Theological Noncognitivism

Originally posted by vistesd
I thought that this might be an interesting topic for discussion, following on the “atheism is a belief system” thread.

The passages below are from the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism

“Theological noncognitivists claim that all alleged definitions for the term "God" amount to "God is that which caused e coherent/meaningful—and I thinkl would have to be udged on a case-by-case basis.

By the way, Conifer lays the groundwork for his paper in accordance with what your OP said here (which probably came from the Conifer paper, I would guess):

“Another way of expressing theological noncognitivism is, for any sentence S, S is cognitively meaningless if and only if S expresses an unthinkable proposition or S does not express a proposition.

(Of course, the above fails to make it clear that theological noncognitivism is, generally as taken by Conifer, the view that the statement "God exists" is cognitively meaningless.)

Then Conifer lists a bunch of different but common definitions for 'God' and then in turn examines, for each definition, if the statement "God exists" should be taken as cognitively meaningless. In this way, Conifer argues that theological noncognitivism is generally false.

Originally posted by LemonJello
By the way, Conifer lays the groundwork for his paper in accordance with what your OP said here (which probably came from the Conifer paper, I would guess):

[quote]“Another way of expressing theological noncognitivism is, for any sentence S, S is cognitively meaningless if and only if S expresses an unthinkable proposition or S does not express a propo ...[text shortened]... ningless. In this way, Conifer argues that theological noncognitivism is generally false.

Except for the one that is true.

HalleluYah !!! Praise the Lord! Glory be to God! Holy! Holy! Holy!

The Instructor

Originally posted by vistesd
Are you proposing a noncognitive faith?

What PROPOSING? Faith IS noncognitive.

Originally posted by wolfgang59
For God's sake man!

[b]rough[/b]

Stop making doggy sounds🙂

Originally posted by vistesd
I thought that this might be an interesting topic for discussion, following on the “atheism is a belief system” thread.

The passages below are from the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism

“Theological noncognitivists claim that all alleged definitions for the term "God" amount to "God is that which caused e ...[text shortened]... coherent/meaningful—and I thinkl would have to be udged on a case-by-case basis.

"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."

In answer to your post above I submit that by attempting to define God one falls victim to one's own "unthinkable proposition" and "circular, incoherent and meaningless assertions".

Only God can define Himself. It is the only rational way to think about God. Any attempt to define God is purely subjective folly, and leads to obscurity of logical thought.

To define God is the same as defining something before it even exists; as though giving a definition brings a thing into existence, when logically, a thing must needs be in existence before it can be defined.

We are the creature. God is the creator. The Creator defines. We hear the Creator's voice or we plug our ears. Spiritually speaking of course.

Originally posted by sonhouse
What PROPOSING? Faith IS noncognitive.

How do you know faith is noncognitive? Noncognitive isn't even a word.

Did you develop some kind of faith recently? 😉

Originally posted by LemonJello
By the way, Conifer lays the groundwork for his paper in accordance with what your OP said here (which probably came from the Conifer paper, I would guess):

[quote]“Another way of expressing theological noncognitivism is, for any sentence S, S is cognitively meaningless if and only if S expresses an unthinkable proposition or S does not express a propo ...[text shortened]... ningless. In this way, Conifer argues that theological noncognitivism is generally false.

This is a topic I keep meaning to get into but haven't yet found the requisite time to
do it justice.

It sounds like 'conifer' is making the point that I would have made that many/most god
concepts people actually believe (rather than the tortured creations professional
apologists come up with) are not cognitively meaningless...

However I was going to go further.

Even if the god concepts ARE cognitively meaningless I would still hold that disbelief, as
opposed to simple absence of belief, is justified.

Obviously strong atheism is only necessitated and made relevant by the existence,
prevalence and power of theism. Without theists there would be no need for anybody
to label themselves atheist.

However there are theists, and belief in gods is common, and damaging.

Given that fact, I feel it's perfectly reasonable [in general] to go beyond simple absence of
belief even with cognitively meaningless definitions of gods, if there is sufficient scientific
or rational justification to believe that such entities do not, or can not, exist.


I would be interested to know what you, and the other posters here, think about that point.

Originally posted by LemonJello
By the way, Conifer lays the groundwork for his paper in accordance with what your OP said here (which probably came from the Conifer paper, I would guess):

[quote]“Another way of expressing theological noncognitivism is, for any sentence S, S is cognitively meaningless if and only if S expresses an unthinkable proposition or S does not express a propo ningless. In this way, Conifer argues that theological noncognitivism is generally false.

Thanks for the reference LJ; I'll read it. I just stumbled onto the topic and didn't do a lot of research before I posted--Iwas hoping, for example, that you'd show up. 🙂 By the way, I do think that there are some "definitions" of God that end up amounting to "all that is not god", where god is ultimately the "wholly other" to cosmos as a whole (bad punning there; Tillich's Systematic Theology comes to mind, but its been a long time); as well as the whole apophatic tradition--where god really is all that is not god.

