The Differences Between Religion, Theology, and Philosophy
Religion and Theology--beliefs
about the nature and existence of God are accepted on faith,
and ultimately authority.
Philosophy--beliefs about
the nature and existence of God must come from from experience
and reason--which is based upon human knowledge.
One way of distinguishing
between the two might best be understood in the
following way:
naturalistic--philosophical explanations must comport with the existing
reality in some strong sense.
anti-naturalistic--religious and theological explanations do not need to
comport with the same strength because they often appeal to super-
natural elements that are not based in reality for further justification.
Philosophy of Religion Lexicon
Theism--the belief that
a personal God exists.
Deism--the belief that an
impersonal God exists.
Monotheism--the belief that
only one God exists.
Polytheism--the belief that
more than one God exists.
Atheism--the belief that
God does not exist.
Agnosticism--the belief
that we are unable to know about the existence and nature of God.
Anthropormorphism--the belief
that God has human form or properties.
The Concept of God
God as a perfect being.
1. Infinite
a. eternal--no temporal limits, there was never a time God did not exist.
b. omnipresent--no spatial limits, there is no place where God is not.
If God is everywhere, there can be no physical body because that would
limit in
time and space.
2. Creator
a. God creates all and out of nothing.
1. transcendent--totally distinct from the realm of time and space.
2. ruler--God rules the creation or what he has acted upon.
b. self-existent--God makes everything, although God is neither made nor
created.
He is the uncreated creator.
3. Person
a. God is thought of with personal characteristics such as being able to
understand and can communicate.
4. Good
a. God is morally good and does no evil. Everything God does is morally
correct.
b. God is the highest good and the goal of our lives of what we should
strive for even
though it may be unattainable.
5. Omnipotent
a. God is all powerful
b. God is limited by the laws of logic; thus, God cannot make a squared
circle.
c. God does what is logically possible.
6. Omniscient
a. God knows all--past, present, and future.
b. There is nothing that is not known by God.
Some philosophers of the ancient and medieval times added two more characteristics a perfect being should have.
7. Immutable
a. Perfect beings cannot change.
b. There is a medieval debate about the immutability of God.
The debate is about the creation of the universe. It seems to me that what
the group of Aristotelians failed to take into account is that if God does
'x', and 'x'
is consistent with with His nature, then he has not changed. God is bound
by logical impossibility and decreeing the world to come into existence
is
not a logical impossibility.
8. Impassible
a. God is unaffected by creatures like us.
b. For God to be God, God has no wants or needs.
The Implications of 1-8
1-8 express either one of
two types of properties.
Essential properties
are those that something without that property fails to be that thing.
For example, an essential property of being human is having DNA. An essential
property of water is H2O.
Relational properties are
those that put a thing in relation to another thing. For example,
'x taller than y', 'y is heavier than z', and many others. God being the
ruler of the world
is a relational property, it puts him into a relation with an object. However
God is
not dependent upon that object, nor does that property form an essential
property of
God. In other words, God could not be ruler of the world and still be God.
However
God could not be omnipotent and still be God which is an essential property.
The properties we deem to be essential constitute our concept of God.
Implication#1--essential
properties often conflict and reveal inconsistencies.
a. If God is all good and cannot perform an immoral action, then
there is something that God cannot do (this conflicts with omnipotence).
b. If God cannot do things that are logically impossible, then there
is something God cannot do. The stronger claim is that if God
is bound by the laws of logic he created them knowing they
would limit him. But, before the laws of logic existed, nothing
was logically impossible, so God knowingly limited his own power.
c. If God is outside of time, how does he operate in time?
d. If God is everywhere, then he is in and outside of time. If he is
inside time, he must be limited in some sense and this conflicts
with his being unlimited.
Implication#2--properties
can be ambiguous--more than one meaning.
a. What does 'time' mean for God? Is it sequential or momentary?
b. What does 'eternal' mean? Existed forever, existed?
Implication#3--
a. What 1 and 2 show is a semantic problem. When absolute
statements are used, they can conflict with each other. Having
7-8 absolute statements further magnifies the problem. The
question becomes, does our language limit an unlimited God?
