Twentieth-century perspectives and philosophical comparisons - Wittgenstein and language games

Language use, games and forms of life

Understanding a word involves understanding what people do with it in a practice, not merely identifying an object it names. The later Ludwig Wittgenstein challenges the assumption that every meaningful sentence works like a factual picture. In Philosophical Investigations §§7,23 and43 he explores language games: language woven into activities such as describing, asking, thanking or making a joke. These are paraphrases of his approach. Scholarly account and primary locators.

Saying “I promise” can undertake a commitment rather than report an observation; saying “thank you” expresses gratitude within a recognisable interaction. To understand these utterances we need their circumstances and standards of use. Evaluating a promise solely by asking which laboratory measurement verifies its words misses what the speaker is doing.

A form of life is the shared background of human activities, practices and ways of responding in which language works. It is broader than a vocabulary list. Language games depend on learning how to use expressions, recognise appropriate responses and follow shared standards. They are not secret private codes that become correct merely because an individual chooses them.

The game comparison emphasises practice and standards, but ordinary language is more open and varied than a single game with a complete rulebook. Religion includes prayer, confession, narration, argument and instruction; calling all of it one uniform game can hide those differences. Religious and non-religious uses also overlap. An outsider may learn the practice well enough to understand it without converting.

Shared understanding does not imply that majority agreement makes a claim true. Wittgenstein distinguishes agreement in a form of life from agreement in opinions. A community can share the use of true and false while disagreeing about a particular judgement.

Meaningful non-cognitive religious use

A language-game approach can explain religious significance without treating every utterance as a hypothesis about an unseen object. A prayer may express reliance; a confession may acknowledge responsibility and seek reconciliation; a statement about judgement may shape decisions throughout a life. Their meaning is understood through these roles.

On a non-cognitive interpretation, the central function is orientation, commitment or practice rather than asserting an independently factual description. Such language can be meaningful while failing Ayer's empirical criterion. The response is not to invent a new experiment verifying gratitude or prayer, but to challenge the assumption that one experimental standard governs every use.

This is an application of Wittgenstein's later approach, not the claim that he issued a universal rule that every religious sentence is non-cognitive. A description of a religious ceremony, a claim about a historical event and an act of worship may have different uses. Nor does cognitive mean provable: an analogical assertion about God remains cognitive even if its evidence is disputed.

A critic objects that the non-cognitive interpretation can redescribe believers' claims against their intentions. If someone insists that God really exists independently of worship, explaining what that belief does in life does not answer whether it is true. A defender can accept a more modest purpose: understanding use is necessary before deciding what kind of claim, if any, to assess. It does not automatically settle every truth question.

Non-cognitive interpretation of texts

A non-cognitive reading asks how a religious text shapes a life before treating its sentences as detached reports. Consider an original paraphrase of a familiar devotional image: a worshipper describes God caring for them as a shepherd cares for a flock. Reading this as a report about a literal occupation misses the use. Reading it as a language of dependence can explain reassurance, trust and the speaker's way of facing danger.

The interpretation changes the questions asked. Instead of beginning “Which observable evidence establishes a supernatural shepherd?”, one might ask how the image is used in prayer, what it calls the speaker to trust and which anxieties it addresses. A narrative of forgiveness could likewise teach reconciliation or transform a person's self-understanding rather than function only as a collection of historical propositions.

Context constrains that reading. A text spoken as praise may also be studied as history or employed in a doctrinal argument. Its genre, setting and practical use matter. A non-cognitive approach should not decree that every historical claim disappears because a narrative influences its readers. A believer might regard a text's historical truth as crucial to the life it supports.

One advantage is avoiding literalism and the mistake of assessing every passage as a scientific report. Another is explaining why religious texts remain significant without certainty about every description. The danger is insulation: if disputed claims are always reclassified as internal rules of faith, external criticism may be excluded. Moral consequences, historical evidence and contradictions still merit discussion where the text or its use involves them. Understanding a practice is not endorsing everything done within it.

Aquinas, Wittgenstein and continuing value

Aquinas and a non-cognitive language-game approach make sense of religious language by attending to different relationships. Aquinas relates creaturely perfections to their divine source and mode of possession. The language-game approach relates expressions to activities and shared forms of life. Both reject the demand that every divine predicate work like a simple physical description, but they need not reach the same conclusion.

Take “God is good”. Aquinas intends a real perfection whose divine mode differs from ours; it should not be compatible with any arbitrary moral defect. A non-cognitive interpretation may explain how the expression structures gratitude, trust and conduct. That can show why its use matters but cannot automatically replace the believer's claim that God is actually good.

The best choice depends on the task. Analogy remains valuable for philosophical arguments about attributes because it preserves a subject and predicates capable of truth or falsity. Its metaphysical foundation and the unfamiliar divine mode remain vulnerable to criticism. Language games illuminate what is lost when a creed or prayer is treated only as an experimental hypothesis, but can become reductive if they erase every factual ambition.

The approaches can be complementary: investigate how the sentence is used, then ask whether that use involves an analogical assertion and whether it is justified. Alternatively, a critic may think cognitive theology overreaches and prefer a consistently non-cognitive interpretation. A sound comparison explains the gain and cost rather than claiming that meaning within a community proves truth, or that failure of a scientific test proves total meaninglessness.