What sort of thing is religious belief? First, the grounds for belief are not ordinary grounds. If you were going to state the grounds for a scientific proposition, you’d say something completely different than you would if you were talking about religious belief. If you were arguing for a new law, your statement of the grounds for it would be different again.
Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out that analyzing philosophical concepts is not as straightforward as it would appear. The concepts are in language, and we have to use language to analyze them. We commonly use language to make statements of fact. If you assert “The cat is on the mat,” I can verify the truth of your assertion by using my senses. I can go look. If I don’t believe my eyes, I can touch and smell.
Because that’s the ordinary way we use language, we think that’s the pattern for using it.
Wittgenstein, many years ago, helped me to see that’s just not so.
And, yes, I’m trying to show honor to a thinker who influenced me by marking his birthday: April 26, 1889, in Vienna.
• Source: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief; Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967.
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