The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: An Interview with Alex Rosenberg - (Review by Massimo Pigliucci)
http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=4209
EXCERPT: Reality, notes philosopher Alex Rosenberg, is “completely different from what most people think… stranger than even many atheists recognize.” And having spent some 40 years trying to work out “exactly how advances in biology, neuroscience and evolutionary anthropology, fit together with what physical science has long told us” Professor Rosenberg seems well placed to judge. Thinking seriously and unsentimentally about the nature of reality and life’s ‘persistent questions’ has led the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University to some striking, disconcerting and far-reaching conclusions. In The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions, Rosenberg aims to stretch out just what the atheist’s attachment to science really commits him to.
The author of some 14 books and an eminent philosopher of science, Professor Rosenberg has been kind enough to answer some questions from Talking Philosophy about his controversial and challenging work. The questions posed, and Professor’s Rosenberg’s replies to them have been posted in full ‘as is’. Readers will, I hope, find something in the following to stimulate both thought and discussion...
MORE: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=4209
Religious Language
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-language/
INTRO: The principal aim of research on religious language is to give an account of the meaning of religious sentences and utterances. Religious sentences are generally taken to be have a religious subject matter; a religious utterance is the production in speech or writing of a token religious sentence. In principle, religious subject matters could encompass a variety of agents, states of affairs or properties—such as God, deities, angels, miracles, redemption, grace, holiness, sinfulness. Most attention, however, has been devoted to the meaning of what we say about God.
The scope of religious language and discourse could be construed more widely. For instance, while The Song of Songs has little in the way of distinctively religious content, it could be included in the field because of its place within a religious canon. Alternatively, the field could be characterised pragmatically to include utterances which are used for religious purposes or in religious contexts (Alston 2005: 220; Donovan 1976: 1; Soskice 1999: 349; Charlesworth 1974: 3). In practice, however, philosophical treatments have not extended so broadly, instead focusing on sentences and utterances with putatively religious content. This is partly because it is difficult to find a principled characterisation of a religious context that would delineate a philosophically interesting scope for the topic. When a church congregation is told “Please kneel”, this direction appears to be in a religious context and have a religious purpose but it is difficult to see how the analysis of the meaning of this instruction would informatively contribute to the topic. It is also because the most pressing questions about religious language seem to be those that come into alignment with questions in other areas of philosophy of religion. Is there is anything distinctive about the meanings of what we say about God and other religious matters that are also the focus of metaphysical and epistemological discussion? If, in talking about God, speakers are not expressing propositions or not talking literally—to take a couple of the more radical proposals—that would accordingly require dramatic adjustments in approaching questions about knowledge of God or God’s existence.
Research in the field has a lengthy history, with sustained discussion of the meanings of religious expressions and utterances stretching back at least to the middle of antiquity. Notable treatments of the topic include the work by medieval theologians and philosophers concerned with the meanings of divine predicates, including the debates surrounding analogy and apophaticism (White 2010; Turner 1995; Scott & Citron 2016), and debates about the meaningfulness of religious language that were prompted by Ayer’s 1936 popularisation of logical positivism in Language, Truth and Logic and remained a central issue in the philosophy of religion through the mid-twentieth century. In recent years, religious language has also become a topic of interest in continental philosophy (Derrida 1989 and 1992; Marion 1994 and 1995).
A distinction that guides the selection of material for this article is between revisionary and non-revisionary accounts of religious language. Non-revisionary theories aim to explain what religious sentences and utterances mean. Revisionary theories, in contrast, propose accounts of what religious language should mean or how it should be used. While non-revisionary theories are descriptive of religious language and should do justice to linguistic data, revisionary theories are usually driven by metaphysical or epistemological considerations. This article will mainly be concerned with theories of the former type i.e., what religious utterances mean rather than what they should mean.
MORE: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-language/
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http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=4209
EXCERPT: Reality, notes philosopher Alex Rosenberg, is “completely different from what most people think… stranger than even many atheists recognize.” And having spent some 40 years trying to work out “exactly how advances in biology, neuroscience and evolutionary anthropology, fit together with what physical science has long told us” Professor Rosenberg seems well placed to judge. Thinking seriously and unsentimentally about the nature of reality and life’s ‘persistent questions’ has led the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University to some striking, disconcerting and far-reaching conclusions. In The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions, Rosenberg aims to stretch out just what the atheist’s attachment to science really commits him to.
The author of some 14 books and an eminent philosopher of science, Professor Rosenberg has been kind enough to answer some questions from Talking Philosophy about his controversial and challenging work. The questions posed, and Professor’s Rosenberg’s replies to them have been posted in full ‘as is’. Readers will, I hope, find something in the following to stimulate both thought and discussion...
MORE: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=4209
Religious Language
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-language/
INTRO: The principal aim of research on religious language is to give an account of the meaning of religious sentences and utterances. Religious sentences are generally taken to be have a religious subject matter; a religious utterance is the production in speech or writing of a token religious sentence. In principle, religious subject matters could encompass a variety of agents, states of affairs or properties—such as God, deities, angels, miracles, redemption, grace, holiness, sinfulness. Most attention, however, has been devoted to the meaning of what we say about God.
The scope of religious language and discourse could be construed more widely. For instance, while The Song of Songs has little in the way of distinctively religious content, it could be included in the field because of its place within a religious canon. Alternatively, the field could be characterised pragmatically to include utterances which are used for religious purposes or in religious contexts (Alston 2005: 220; Donovan 1976: 1; Soskice 1999: 349; Charlesworth 1974: 3). In practice, however, philosophical treatments have not extended so broadly, instead focusing on sentences and utterances with putatively religious content. This is partly because it is difficult to find a principled characterisation of a religious context that would delineate a philosophically interesting scope for the topic. When a church congregation is told “Please kneel”, this direction appears to be in a religious context and have a religious purpose but it is difficult to see how the analysis of the meaning of this instruction would informatively contribute to the topic. It is also because the most pressing questions about religious language seem to be those that come into alignment with questions in other areas of philosophy of religion. Is there is anything distinctive about the meanings of what we say about God and other religious matters that are also the focus of metaphysical and epistemological discussion? If, in talking about God, speakers are not expressing propositions or not talking literally—to take a couple of the more radical proposals—that would accordingly require dramatic adjustments in approaching questions about knowledge of God or God’s existence.
Research in the field has a lengthy history, with sustained discussion of the meanings of religious expressions and utterances stretching back at least to the middle of antiquity. Notable treatments of the topic include the work by medieval theologians and philosophers concerned with the meanings of divine predicates, including the debates surrounding analogy and apophaticism (White 2010; Turner 1995; Scott & Citron 2016), and debates about the meaningfulness of religious language that were prompted by Ayer’s 1936 popularisation of logical positivism in Language, Truth and Logic and remained a central issue in the philosophy of religion through the mid-twentieth century. In recent years, religious language has also become a topic of interest in continental philosophy (Derrida 1989 and 1992; Marion 1994 and 1995).
A distinction that guides the selection of material for this article is between revisionary and non-revisionary accounts of religious language. Non-revisionary theories aim to explain what religious sentences and utterances mean. Revisionary theories, in contrast, propose accounts of what religious language should mean or how it should be used. While non-revisionary theories are descriptive of religious language and should do justice to linguistic data, revisionary theories are usually driven by metaphysical or epistemological considerations. This article will mainly be concerned with theories of the former type i.e., what religious utterances mean rather than what they should mean.
MORE: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-language/
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