Can someone help explain to me what Ludwig Wittegenstein is saying about language and God here?

[Ben_Sinner]

I came across this Catholic (I think) philosopher

I have a few questions on what he means by all of these:

From Wikipedia:

With age, his deepening Christianity led to many religious elucidations and clarifications, as he untangled language problems in religion, attacking, for example, the temptation to think of God’s existence as a matter of scientific evidence.

From older CA thread

*Wittgenstein talks about the transcendent. What is transcendent transcends language. When we transcend language we end up with “Can God pick up a rock so big he cannot pick it up?” “Is God one or is he three,” or thirteen in the Jewish faith, or ninety-nine in the Muslim faith?

The great philosophers have argued these things for centuries, and Wittgenstein found the answer. In discussing God we have transcended language and ended up with non-sense, but non-sense in a good sense. We can fall back into language games and continue arguing or pass over in silence.

The inherent contradiction in discussing God is that he transcends language so we cannot do it properly, but we must pass our faith on to our children, so we must do it. I do not see Wittgenstein changing his position so much as trying to phrase it in more meaningful ways. The method is heterodox, but the result is very orthodox.God transcends our understanding but is a very central part of our everyday lives.*

From the same thread

That which cannot be spoken of refers to the manifesting or identifying conditions of elements. Sometimes called transcendental conditions. See Kant too. So if the elements are language (words or syntax) then the manifesting condition of language cannot be put into elements or syntax, words.
For example, the elements of a bouquet of flowers are identified by the bouquet. The elements do not identify themselves, and neither do they show a bouquet. WE have to see the bouquet to see that the set of flowers is in fact a bouquet.
Like the bouquet, if God is the manifesting condition of the elements of sense, logic, and all things experiential, etc, then we cannot show by sense, logic, or experience, what God is. Like the bouquet, we know it when we see it, but the elements themselves cannot describe their own manifesting condition.

1. He is saying that God can’t be proven scientifically…isn’t this a heresy? Why can’t God be viewed this way?
2. What is meant by the transcendent language stuff?..is he saying that it is impossible to know about God and the ability to prove he is true? What is meant by ‘illogical’ to speak of God? Doe illogical mean ‘false’, ‘imaginary’, ‘can’t be proven’?, etc.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I came across this Catholic (I think) philosopher

I have a few questions on what he means by all of these:

From Wikipedia:

With age, his deepening Christianity led to many religious elucidations and clarifications, as he untangled language problems in religion, attacking, for example, the temptation to think of God’s existence as a matter of scientific evidence.

From older CA thread

*Wittgenstein talks about the transcendent. What is transcendent transcends language. When we transcend language we end up with “Can God pick up a rock so big he cannot pick it up?” “Is God one or is he three,” or thirteen in the Jewish faith, or ninety-nine in the Muslim faith?

The great philosophers have argued these things for centuries, and Wittgenstein found the answer. In discussing God we have transcended language and ended up with non-sense, but non-sense in a good sense. We can fall back into language games and continue arguing or pass over in silence.

The inherent contradiction in discussing God is that he transcends language so we cannot do it properly, but we must pass our faith on to our children, so we must do it. I do not see Wittgenstein changing his position so much as trying to phrase it in more meaningful ways. The method is heterodox, but the result is very orthodox.God transcends our understanding but is a very central part of our everyday lives.*

From the same thread

That which cannot be spoken of refers to the manifesting or identifying conditions of elements. Sometimes called transcendental conditions. See Kant too. So if the elements are language (words or syntax) then the manifesting condition of language cannot be put into elements or syntax, words.
For example, the elements of a bouquet of flowers are identified by the bouquet. The elements do not identify themselves, and neither do they show a bouquet. WE have to see the bouquet to see that the set of flowers is in fact a bouquet.
Like the bouquet, if God is the manifesting condition of the elements of sense, logic, and all things experiential, etc, then we cannot show by sense, logic, or experience, what God is. Like the bouquet, we know it when we see it, but the elements themselves cannot describe their own manifesting condition.

1. He is saying that God can’t be proven scientifically…isn’t this a heresy? Why can’t God be viewed this way?
2. What is meant by the transcendent language stuff?..is he saying that it is impossible to know about God and the ability to prove he is true? What is meant by ‘illogical’ to speak of God? Doe illogical mean ‘false’, ‘imaginary’, ‘can’t be proven’?, etc.

