Taking a Wittgensteinian line, D. Z. Phillips construes the question of the reality of God as like the question of the reality of physical objects in general, and unlike the question of the reality of unicorns, say. Phillips would therefore have a bone to pick with Edward 'Cactus Ed' Abbey who writes,
Is there a God? Who knows? Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon?
Abbey's meaning is clear: It is as idle to suppose that there is a God as to suppose that there is an irate unicorn on the far side of the moon. Of course, there could be such a unicorn. It is logically possible in that there is no contradiction in the idea. It is also epistemically possible in that the supposition is consistent with what we know. (Perhaps a clever extraterrestrial scientist synthesized a unicorn, put him in a space suit, and deposited the unfortunate critter on the moon.) But there is no positive reason to believe in something so outlandish. The same goes for God according to Abbey, Russell, and plenty of others.
How might a theist respond to this? (And to cognate 'objections' such as the flying spaghetti monster and Russell's teapot?) One way to respond is that of the Wittgensteinian fideist. A fideist like Phillips would take Abbey to have misconstrued the very sense of the theist's affirmation. Abbey takes the theist to be adding a weird object to the ontological inventory: hence the comparison of God to an irate lunar unicorn. Phillips, however, thinks that the claim that God exists is more like the claim that there are physical objects in general. That there are physical objects in general is presupposed by any inquiry into whether a particular object exists. It is a presupposition without which such an inquiry would make no sense. As Phillips puts it:
Similarly, the question of the reality of God is a question of the possibility of sense and nonsense, truth and falsity, in religion. When God's existence is construed as a matter of fact, it is taken for granted that the concept of God is at home within the conceptual framework of the reality of the physical world. . . . to ask a question about the reality of God is to ask a question about a kind of reality, not about the reality of this or that, in much the same way as asking a question about the reality of physical objects is not to ask about the reality of this or that physical object. ("Philosophy, Theology, and the Reality of God," Phil. Quart., 1963, reprinted in Rowe and Wainwright, p. 281)
Phillips blunders badly in this passage when he says that construing the divine existence as a matter of fact takes it for granted that the concept of God belongs within the conceptual framework of the reality of the physical world. For if anything is clear, it is that God for the theist is not a physical object. Surely, in claiming that God exists as a matter of fact, the theist who understands his doctrine is not claiming that God exists as a physical object. What Phillips should have said is that construing God's existence as a matter of fact presupposes, not that God is a physical object, but that God is a being or existent.
Phillips would want to deny that too. His view is that the reality of God is not the reality of a special being, but the reality of a presupposition that is not and cannot be questioned from within a religious language-game (or at least from within a theistic religious language-game). The reality of God has to do with what a religious believer is prepared to say: ". . . the religious believer is not prepared to say that God might not exist. It is not that as a matter of fact God will always exist, but that it makes no sense to say that God might not exist." (280)
Perhaps the following analogy will clarify what Phillips is driving at. Consider the reality of checkmate in chess. The existence of checkmate is not a matter of fact in the way that it is a matter of fact that Karpov opened a certain game with 1. d4. For within the game of chess it makes no sense to say that checkmate might not exist. Checkmate and the rules governing it are defining features of the game. They cannot be questioned from within the game, and to question them from without the game is simply to reject the game. For that reason, it makes no sense to demand proof of these rules, nor can one raise the question whether they are reasonable. Is it reasonable that one cannot castle out of check, into check, or though check? It is neither reasonable nor unreasonable. The question of reasonableness cannot arise. Similarly, for Phillips, it is neither reasonable nor unreasonable that God exists. To play a theistic language-game is to presupposes the meaningfulness of God-talk just as to play chess is to presuppose the meaningfulness of talk of checkmate. And just as God exists in theistic language-games, checkmate exists in chess. But also: just as checkmate does not exist outside chess, God does not exist outself theistic language-games. For if God does exist apart from theistic language-games, then there would be a fact of that matter as to the existence of God.
At this point one can see what is wrong with Phillips' view. Every sane person is an anti-realist about checkmate, but to be an anti-realist about God, as Phillips' view seems to require, is to make a joke of theistic belief. Phillips' claim that "theology is the grammar of discourse" (282) is therefore as preposterous as the claim that botany is the grammar of discourse about plants. There is of course a sense in which for the theist the existence of God is necessary, but this is not the sense in which a rule is necessary for a language-game. Chess is not chess without checkmate, so checkmate is necessary within chess. God, however, is not a rule, nor a linguistic presupposition, nor concept, nor anything dependent on human talking and acting. So the necessity of God is not the necessity of a rule. God is a necessary being, which implies that he is a being, which implies that he exsts independently of human talk and speech if he exists at all. God cannot be reduced to God-talk and God-ritual. Chess just is chess-talk and chess-ritual: chess has no reality outside chess conventions and the chessic form of life. Not so with God.
These points are frightfully obvious, but one can understand why Phillips was driven to contravene them. Surely God is not a physical object, and it is arguable that he is not a being among beings. What then is God, and how understand his reality? His is not the reality of any sort of abstract object, nor that of any sort of collection; thus he is not the world-whole. So Phillips is driven to say something equally untenable, namely, that God is immanent to certain language-games.
Related Posts (on one page):
- The Question of the Reality of God: Wittgensteinian Fideism No Answer
- What is Wrong and What is Right with Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion
Taking a Wittgensteinian line, D. Z. Phillips construes the question of the reality of God as like the question of the reality of physical objects in general, and unlike the question of the reality of unicorns, say. Phillips would therefore have a bone to pick with Edward 'Cactus Ed' Abbey who writes,
Yet I can assert that God exists, and you may deny it. And it is true that God exists iff there is such a being as God.