I'll take some time to read Conifer, and some of the others, and then revisit it.

Just a little compulsive nitpicking with Conifer here (I’ll take more time after the initial run-through):

He seems to cherry-pick quite a bit, and then say that he thinks most theists/theologians would agree with his wording/understanding. That made me suspicious, and I was starting to think that he means theists/theologians that are in, or at least close to, whatever his own theological/religious camp is.

Nevertheless, I got to the discussion of G-5 (which I have not yet really analyzed) and saw this sentence:

(G5): “the Ground of Being; the Source of Everything.” This is a definition of “God” that is quite popular among New Agers and other liberal believers. [my bolds and italics]

What dismissive and utter (and, needless to say, irritating) BS! Maybe he is a Barthian, who thinks that Paul Tillich (who, along with Barth, Bultmann, Brunner and Niebuhr, was one of the dominant Christian theologians of the 20th century) was just a “liberal believer”. I wonder what he would think of the Jewish religious philosopher/theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel? Or, later, process theologians such as Hartshorne and Cobb (okay, Hartshorne’s really a philosopher of religion)? Or the Greek Orthodox theologian Olivier Clement? (It’s been too long since I’ve read Jürgen Moltmann, so I can’t say.)

Okay, I’ll leave the nitpicking. Sorry about that—but it does make me want to read him very carefully.

Originally posted by sonhouse
What PROPOSING? Faith IS noncognitive.

Well, faith in its conventional sense(s) certainly can be cognitive—e.g., a trust or confidence based on analysis of evidence. I know that some Christians on here use faith pretty much in that sense, but that others give it a more specialized sense in the context of their religious beliefs.

On the other hand, there is, I believe, at least some tradition of faith being noncognitive. Kierkegaard comes to mind.

It was just an honest question as to your view on the matter.

I’m not sure that one who holds to faith as—ultimately—noncognitive would really have any response to theological noncognitivism more than a (metaphorical) shrug . . .

Originally posted by josephw
"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."

In answer to your post above I submit that by attempting to define God one falls victim to one's own "unthinkable proposition" and "circular, incoherent and meaningless assertions".

Only God can define Himself. It is the ...[text shortened]... efines. We hear the Creator's voice or we plug our ears. Spiritually speaking of course.

Hi, Joe! Long time no talk. 🙂 Hope you and yours are well.

You start out here taking the roughly the position of apophatic theology—i.e., one cannot say what God is, but only what God is not.

Then you went ahead and gave a definition:* God is Creator—with a capital “C”, indicating that God is not just a creator, but the ultimate (working the chain backwards) creator of all that is (except God). Now the questions arise: what kind of creator is God that differentiates his creative activity from other creators (your answer is likely creatio ex nihilo)? What can “creation” mean for a God who existed “before time” (which God presumably created), when all creative activity that we know entails time? Can God’s creating be defined/described, or is it really also a word empty of any definition or descriptive content here? Etc., etc.

If you can’t say what it means, then you are back to—not being able to say. If you say that God created by utterance—word—then similar questions arise.

I’m not sure yet whether or not theological noncognitivism holds water generally—but I do think it holds water in some cases.

_________________________________________________

* Only part of the complex definitions generally offered, to be sure.

Originally posted by googlefudge
This is a topic I keep meaning to get into but haven't yet found the requisite time to
do it justice.

It sounds like 'conifer' is making the point that I would have made that many/most god
concepts people actually believe (rather than the tortured creations professional
apologists come up with) are not cognitively meaningless...

However I was ...[text shortened]...
I would be interested to know what you, and the other posters here, think about that point.

the point that I would have made that many/most god
concepts people actually believe (rather than the tortured creations professional
apologists come up with) are not cognitively meaningless...

Yes, I would agree: I think, in general, typical or common usage regarding god-talk is cognitively meaningful, by which I mean that I think it characteristically serves to express propositions. It's just that I have never come across such propositions that I think are true or justified. Of course, I have no doubt that there are, or could be, some 'god' concepts and god-talk that are cognitively meaningless and do not express propositions. But that no more demonstrates theological noncognitivism to be true than the fact that I could attach any number of meaningless definitions to 'chair' demonstrates that chair-talk is generally cognitively meaningless. To demonstrate theological noncognitivism I think one would need to examine a wide range of common usages of 'god' and show that when one tries to unpack them they characteristically have no actual propositional content; or would need to show that there is something quasi-fundamental across a wide terrain of god-talk that renders it empty with respect to expressing propositions. That sounds like an extraordinarily hard thing to show; and, when I start to consider some common usages of 'god', it seems clear to me that theological noncognitivism is false. But, of course, I would be interested in hearing other takes on it.