I thought you were going to give up all this stuff? If you are bound and determined not to follow good advice, you should at least be reading Thomas Aquinas. I should think he would give you enough to do for the rest of your life.

Linus2nd

 

[Ben_Sinner]

I thought you were going to give up all this stuff? If you are bound and determined not to follow good advice, you should at least be reading Thomas Aquinas. I should think he would give you enough to do for the rest of your life.

Linus2nd

I want to give it up, but I keep running into more and more problems.

Is there a refutation of his claims?

I guess I am confused about the whole ‘language’ thing. I don’t understand how language has anything to do with thinking.

Could someone enlighten me on that as well?

That has been one of my problems, I will read something like ‘x is a matter of language’, so when i begin to think of ‘x’ I have this fear that it is an illusion since its ‘a matter of language’

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I want to give it up, but I keep running into more and more problems.

Is there a refutation of his claims?

I guess I am confused about the whole ‘language’ thing. I don’t understand how language has anything to do with thinking.

Could someone enlighten me on that as well?

That has been one of my problems, I will read something like ‘x is a matter of language’, so when i begin to think of ‘x’ I have this fear that it is an illusion since its ‘a matter of language’

It doesn’t have anything at all to do with it. I have already told you that these " great thinkers " are a temptation to you because they make you doubt the exsistence of reality and of God. You don’t need these people, you can’t handle them so you should stop paying attention to them.

Philosophy is very dangerous to people not trained to handle it.

Pax
Linus2nd

 

[lmelahn]

I came across this Catholic (I think) philosopher

I have a few questions on what he means by all of these:

From Wikipedia:

With age, his deepening Christianity led to many religious elucidations and clarifications, as he untangled language problems in religion, attacking, for example, the temptation to think of God’s existence as a matter of scientific evidence.

From older CA thread

*Wittgenstein talks about the transcendent. What is transcendent transcends language. When we transcend language we end up with “Can God pick up a rock so big he cannot pick it up?” “Is God one or is he three,” or thirteen in the Jewish faith, or ninety-nine in the Muslim faith?

The great philosophers have argued these things for centuries, and Wittgenstein found the answer. In discussing God we have transcended language and ended up with non-sense, but non-sense in a good sense. We can fall back into language games and continue arguing or pass over in silence.

The inherent contradiction in discussing God is that he transcends language so we cannot do it properly, but we must pass our faith on to our children, so we must do it. I do not see Wittgenstein changing his position so much as trying to phrase it in more meaningful ways. The method is heterodox, but the result is very orthodox.God transcends our understanding but is a very central part of our everyday lives.*

From the same thread

That which cannot be spoken of refers to the manifesting or identifying conditions of elements. Sometimes called transcendental conditions. See Kant too. So if the elements are language (words or syntax) then the manifesting condition of language cannot be put into elements or syntax, words.
For example, the elements of a bouquet of flowers are identified by the bouquet. The elements do not identify themselves, and neither do they show a bouquet. WE have to see the bouquet to see that the set of flowers is in fact a bouquet.
Like the bouquet, if God is the manifesting condition of the elements of sense, logic, and all things experiential, etc, then we cannot show by sense, logic, or experience, what God is. Like the bouquet, we know it when we see it, but the elements themselves cannot describe their own manifesting condition.

1. He is saying that God can’t be proven scientifically…isn’t this a heresy? Why can’t God be viewed this way?
2. What is meant by the transcendent language stuff?..is he saying that it is impossible to know about God and the ability to prove he is true? What is meant by ‘illogical’ to speak of God? Doe illogical mean ‘false’, ‘imaginary’, ‘can’t be proven’?, etc.

These texts are from to so-called “second Wittgenstein” (Wittgenstein in his second period, a number of years after he published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which is the kind of the Magna Carta of a movement called Neopositivism.

In his second period, Wittgenstein studied the internal consistency of language. He felt, essentially (in his second period), that there is no reliable way to overcome the conventional character of language. What counts is that we obey its internal “rules” so to speak. Hence, speaking a language is kind of like playing a game: as long as you are playing that game, you follow its rules; if you change to another game, you follow that game’s rules.

He felt that religious language was a kind of non-sense. However, in his second period he recognized that even that kind of “nonsense” could be valuable.