On the comparison to chess, can't I make the existential statement that the rule of checkmate exists in chess, or that there is no (i.e. there doesn't exist) and offside rule in chess? And there are instances of checkmate. We can ask whether that 'was' an instance of checkmate or not, or whether that player was really offside, and so whether an instance of offside exists.
>> Is it reasonable that one cannot castle out of check, into check, or though [through?] check? ... Similarly, for Phillips, it is neither reasonable nor unreasonable that God exists.
I don't understand this at all. The logical form of 'the rules of chess forbid castling out of check' has no obvious resemblance to 'God exists'. The logical form of the latter is either a general existential – 'there something with the properties of x y z' (say, omniscient, omnipotence &c), or a singular proposition, that the term 'God', as used in the Old Testament, say, has a reference. There is no mention of a rule or games or anything like that, or of reasonability or unreasonability.
Thanks for the detailed response. "I take it that the language game hypothesis is a way of avoiding 'truth conditions'." That sounds right to me. If meaning is use, then the performative aspect of language (made much of by J. L. Ausin and Co.) comes to the fore with the result that fact-stating language is slighted. I argue that meaning cannot be identified with use here.
So I'm as puzzled as you are, but I'm a bit more dogmatic. I say it is just false that 'God exists' has no truth conditions. A question about porridge. Is this any hot breakfast cereal made of grains, or must it be made of some particular grain like wheat or oats?
Checkmate is not a rule, though there are rules governing it; checkmate is a state, the state the king is in when he is in check but the check cannot be removed either by a king move or by a capture of the the offending (checking) piece or pawn, or by interposing a piece or pawn. But you are right that there is a distinction between checkmate and as instance of it, and that there can be a question whether a putative mate really is a mate.
If I understand Phillips, he is saying that 'God exists' is a rule within a religious language game in the same way that the castling rule is a rule in chess. If you play (standard) chess, then there is no question but that you must accept the castling rule as spelled out in the FIDE rule book, say. And obviously there is nothing in reality outside the game that makes the rule true. Similarly, 'God exists' cannot be questioned from within theistic LGs, and there can be no talk of proving this rule, or supporting it, or judging its reasonableness. This has the effect of insulating rel from phil and scientific criticism -- which is presumably why is it called 'fideism.'
If I am playing chess, I cannot ask whether it is really true that I must not castle into check. There is no true or false about it. Same with 'God exists.' If I am really participating in a rel form of life/LG, then I cannot ask whether 'God exists' is really true, or how I know it to be true, etc.
Now I find this completely untenable, and if I understand you, you do as well. As you point out, there is a logical diff btw the castling rule and 'God exists.'
"Mathematics is in its development entirely free and is only bound in the self-evident respect that its concepts must both be consistent with each other, and also stand in exact relationships, ordered by definitions, to those concepts which have previously been introduced and are already at hand and established. In particular, in the introduction of new numbers, it is only obligated to give definitions of them which will bestow such a determinacy and, in certain circumstances, such a relationship to the other numbers that they can in any given instance be precisely distinguished. As soon as a number satisfies all these conditions, it can and must be regarded in mathematics as existent and real. " (From the Grundlagen).
And the statement "… the essence of mathematics lies entirely in its freedom" is his epitaph. Frege (and of course Aristotle, and Mill) disagreed with this. It is one thing to define an X as being an A that is B. It is another question whether there are any X's.
I also found this passage when Alexis and I were pondering over the translation of Bonaventura's commentaries on the Sentences. It is supposed to be from Augustine on Free Will "Potest esse aliquid in rerum natura quod tua ratione non cogitas, non esse autem quod vera ratione cogitas non potest." We think it means that it is possible that something you haven't thought of does exist, but it is not possible that something you think of by true reason, fails to exist. I.e. If you can think of it 'by true reason', whatever that means, then it absoutely has to exist. Perhaps it means this: you can think of a unicorn as something like horse, but with a horn. But that is not thinking it through, as it were. If you really thought it through, by 'true reason', you would have to consider things like what sort of DNA this creature would have, and if you did work all that out, then you really would have a unicorn. Similarly, if you could make complete sense of the notion of God, there would have to be God.
(And indeed, this seems connected with the idea that logical differences are big differences. Also connected with a comment you made a way back on the notion of a disembodied mind - can we really make sense of that?).
"Potest esse aliquid in rerum natura quod tua ratione non cogitas, non esse autem quod vera ratione cogitas non potest." Your reading of this seems right. Surely it it possible that there exist something I haven't thought of. And it is possible that there exist things that no finite mind ever has or ever will think of. But is it possible that there exist things that no finite mind could ever think of?
The second half of the assertion seems to imply that any object that is completely determinate exists just in virtue of its complete determinateness. I am inclined to reject that. God could have before his mind completely determinate objects which are yet merely possible. Think of the possible worlds that are possible but not actual. They and their members are completely determinate.
But Scotus, if I am not mistaken, thinks that complete determinateness entails existence, which is presumably why he rejects the distinctio realis. I'm for the latter.
You're welcome. I've read quite a bit of Hartshorne, but I don't see how Phillips could be used to bolster Process Theology. That would be a bit like using Wittgenstein as an introduction to Whitehead.
I believe he used it more as a move to disarm the average student. If that Professor, can disarm the average student of their normal assumed evangelical beliefs and thoughts on prayer then the average student will more humbly approach Hartshorne's work.
Normally, I would not say this about a professor, but this professor obviously showed that he had personally invested in Process Theology. As well he stated that he went to Claremont to study under DZ Phillips and specifically to study Process Theology (via John B. Cobb).
As for the logical suasion, I can't remember the precise argument, only that there had been one made.
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