Rejection of Contemporary Religious Epistemological Foundationalism: Phillips’ Wittgensteinian Religious Language Analysis

Authors : Resul Yüksel

Pages : 449-476

Doi:10.51553/bozifder.1766516

View : 39 | Download : 49

Publication Date : 2025-12-31

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :In contemporary philosophy of religion, Phillips uses Wittgenstein’s theory of language-games to examine the truth claims, metaphysical meanings and practical implications of religious assertions. According to this theory, religious language cannot be evaluated by the criteria of meaningfulness applied in other language-games, due to its distinctive grammatical structure. Hence, religious language is not meaningless, contrary to the view of verificationism and falsificationism. Ayer’s verificationist criterion asserts that a proposition is meaningless if the conditions under which it can be empirically verified are unclear. From this perspective, moral, aesthetic, and religious propositions are considered meaningless. This criterion, based on scientific language, was later replaced by Flew’s falsificationist criterion, which argues that a proposition is meaningless if it cannot be shown false under any empirical condition. Flew claimed that religious propositions fail to meet this standard because no empirical condition can falsify them. Phillips, unlike these claims, argues in his functionalist analysis that religious language has meaning because of the functional roles it plays within communities and cultures. Reformed epistemologists, on the other hand, contend that religious language is properly basic and requires no external justification. According to Phillips, reformed epistemologists’, like Alvin Plantinga, problem lies in treating religious propositions as universal and foundational while overlooking the role of experience. Therefore, both the religious evidentialist attempt to ground religious claims in transcendent factors and the reformed epistemologists’ effort to justify them on universal foundations should be rejected. For Phillips, the meaning of religious language derives not from transcendent factors but from the functional roles it plays in the lives of believers, in practices such as prayer, faith, and worship.
Keywords : Din Felsefesi, İşlevsel Analiz, Din Dili, Mantıksal Pozitivizm, Doğal Teoloji, Reformcu Epistemoloji

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