{"title":"Taking Issue with Le Poidevin’s New Agnosticism","authors":"Carl-Johan Palmqvist","doi":"10.1007/s11406-024-00762-0","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Le Poidevin’s ‘new agnosticism’ concerns partaking in religious life while being uncertain whether religious discourse is fictional or not. Le Poidevin has offered two distinct versions of the new agnosticism, ‘semantic agnosticism’ and ‘meta-linguistic agnosticism’. I suggest that the first, ‘semantic agnosticism’, should be rejected, mainly because it involves a highly questionable view of truth and fails to properly distinguish fictional existence from real existence. The second, ‘meta-linguistic agnosticism’ seems acceptable as a view of religious discourse but not as a foundation for a religious life. A meta-linguistic agnostic will not be able to take the proper attitude towards religious propositions, since what is the proper attitude varies greatly between realism and fictionalism. Even more importantly, she will not know when it is rationally permissible to perform religious actions, because she will not know whether real-life concerns should take precedence or not. Le Poidevin’s meta-linguistic agnostic is also a truth-agnostic, and I conclude that adding meta-linguistic agnosticism to truth-agnosticism only complicates matters without offering any benefits.</p>","PeriodicalId":46695,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHIA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"PHILOSOPHIA","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-024-00762-0","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Le Poidevin’s ‘new agnosticism’ concerns partaking in religious life while being uncertain whether religious discourse is fictional or not. Le Poidevin has offered two distinct versions of the new agnosticism, ‘semantic agnosticism’ and ‘meta-linguistic agnosticism’. I suggest that the first, ‘semantic agnosticism’, should be rejected, mainly because it involves a highly questionable view of truth and fails to properly distinguish fictional existence from real existence. The second, ‘meta-linguistic agnosticism’ seems acceptable as a view of religious discourse but not as a foundation for a religious life. A meta-linguistic agnostic will not be able to take the proper attitude towards religious propositions, since what is the proper attitude varies greatly between realism and fictionalism. Even more importantly, she will not know when it is rationally permissible to perform religious actions, because she will not know whether real-life concerns should take precedence or not. Le Poidevin’s meta-linguistic agnostic is also a truth-agnostic, and I conclude that adding meta-linguistic agnosticism to truth-agnosticism only complicates matters without offering any benefits.
期刊介绍：
Founded in 1971, Philosophia is a much-respected journal that has provided a platform to many well-known philosophers, including Kenneth Arrow, A.J. Ayer, Roderick Chisholm, Bas van Fraassen, William Frankena, P.T. Geach, Alan Gewirth, Jaakko Hintikka, Richard Popkin, W.V.O. Quine, Gilbert Ryle, Marcus Singer, Peter Singer, J.J.C. Smart, P.F. Strawson, and many others. Philosophia also published papers of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Carnap.
Philosophia is an international journal in scope, submissions and readership. The journal publishes contributions fitting within various philosophical traditions, but manifests a preference of the analytic tradition in the broad sense of commitment to clarity and responsibility.
Besides papers in the traditional subfields of philosophy and its history, Philosophia also publishes work on topical subjects such as racism, silence of God, terrorism, the nature of philosophy, emotion, AIDS, scientific discovery, punishment, modality, and institutional theory of art.
Philosophia welcomes a wide range of contributions to academic philosophy, covering all fields of philosophy. Contributions to the journal may take the form of topical papers, philosophical surveys of literature, symposia papers, short discussion notes, puzzles, profiles, book reviews and more extensive critical studies of new books. The journal includes a ''books revisited'' section where a book and its impact are reconsidered a decade or more after its appearance. Double-blind review procedure The journal follows a double-blind reviewing procedure. Authors are therefore requested to place their name and affiliation on a separate page. Self-identifying citations and references in the article text should either be avoided or left blank when manuscripts are first submitted. Authors are responsible for reinserting self-identifying citations and references when manuscripts are prepared for final submission.Please read our Editorial Policies carefully before you submit your paper to this journal https://www.springer.com/gp/editorial-policies
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