded, for is not the evidence of experience that God is not a loving father. But do you think you know or see something that the one who calls God our Father does not see. Do you think there is some fact or other he would dispute with you. Do you think that the religious believer is in need of an elementary lesson in reasoning [logic]. But if not, then something very different from that is going on here. If in this case you really can say: "How words are understood is not told by words alone" (Z § 144), then in religion we find yet another way we use the word 'to understand', one which demands more thought than the statement that "understanding is a public event" (which is a true grammatical account, for how words are understood is shown by the differences they make in what we do) appears to suggest. I think that sense of 'understand' is also shown by the following remark (where 'not to understand' = 'to be concept blind').

What must the man be called, who cannot understand the concept 'God', cannot see how a reasonable man may use this word seriously? Are we to say he suffers from some blindness? (RPP i § 213 [circa 1946-1947])

"Jesus told us to call God our Father, and that is why I do." That could be called "a mystery of faith", and in this particular case you really might say of the religious believer, not that his reasoning is poor but instead that: "Here he does not use reason" (LC i, p. 59), not at all. And that is a way of life ("language as forms of life").

[Above I am not thinking of those who rationalize away the reality before our eyes by saying e.g. "Evil does not exist; it is merely the absence of good" (Augustine) or "God wills to bring good out of evil" (as if absolute evil, from which no good could be drawn, did not exist), much less about those who base their faith on "weak reasons" (ibid. i, p. 59), as if the truth of their beliefs were easily demonstrated.]

Notes.--There are many possible ways 'God the Father' may be understood. As always in the philosophy of religion: the challenge is not to tilt at scarecrows, but to understand faith (that is to say, our concepts 'religious belief', 'faith').

Blaise Pascal dismissed what he called "the God of the philosophers and scholars", for it is a barren and unserviceable metaphysical picture with no religious life in it, whereas e.g. Jesus' picture of the ethical kingdom of God has life.

God is all-powerful and all-good

Anselm's definition of God as that than which nothing greater can be conceived is both logically valid and empirically false. Its conclusion is false -- but not because it follows from false premises. What can be done with Anselm's God?

A very strange case. True premises (propositions) that lead to a conclusion that is logically true but empirically false.

"Religious Experience"

Query: Ludwig Wittgenstein: inner states break the rules of games behavior. (Philosophy of Psychology)

That query sounds as if it assumed that Wittgenstein had a theory -- a bed of Procrustes he fit language meaning to -- as if to say: the simile of language-games is not a mere simile, but the underlying reality of meaning. But what Wittgenstein does instead is to compare using language [in some cases, not in all] to playing a game where what characterize a game is its rules; and where there are no rules of course that comparison cannot be made. But that it be possible to make such a comparison is not a requirement Wittgenstein ever made.

But it is true that if we are going to make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense using Wittgenstein's concept 'grammar' or 'rules for using signs', then we cannot use "inner states" to do this. (And of course where there is no difference between sense and nonsense, it follows that there is also no difference between truth or falsity. Religious experience.)

An "inner process" stands in need of outward criteria. (PI § 580)

It is grammar that stands in need of that criteria, if sense and nonsense is to be an objective distinction. Outward criteria are objective because they are public. What is essentially private ("inner states") can neither be public nor objective. (Games are of course played according to held-in-common -- i.e. public -- rules.)

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