My primary concern within the philosophy of religion is the conceptual status of claims of relgious ‘belief’. While religious belief and scientific belief have been compared with respect to warrant (with religious belief often being seen as degenerate in some important way), I wish to pursue the idea that doing so ‘runs them together’ epistemologically.
Wittgenstein, in Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, wrote
Suppose somebody made this guidance for this life: believing in the Last Judgement. Whenever he does anything, this is before his mind. In a way, how are we to know whether to say he believes this will happen or not?
Asking him is not enough. He will probably say he has proof. But he has what you might call an unshakeable belief. It will show, not by reasoning, or by appeal to ordinary grounds for belief, but rather by regulating for in all his life (p. 53-4).
It would seem that Wittgenstein is suggesting that religious ‘belief’ is of a different conceptual class than scientific belief. If correct, certain criticisms of each of these practices from the other pass each other by.