Regarding (1) (speaking as an unrepentant Thomist ):

There is no way to prove the existence of God “scientifically,” if by that you mean, using the tools of empirical science (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.). Those sciences study material phenomena, and God is not material in any way.

On the other hand, His existence can be demonstrated using philosophy, and that possibility is, in fact, guaranteed by a church dogma (in the dogmatic constitution Dei Filius of Vatican I). So denying this would, in fact, be formal heresy.

(2) “Transcendent language” just means language that does not have to do with empirically verifiable things. (Wittgenstein seems to think that saying God is Three Persons in one Nature is a kind of logical contradiction–of course, we know that it isn’t–however, he argues, it can still be valuable to speak of such things out of religious sentiment, or what have you.)

 

[inocente]

1. He is saying that God can’t be proven scientifically…isn’t this a heresy? Why can’t God be viewed this way?
2. What is meant by the transcendent language stuff?..is he saying that it is impossible to know about God and the ability to prove he is true? What is meant by ‘illogical’ to speak of God? Doe illogical mean ‘false’, ‘imaginary’, ‘can’t be proven’?, etc.

Words are tokens, and sometimes they can’t do justice to what we wish to convey. For instance, romantic love transcends all attempts to put it into words, and for that reason thousands and thousands of love songs and sonnets have been written. But none of them can capture the totality of what we feel, and so we keep writing them. The problem is that words can only state facts, and facts always limit, they cannot convey the value, they cannot convey the enormity of what it we feel when we’re in love.

In the same way there can be no song which captures all that we mean by God. If we try to define God then we can only do so by stating what we think are facts about him, and facts cut him down to our size, they put him in our back pocket. So we can’t prove or disprove the existence of God, since to do so we would have to define him, yet we know that he transcends all our puny definitions.“I am who I am", not who we say.

If we can’t use normal language to convey religious insights, perhaps we would use a kind of nonsense instead. The following may or may not be what Wittgenstein had in mind, it’s from a Sikh bedtime prayer by Guru Nanak (sung here by Snatam Kaur):

Thousand are thine eyes, yet thou hast no eyes;
Thousand are thy forms, yet thou hast no form;
Thousand are thy lotus feet, and yet thou hast no feet;
Thousand are thy noses to smell, yet thou hast no nose.
I am enchanted with thy play.
It is thy light which lives in every heart,
And thy light which illumines every soul.

I might be off base but that’s my take on Wittgenstein, and I think you’re right, he was Catholic. And imho never listen to those who try to censor which philosophies have value, that’s for each person to decide for themselves.

 

[Bahman]

I came across this Catholic (I think) philosopher

I have a few questions on what he means by all of these:

From Wikipedia:

With age, his deepening Christianity led to many religious elucidations and clarifications, as he untangled language problems in religion, attacking, for example, the temptation to think of God’s existence as a matter of scientific evidence.

From older CA thread

*Wittgenstein talks about the transcendent. What is transcendent transcends language. When we transcend language we end up with “Can God pick up a rock so big he cannot pick it up?” “Is God one or is he three,” or thirteen in the Jewish faith, or ninety-nine in the Muslim faith?

The great philosophers have argued these things for centuries, and Wittgenstein found the answer. In discussing God we have transcended language and ended up with non-sense, but non-sense in a good sense. We can fall back into language games and continue arguing or pass over in silence.

The inherent contradiction in discussing God is that he transcends language so we cannot do it properly, but we must pass our faith on to our children, so we must do it. I do not see Wittgenstein changing his position so much as trying to phrase it in more meaningful ways. The method is heterodox, but the result is very orthodox.God transcends our understanding but is a very central part of our everyday lives.*

From the same thread

That which cannot be spoken of refers to the manifesting or identifying conditions of elements. Sometimes called transcendental conditions. See Kant too. So if the elements are language (words or syntax) then the manifesting condition of language cannot be put into elements or syntax, words.
For example, the elements of a bouquet of flowers are identified by the bouquet. The elements do not identify themselves, and neither do they show a bouquet. WE have to see the bouquet to see that the set of flowers is in fact a bouquet.
Like the bouquet, if God is the manifesting condition of the elements of sense, logic, and all things experiential, etc, then we cannot show by sense, logic, or experience, what God is. Like the bouquet, we know it when we see it, but the elements themselves cannot describe their own manifesting condition.