Even if the god concepts ARE cognitively meaningless I would still hold that disbelief, as
opposed to simple absence of belief, is justified.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that if it turns out that if 'god' or god-talk is cognitively meaningless, you still think it would be justified to, for example, believe that gods do not exist? If so, I don't think I agree with that. If god-talk were cognitively meaningless, then it would not serve to express propositions (or at least not serve to express thinkable propositions). But, if that is the case, then "gods do not exist" no more expresses a proposition than "god exists" does. So, there would be no propositions here to believe either way. In that case, god-talk would be no more propositional in nature than art or music, for examples. In that case, arguing that theism is factually wrong would be like arguing that some piece of music is factually wrong. Of course, some art or music can still be offensive, and it sounds like you are saying that god-talk would be offensive/damaging in some ways even if it were cognitively meaningless. In that case, supposing it were damaging, you would be responding appropriately to oppose it and to have negative attitudes toward it. But I don't think it would be notionally correct to say you disbelieve it; just like it would be notionally confused to say you disbelieve some piece of music you find offensive.

Given that fact, I feel it's perfectly reasonable [in general] to go beyond simple absence of
belief even with cognitively meaningless definitions of gods, if there is sufficient scientific
or rational justification to believe that such entities do not, or can not, exist.

If there were sufficient scientific or rational justification to believe that entities such as 'god' do not or cannot exist; then "god does not exist" or "god cannot exist" would express a proposition. But then god-talk would be cognitively meaningful at least to that extent. The deliverances of scientific or rational study are cognitively meaningful; otherwise, they would literally assert nothing of propositional content. So, I don't think you can coherently hold on one hand that god-talk is cognitively meaningless; while holding on the other hand that there is sufficient scientific/rational justification to believe gods do not or cannot exist.

I guess what I am saying is that I agree with you that even if theistic discourse were cognitively meaningless, you may still have very good (or even overwhelming) reasons to oppose theism or hold negative attitudes toward it. Such attitudes may be justified (or appropriate). But I think in that case, it would be notionally confused to say you disbelieve it.

(Of course, if you just mean 'disbelief in X' in the sense of being unable to believe X, then that follows trivially from noncognitivism regarding X-talk, since one cannot believe something that has no proposition content. But, the point is, no one would say that they disbelieve some piece of music, for example. But it still may be appropriate to find the piece offensive and to oppose it.)

Originally posted by vistesd
Thanks for the reference LJ; I'll read it. I just stumbled onto the topic and didn't do a lot of research before I posted--Iwas hoping, for example, that you'd show up. 🙂 By the way, I do think that there are some "definitions" of God that end up amounting to "all that is not god", where god is ultimately the "wholly other" to cosmos as a whole ( ...[text shortened]...

I'll take some time to read Conifer, and some of the others, and then revisit it.

I'm sure there are some definitions that collapse to saying that "god is that which caused everything but god". However, to say that theological noncognitivists claim that all alleged definitions of god collapse to this is totally absurd. Maybe some noncognivitists claim that (for some bizarre reason, since the claim is obviously false); but, to be honest, I'm not even sure the holding of that claim is itself sufficient for being a theological noncognitivist. That's not obvious to me.

Originally posted by vistesd
Just a little compulsive nitpicking with Conifer here (I’ll take more time after the initial run-through):

He seems to cherry-pick quite a bit, and then say that he thinks most theists/theologians would agree with his wording/understanding. That made me suspicious, and I was starting to think that he means theists/theologians that are in, or at least clo ...[text shortened]... ’ll leave the nitpicking. Sorry about that—but it does make me want to read him very carefully.

I'm sure you can find places where Conifer is talking out his arse in that essay. However, if you agree with even, say, half of his analyses regarding the various G-X, it's going to be a huge strike against theological noncognitivism (TN).

I think there can be at least a couple points to take away from the essay. One is that Conifer at least starts by outlining what TN holds in a general sense (that "G exists" is cognitively meaningless, according to D1 or D2). Second, his format of argument is basically what one would need to adopt in order to either demonstrate or refute TN, I would think. To demonstrate TN it would not be good enough to show that some isolated 'god' concepts or talk is cognitively meaningless. You would need to show this across a wide terrain of common usage. Unpacking the propositional content (or lack thereof) of even common usages may prove difficult. But that would be just as big a problem for the TN supporter as the TN refuter.

Originally posted by vistesd

* I am ignoring the “verificationist” view of theological noncognitivism, because I think that verificationism as a theory of meaning has problems.
[/b]

I am hard put to see much distinction between this formulation of non-cognitivism and verificationism. Non-cognitivism just seems to be a subset of verificationism: if an entity is defined negatively, then a reference cannot obtain and hence cannot be verified. It is therefore meaningless.

The verificationist would say that since supernatural properties cannot be verified they are meaningless. The theological non-cognitivist would hold that since supernatural properties cannot be properly defined in the first place (they are simply defined as 'super'-natural), again, no verification is possible.

I suppose a theist would object by 1. denying that definitions of God are negative (I think mainstream Christians generally holds that there is a lot of positive definition of God); or 2. denying that negative definitions are meaningless (and I think, even as an atheist, there are a lot of arguments in favour of this).