on one's analysis of that meaning the restriction that such sentences cannot be analyzed as
being used to make assertions.
In his Belief, Change, and Forms of Life of 1986, D. Z. Phillips, today the most
prominent Wittgensteinian philosopher of religion, remarked:
If we look back to the 1950's, we find, in the literature, a certain kind of disagreement
between philosophical believers and philosophical unbelievers which still persists today.
The unbelievers suggested that the problematic core of religious beliefs was to be found,
not in their falsity, but in their meaninglessness.
The believers, on the other hand, argued that the beliefs were meaningful. By and large,
however, the believers and the unbelievers agreed on the criteria of meaningfulness
which had to be satisfied. (80)
Phillips then goes on to remark:
Under Wittgenstein's influence, some philosophers have suggested that these disputes are
an irrelevance, since they never raise the question of whether the criteria of
meaningfulness should have been agreed on in the first place. What has happened, it is
suggested, is that criteria of meaning appropriate to certain aspects of human life and
activity are made synonymous with meaning as such. One obvious example in our culture
has been the tendency to elevate scientific criteria and procedures in such a way. What
we ought to do by contrast, it was said, is to enquire into the meanings which religious
beliefs have in the forms of life of which they are a part. Instead of constructing theories
of meaning which determine what is to count as meaning, we should look at the use
concepts actually have. This was the force of Wittgenstein's command, “Don't think.
Look!” (80)
The history here is a bit shaky. The “unbelievers” to whom Phillips is alluding in the first
passage are logical positivists. But as I indicated above, the positivists conceded, rather
early, that their criterion was not a criterion for all modes of meaning. To affirm that
there are types of meaning not captured by the positivist criterion, and to inquire into
some of those alternative modes, is so far not to repudiate positivism. Admittedly, the
inquiry by the positivists into alternative modes of meaning was desultory. It was
desultory, however, not because they pulled the boner of equating scientific meaning with
meaning as such, but because of their veneration of science; they weren't interested in
other modes of discourse.
An important issue of interpretation posed by Wittgenstein's own relatively brief remarks
on religion is whether his interpretation of religious discourse presupposed the
unacceptability of the positivist criterion of assertoric meaning. That Wittgenstein did in
fact regard the criterion as unacceptable is decisively clear from other writings of his.
What's also decisively clear is that in his remarks on religion he did not head-on
challenge the criterion. The contested issue then is this: Does his analysis of religious
discourse tacitly assume the unacceptability of the criterion? Or was he instead exploiting
the opening that the positivists themselves had offered when they conceded that there are
other modes of meaning than assertoric meaning?
The issue pivots, naturally, on whether Wittgenstein thought that in using primary
religious language the religious person is making assertions. I myself think the evidence
tilts toward the conclusion that he did not think that; accordingly, that's the interpretation