1. He is saying that God can’t be proven scientifically…isn’t this a heresy? Why can’t God be viewed this way?
2. What is meant by the transcendent language stuff?..is he saying that it is impossible to know about God and the ability to prove he is true? What is meant by ‘illogical’ to speak of God? Doe illogical mean ‘false’, ‘imaginary’, ‘can’t be proven’?, etc.

Keep it up. You are gathering knowledge now. You will reach a state that you can judge right from wrong.

In simple word, we are consciousness, consciousness is primary, thought are utility of consciousness hence thought cannot directly tell you what consciousness is. Language is method of communication based on semantic in order to transfer information between two conscious beings, with though/knowledge being the content of information. Hence the formal language cannot transfer the knowledge of what consciousness is since we cannot perceive it in thought either.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Keep it up. You are gathering knowledge now. You will reach a state that you can judge right from wrong.

In simple word, we are consciousness, consciousness is primary, thought are utility of consciousness hence thought cannot directly tell you what consciousness is. Language is method of communication based on semantic in order to transfer information between two conscious beings, with though/knowledge being the content of information. Hence the formal language cannot transfer the knowledge of what consciousness is since we cannot perceive it in thought either.

Your last sentence is inchoherent, it is meaningless.

Linus2nd

 

[Triflelfirt]

1. Depends on the meaning of “scientific” here. If it means “scientific” as in the sense of the modern natural sciences, then Witt is right, God can’t be proven through science, precisely because it is outside its scope (God is immaterial, transcendent, eternal, and all that, after all); the best science can do, in this case, is provide inductive arguments to support premises for certain deductive arguments for God’s existence.

For instance, take the Kalam cosmological argument: its second premise is that the universe began to exist. Besides the logical arguments we can put forward for it, we can also use scientific data, like modern developments of the Big Bang theory. In this case, if the scientific theory is correct, then premise 2 is correct, and (coupled with premise 1) the argument would then establish the existence of God (as the cause of the universe, considering such a cause must transcend the universe, can’t simply be a multiverse, yatta yatta yatta). In this case, science didn’t prove God, but it supported a premise for a logical argument for God’s existence.

But I believe that what Wittgenstein is stressing here is that the idea that God’s existence can (or must) be proved strictly though the scientific method (which isn’t even more certain than logic, for instance) is a naïve one, stemming from a misunderstanding of both the idea of science and the idea of God. Being that God is immaterial, transcendent, undetectable to our five senses (unlike a horse, a germ, a mountain or a galaxy, for instance), His existence simply can’t be proved or disproved by the scientific method. Only logic and metaphysics can reach his existence. And this brings us to number 2.

1. I believe Wittgenstein is saying that it’s impossible to speak of God with our language, because God transcends language. However, the problem is that Witt (or rather this text you just pasted) seems to be confusing the EXISTENCE of God with God Himself. Granted, God’s essence IS His existence, but that’s not something self-evident (rather, it must be proved through deductive reasoning, which is why Aquinas would argue that Saint Anselm’s ontological argument fails). God’s essence is existence, but the fact of God existing is a different thing from what God is. There is a difference between the following propositions:

P1) We can prove that God exists;
P2) We can prove what God is.

Notice the stress on “that”. To say that God exists (or that there is such a being as God) is different from saying what God actually is, even if His essence is existence. P1 would be concerned with the fact that there is such a being as a transcendent, immaterial, purely actual being (God), and P2 would be concerned with the quiddity/essence of God.

Hence what Wittgenstein says about “transcending language” would only apply to P2, because God’s essence is existence, but is not the same thing as the proposition that God exists, creates and sustains the universe, etc. In fact, Aquinas would be quite happy to concede that we can’t speak UNIVOCALLY about God, but only analogically! This is the famous doctrine of Analogy. God’s power, goodness and wisdom aren’t the same as man’s power, goodness and wisdom; the difference isn’t merely of degree, but one of kind. In fact, God’s power, wisdom and goodness are one and the same thing, and we only speak of them in analogical terms (like the word “see” in “to see the truth” is only analogous to the word “see” in “to see the tree”). I wonder if Wittgenstein knew about such an important aspect in thomistic theology, because it precisely avoids the problem that Witt seems to be talking about.

