Abstract
In the ‘Author’s Introduction’ to The Natural History of Religion David Hume distinguishes between two questions regarding religion: ‘that concerning its foundation in reason and that concerning its origin in human nature’ (p. 21). Wittgenstein’s work pursues a similar, if less explicitly announced, distinction concerning all rule-governed practices. In this essay I examine the concept ‘language-game’ as it applies to the groundlessness — in reason — of our proceedings in language, and also as it applies to the non-rational bases in human nature of our operating with words. Wittgenstein argues that explanations come to an end; that is, we must acknowledge that reasons finally appeal to things that are not reasons.
I want to regard humanity here as an animal; as a primitive being one credits with instinct but not with reasoning. … Language did not emerge from some kind of reasoning.
(On Certainty §475)1
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Works Cited
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© 1995 Timothy Tessin and Mario von der Ruhr
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Churchill, J. (1995). The Squirrel does not Infer by Induction: Wittgenstein and the Natural History of Religion. In: Tessin, T., von der Ruhr, M. (eds) Philosophy and the Grammar of Religious Belief. Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23867-5_3
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