An essay plan answering ' Is Religious Language Meaningful?'
It is designed for the AQA Philosophy A-Level 25 Marks. All essays are Band 5 and above.
The essays largely follow the recommended RICE (Reason, Issue, Counterexample and Evaluation).
Introduction, Statement of Intent and Conclusion ...
Is Religious Language meaningful?
Statement of Intent: I will argue that religious language has both cognitive and non-cognitive meaning.
Religious language having just non-cognitivist meaning is problematic as I will first show with the issues of
Hare’s account of religious language having meaning. I then will show why Wittgenstein's and Mitchell’s
account of religious language is the most convincing because it is more realistic and is a good balance
with cognitivist meaning which in my opinion is necessary for religious language. In this essay I will use
the falsification principle to show what is meaningful or not.
Small paragraph about rejecting the verification principle - it is itself meaningless and even if it just
intended as definition and not an empirical hypothesis about meaning, the verification principle is only as
convincing as the arguments that are intended to show it is right definition of meaningful. this is because
whist they accept the principle as completely accurate he provides arguments in specific cases to support
the verification principle but if we find those arguments itself not convincing then it does not work and we
are at a stalemate. Falsification in general is a more convincing account of cognitive meaning so we will
proceed with that.
RICE 1:
R: Issues with Hare opinion on religious language and non-cognitive meaning. If someone holds a blik
about some claim whilst the rest of us holds falsifiable beleifs then we tend to think that the person is
irrational. What if it wasn’t religious language but instead a blik about how vaccines cause autism or how
the world is flat. In the face of contrary evidence we would think that they are irrational.
I: Religious language is different to beliefs about vaccines and the earth is flat- it involved a commitment to
the belief and therefore it isn’t irrational if it isn’t unfalsifiable.
C: Further problems with non-cognitivism. Fails to understand what religious believers actually say. If
religious claims are no longer assertion that claims such as ‘you ought to do it because it is Gods will’
becomes you ought to do it (as ‘god will’s is just an expression of a blik) but this is not what religious
believers mean. Within the history of any religion here have been heated arguments about how to interpret
doctrines etc and how that impacts the way we live. This suggests that religious language is intended to
be true ie fact stating and not just personal bliks. Not only this, it will be discussed more in the next
paragraph but Hare is wrong in that it shouldn't be completely falsifiable whilst it does involved a
commitment but the commitment means you accept that there is contrary evidence and consider it and
THEN maintain your faith. It is different.
E: Therefore to have just non-cognitivism is not convincing and the implications really narrow down what
religious language can be. Isn’t the strongest argument because it has failed to show that religious
language is definitively meaningful just showing it cant be non-cognitive.
RICE 2:
R: Religious Language can be falsified. Mitchell’s account of religious language. It is unrealistic to expect
religious believers to drop their belief as soon as contrary evidence arises. Parable of the Partisan. If the
partisan refused to count the ambiguous actions as the evidence against the claim that the stranger is on
the side of the resistance then that is irrational (like the bliks). But that is not what believers/ the partisan is
doing. They consider the evidence against and then proceed to still choose to believe in God and The
most convincing aspect of this argument is that it isn’t saying that religious language is 100% falsifiable
and so doesn't face the same problems of Mitchell but rather saying that as long as the religious believer
accepts that their is contrary evidence against it then it is still falsifiable but it doesn't mean they won’t
maintain their belief and it is much more realistic approach that most religious believer have.
Is Religious Language meaningful? 1
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