(As a note: even if we ignore the thomistic doctrine of Analogy, I believe some analytical philosophers today would disagree with Wittgenstein, but I can’t cover that here)

Considering the fact that the proposition that God exists is different from a proposition that states what is the quiddity of God (and remember that Analogy deals with P2 with no problems), we can just continue to assess God’s existence. The fact is that there’s clear deductive logical arguments that conclude the existence of a being whom we all call God, and we can’t ignore them without attempting to refute any of their premises. In fact, even if we were to grant validity to Wittgenstein’s criticism that “we can’t talk about God”, we still can’t ignore the fact that, for instance, there is motion in the world, and it’s logically necessary that there is an unmoved mover that is purely actual. Or that things are caused, and therefore there must be a first uncaused efficient cause; or that not all things can be contingent, therefore there must be a necessary being which just is existence; or that there must be a being which encompasses all the transcendentals for us to refer to them in different degrees; or that there are final causes in reality, and therefore there must be some kind of super intellect that orders such final causes; or that the universe began to exist (or very likely began to exist), therefore there must be an eternal, immaterial, powerful cause of the universe); or that the fine tuning in the universe requires some sort of divine intellect; and so and so forth.

 

[Triflelfirt]

By the way, I don’t think Wittgenstein was a Catholic. He had a Catholic upbringing, but strayed away from the faith in his teenage years. However, he maintained a deep respect and admiration for the faith, something that grew a bit more in his later years (he even asked his Catholic friends to pray for him); if I remember well, they even had a priest present at his deathbed. Some say that he converted at the end of his life, and that’s possible, I just don’t know it for certain. Either way, he was an agnostic for most of his adult life.

His best student, G. E. M. Anscombe, was a practicing Roman Catholic, however. Her husband, Peter Geach, was also a Catholic, they’re rather famous analytical philosophers (and some consider them to be predecessors to the “analytical thomism” school of, say, John Haldane).

Hope that helped you. Try not to give in so easily to errors and false interpretations. Study Aquinas. And keep praying.

 

[Bahman]

Your last sentence is inchoherent, it is meaningless.
Linus2nd

Why it is meaningless? It is in fact very meaningful since thought are utility of consciousness hence we cannot understand consciousness using thought. Language is however is mode of transforming of thought between two conscious beings, hence we are not able to use language to understand explain consciousness.

 

[Ben_Sinner]

Keep it up. You are gathering knowledge now. You will reach a state that you can judge right from wrong.

No. I’m not. This isn’t gathering knowledge. This is just a symptom of rebellion to authority (truth is an aspect of authority) on a subconscious level. I’ve just realized this.

 

[Ben_Sinner]

He felt that religious language was a kind of non-sense. However, in his second period he recognized that even that kind of “nonsense” could be valuable.

I’m not sure I understood. Could you give a laymen explanation of this?

Why did he consider religious language ‘nonsense’ and not other languages?

 

[CrossofChrist]

You would really do well read St. Thomas Aquinas. He isn’t just some philosopher theologian from a long time ago; what he says is relevant today. You would be helped immensely. I encourage you to read a book called “The Discovery of God”, written by a Jesuit named Henri de Lubac.

And no, we can’t prove God scientifically. Because it’s just not possible. No, it isn’t heresy. It would be heresy to deny God’s existence can be known by reason alone, but reason does not consist solely of scientific knowledge.

Please, I encourage you to read the book I suggested, as well as Aquinas. There are a number of useful books for learning about him; Garrigou-Lagrange and Ed Feser have written some that are popular. There is also Aquinas’ Shorter Summa which was meant for laymen (although it assumes you are somewhat familiar with Thomistic philosophy).

Also, pray the rosary! Pray, pray, pray!

 

[lmelahn]

I’m not sure I understood. Could you give a laymen explanation of this?

Why did he consider religious language ‘nonsense’ and not other languages?

Sorry, by “non-sense,” Wittgenstein meant language that has no meaning, like if I said “blue algorithms paint the information” (or something like that). The words fit the grammatical structures of English, but they don’t make any sense.

He considered theological language (like that regarding the Trinity) as non-sense of this kind. Yet, in the latter part of his career, he began to see that such language could be useful in its own way.

(Although Wittgenstein has some interesting insights, that would not be a good way to go about theology.)