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A New Programme for Religious Language: The Transformational Generative Grammar
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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Recent defenders of the cognitive significance of religious language have had to face opponents from two directions; from those who demand that religious language be capable of some form of empirical verification (or falsification) and from those who demand that for religious language to be meaningful it must be capable of being understood in ordinary language. Apologists who have taken the first challenge seriously have strained to show that religious statements can be verified by ‘religious experience’, or by an ‘odd discernment’ or by an ‘eschatological verification’. Each of these responses raises further problems for the defender of religion, but in general they all are subject to their failure to provide an adequate criterion or standard by which they could be inter-subjectively tested. Facing in the other direction, theological apologists have attempted to justify religious expressions by showing that they could be subsumed under special categories of ordinary language; namely those of ‘convictional language’ and ‘performative language’. Although these defenders have shown that religious language has an ‘ordinary usage’, they have not shown that the cognitive elements of this usage can be reduced to the ‘use of ordinary language’.
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page 41 note 1 For verification by religious experience, cf. Wilson, John, Language and Christian Belief (London, Macmillan, 1958)Google Scholar; ‘odd discernment’ cf. Ramsey, Ian T., Religious Language: An Empirical Placing of Theological Phrases (New York, Macmillan Paperback, 1963)Google Scholar; ‘eschatological verification’, Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge, Second Edition (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1966), pp. 176 ff.Google Scholar
page 41 note 2 Cf. Zuurdeeg, William F., An Analytical Philosophy of Religion (New York, Abingdon Press, 1958)Google Scholar, and Evans, Donald D., The Logic of Self Involvement (London, SCM Press, Ltd., 1963).Google Scholar
page 41 note 3 This distinction between ‘ordinary usage’ and the ‘use of ordinary language’ is a famous one made by Ryle, Gilbert, ‘Ordinary Language’, The Philosophical Review, Vol. LXII, No. 2 (April 1953), pp. 167–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 42 note 1 My expositions of these critiques is largely taken from: Katz, Jerrold J. and Fodor, Jerry A., ‘What's Wrong with the Philosophy of Language?’ Inquiry, Vol. 5 (Autumn 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fodor, Jerry A. and Katz, Jerrold J., ‘Introduction’ in Readings in the Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice–Hall, 1964).Google Scholar Note that this paper is an adaptation of the one in Inquiry; Katz, Jerrold J., The Philosophy of Language (New York. Harper & Row, 1966), Ch. 3.Google Scholar
page 43 note 1 For a beautiful description of this problem cf. Quine, W. V., ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ in From a Logical Point of View (New York. Harper Torehbook, 1963).Google Scholar
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page 47 note 2 In earlier works like ‘The Structure of a Semantic Theory’ the last of each of the semantic markers in the Lexical entries above were called ‘distinguishers’ which was what is ‘idiosyncratic about the meaning of that term’. In the Integrated Theory these were almost subsumed into semantic markers (p. 14) as they finally were in The Philosophy of Language. One wonders if there is a similar ambiguity in the selection restriction.
page 48 note 1 Katz, , The Philosophy of Language, p. 155.Google Scholar
page 48 note 2 ibid., p. 166.
page 49 note 1 The scope of this paper does not allow me to defend these assumptions; however, they should be made explicit so that the reader can see the following analysis in its proper context. Similarly, the words ‘God created the world’ is spoken of as a religious statement and is assumed to be uttered with the intent of conveying cognitive content.
page 52 note 1 This entry is composed of elements from entries in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1953; Oxford English Dictionary, 1961 and The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 1867.
page 52 note 2 Sartre, Jean-Paul, The Psychology of Imagination (New York. Washington Square Press, 1966). Cf. for example p. 234.Google Scholar
page 52 note 3 There seems to be no reason why this could not be inversely stated that the selection restrictions of the lexical entry of the predicate (verb) must be included in the selection restrictions of the lexical entry of the subject (noun).