Abstract
This paper is centred on the question of objectivity of
religious truth-claims in the Wittgensteinian perspective and
explains how the evidentialist standard model of rationality leads us
nowhere except putting us in a flyglass wherein like distraught flies
we hopelessly flutter and flutter without finding the way out. This
flyglass was manufactured by the Cartesian epistemology which
demanded proofs in order to establish the cognitive validity of a
truth-claim. Wittgenstein rejects this standpoint as wholly mistaken
and misguided. There is no objectively neutral place from which the
philosopher can have a critical look on a particular mode of
discourse. The question of true/false depends on forms of life and
language games. This line of argument has been followed by D. Z.
Phillips, Peter Winch and Norman Malcolm. They also denounced
the claim that there must be a common paradigm of rationality for
all modes of discourse. Indeed, there are many difficulties in
Wittgensteinian criteriology. But it is a fact that evidentialism fails
to take account of diversity in modes of discourse. Likewise, the
scientism suffers the fallacies of generalization and exclusivism.
Rationalist ontology fallaciously promotes the idea of
transcendental truth which Prof. Stuhar rejects as a system of
delusion. Taking lead from Wittgensteinianism, postmodernism lays
emphasis on equality of different cluster of meaning and affirms that
there is no objective point of view that gives us access to a global
truth. Hence, what is temporary, immanent and historically
particular is accepted.
MUHAMMAD IQBĀL AFAQI. (2007) RELIGIOUS BELIEF, LANGUAGE GAMES AND POSTMODERN NARRATIVES , Al-Hikmat: A Journal of Philosophy, Volume 27, Issue 01.
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