Ineffability Assertions -- APA Eastern Division, Atlanta 2012

Philosophy Compass

Though largely neglected by philosophers, the concept of ineffability is integral to the Christian mystical tradition, and has been part of almost every philosophical discussion of religious experience since the early twentieth century. After a brief introduction, this article surveys the most important discussions of divine ineffability, observing that the literature presents two mutually reinforcing obstacles to a coherent account of the concept, creating the impression that philosophical reflection on the subject had reached an impasse. The article goes on to survey some more recent work, which draws on the conceptual resources of existential phenomenology, pragmatism, and the later Wittgenstein. It shows that this work has made possible a new philosophical account of divine ineffability that surmounts the obstacles, overcomes the impasse and makes divine ineffability, once again, a live option in philosophy of religion. The article concludes with some brief remarks on how this alternative approach reflects recent trends in the discipline as a whole and has the potential to make a valuable contribution to live research questions in epistemology of religion.

Saying that x is ineffable seems to be paradoxical – either I cannot say anything about x, not even that it is ineffable – or I can say that it is ineffable, but then I can say something and it is not ineffable. In this article, I discuss Alston’s version of the paradox and a solution proposed by Hick which employs the concept of formal and substantial predicates. I reject Hick’s proposal and develop a different account based on some passages from Pseudo-Dionysius’ Mystica Theologia. ‘God is ineffable’ is a metalinguistic statement concerning propositions about God: not all propositions about God are expressible in a human language.

European Journal of Philosophy, 2003

Are there any ineffable truths? I am reminded, in addressing this question, of Donald Davidson's reaction to a similar question that he poses in his celebrated essay on the idea of a conceptual scheme: 1 could there be a language whose sentences were untranslatable into any of ours? 'It is tempting,' Davidson writes, to take a very short line indeed: nothing, it may be said, could count as evidence that some form of activity could not be interpreted in our language that was not at the same time evidence that that form of activity was not speech behaviour. If this were right, we probably ought to hold that a form of activity that cannot be interpreted as language in our language is not speech behaviour. Putting matters this way is unsatisfactory, however, for it comes to little more than making translatability into a familiar tongue a criterion of languagehood. As fiat, the thesis lacks the appeal of self-evidence; if it is a truth, as I think it is, it should emerge as the conclusion of an argument. 2

Signs and Society

Ancient ideas about the limits of what can be put into words demonstrate the popularity of the notion that language is a guide to truth, even if that truth is defined by the limits of language. Two ancient and one modern example all locate truth in a reality that can be tracked both by the possibility of and the inherent failure of definition. Ancient exegetes started with the basic concept that words were both names for objects and the best formal representations of divinity. Yet names were not capable of fully defining ineffable divinity. These two ideologies-that names formally represent divinity and yet fail to completely describe divinity-coexisted in a delicate balance. The theme of divine ineffability, first articulated as part of a theology emphasizing the complete power of the deity over matter, has been adopted by modern scholars and converted to a theory to locate reality in hardto-define personal experiences. The ineffable as what cannot be spoken about shifts focus from divinity to the self (the locus of modern experience). W hat can and cannot be expressed by language? Diverse answers to this question are rich sites for examining linguistic ideologies, that is, ideas about how language functions. 1 Some ancient philosophers argued that it was impossible to describe a deity in words, as hopeless as capturing a deity in stone. They claimed that the deity was arrēton, an adjective formed from the a-privative combined with "to say/speak," often translated as "ineffable." They also employed apophasis, a rhetorical device that posits something by denying it ("I will not mention X"), employed to make negative theological claim. 2 Various fashions of ineffability or apophasis demonstrate the irresistible appeal of language as somehow containing a revelation of truth, even if that

The Bible writers employ conceptual metaphors that utilise human relationships involving emotions (the source domain) to describe the nature of God (the target domain). Modern conceptual metaphor theory maintains that although such metaphors have a discontinuity in that not all concepts contained in the source domain are transferred to their intended target domain, they nonetheless illustrate a truth. Based on that understanding this paper looks to challenge the classical view of the impassibility of God.

This paper claims that God cannot be described in mere words but rather by silence in itself, since language is a product of human innovation that will only reveal God’s utter incomprehensibility. It explains the idea of the “God of Silence” by experiencing the “Dark Night of the Soul” where man ascends the mountain, motivated by love, to encounter God. It debunks the negative connotation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ preposition that says that what man cannot speak about must be pass over in silence. Through Gregory of Nyssa’s idea of God’s incomprehensibility, it makes a rebuttal that even if language lacks the capacity to define God, man can understand God through and in silence. It means to value silence as perennial in defining and meditating the concept of God that is hard to grasp as a human being, since the concept is infinite while the human mind is finite. The method used in this paper is a hermeneutical analysis in nature since it deals with the idea of the God of Silence. It also utilizes the Kantian Transcendental Method where one gets knowledge from the texts presented by the philosophers as a source of knowledge in themselves. The paper discusses the idea of the “God of Silence” in which man is uncappable of describing or speaking of God totally but doesn’t mean that God cannot be partially grasped by man. The paper is significantly relevant since it deals with the core topics of metaphysics, the study of man as a being and a Transcendent God that ca n be found and be defined by silence. The researcher recommends further discussions on the relationship and relevance of analytic philosophy and the Medieval-Christian philosophical thoughts as integral in developing further studies in connection with the relevance of Catholic teaching of God and the importance of silence now and beyond.

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2019

International Philosophical Quarterly, 2019

John Schellenberg’s version of the divine hiddenness argument is based on a concept of God as an omnipotent, morally perfect, and ontologically perfect being. I show that Schellenberg develops his argument in a way that is inconsistent with each of these aspects, from which it follows that the argument in question proves to be unsustainable.

2021

The ontological argument for the existence of God is generally conceived as a scholastic curiosity. In its original formulation in the Proslogion by Anselm of Canterbury, it is an attempt to proof God’s existence through a thought experiment: if we attempt to think “something than which nothing greater can be thought”, this something – God – must go beyond thought and, therefore, necessarily exists; for if it existed only in our mind, it would not be the “greatest” thing that can be thought. In short: to be (conceptually) “the greatest” entails (ontologically) “to exist”. Instead of excavating the inherent paradox of the ontological argument, my paper attempts to invert it to the degree as to provide an ontological argument for the inexistence of God. Needless to say, this involves a re-interpretation of “greatness” and “existence”. Inspired by the work of Heidegger, Nishida and Deleuze, I argue that “the greatest” – understood as ontologically primordial – must exactly NOT exist because its existence would delimit its divinity. To be precise, this argument involves that God is also not a non-existent entity but – to the contrary – transcends the whole realm of finite determination. Put this way, the ontological argument is even able to resist the critique of Kant who had argued against Anselm’s minor conception of existence. Rather than a mere experiment of thought that would proceed from concept to ontology, the ontological argument gives deep insights into the relation of our limited existence to the divine inexistence of God. To be presented at the international conference Rationality, Theism and Atheism, 1-2 March 2021, Iran