The 20th century Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said,
"The limits of my language are the limits of my world." Our world is
not entirely coextensive with God's, thus our limits may be just
our limits and not God's.
We began by examining our basic belief that God exists.
The next step is to formulate
the problem.
What is the reasonable thing to believe about the existence of God?
So, we are now looking for solutions to this question. we might
also use the method of
reversal to get at one of many solutions by reformulating
the question,
Why might belief in God not be a reasonable thing?
Fideism--An emotional commitment to the existence
of God and not a rational
commitment based upon reasons
and evidence.
Soren Kierkegaard--rational knowledge
was the enemy of God and to truly
know God, one must have complete and utter devotion through trust. When
you try to rationalize God, you are not trusting Him. Trust comes first,
then rationalization.
"201. All this world--historical
to-do and argument and proofs of the truth of
Christianity must be discarded; there only proof there is, is Faith. If
I truly
have a conviction, my conviction to me is always stronger than reasons;
actually a conviction is what supports the reasons, not the other way
around." Diary of Soren Kierkegaard, p. 163
Kierkegaard's version of fideism is extreme.
There are lesser versions including
St. Augustine's fides proecedit intellectum, or faith precedes understanding
is another version. Augustine's point was that one put the intellect aside
and
give faith the highest priority. St. Anselm's credo ut intelligam,
or I believe in
order that I may understand, is another version. This serves as the basis
for his Ontological Argument for the existence of God.
The Ontological Argument (from Sober, Core Questions, pp. 82-83)
History: Originally formulated
by Saint Anselm (1033-1109). Anselm was a
Catholic theologian and
eventually became the Archbishop of Canterbury. The
argument is found in the
Proslogion. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) a French
philosopher and mathematician
also used several versions of the ontological
argument that can be found
in his Meditations on First Philosophy.
O1--By definition God is
the greatest possible being.
O2--A being who fails to
exist in the actual physical world we inhabit, while
existing in other possible worlds, is less perfect than a being who exists
in all possible worlds.
------------------------------------------------
Thus, God necessarily exists.
The Cosmological Argument (from Sober, Core Questions, pp. 38-39)
History: Thomas Aquinas
(1224-1274) is the most famous proponent, but arguably
a form of the argument can
be traced back to Aristotle and his Prime Mover
argument. Contemporary proponents
include William Lane Craig with a unique
version called the Kalam
Cosmological Argument. His argument is based upon
the work of an medieval
Islamic scholar named Al-Ghazali (1058-1111).
Aquinas's First Argument from Motion
M1--There are objects in
the natural world that are in motion.
M2--Objects that are in
motion in the natural world are always sent into motion
by objects other than themselves.
M3--Causes in the natural
world must precede their effects.
M4--There are no infinite
cause/effect chains in the natural world.
------
M5--Thus, there is an entity
outside of the natural world (a super natural being)
which causes the motion of the first moving object that exists in the natural
world.
------
Thus, God exists.
Aquinas's Second Argument from Causality
C1--There are events in
the natural world.
C2--In the natural world,
every event has a cause, and no event is caused by
itself.
C3--Causes must precede
their effects in the natural world.
C4--In the natural world,
there are no cause/effect chains that are infinite.
------
C5--Thus, there is an entity
outside of nature (a supernatural being), which
causes the first event that occurs in the natural world.
-----
Thus, God exists.
Paley's Design Argument
History: William Paley (1743-1805)
was an English theologian and moral
philosopher. A contemporary
proponent of this view is William Dembski.
D1--Organisms are well suited
to the tasks of survival and reproduction.
D2--Organisms are intricate.
----------
---------
Thus, organisms were created
by intelligent design.
Parallel Argument
W1--The watch is well suited
to the task of measuring time.
W2--The watch is intricate.
--------
--------
Thus, the watch was created
by intelligent design.
Van Til and the Transcendental Argument
History
Born May 3, 1895 in Holland.
Awarded a Th.M. from Princeton
Seminary in 1925.
Awarded a Ph.D. in 1927
from Princeton University in
Philosophy for his dissertation
God and the Absolute.
Wrote over 30 books and
220 articles/reviews on Christianity, Philosophy, Ethics and Theology.
He died in 1987 after teaching
from 1929-1972 at Westminister Seminary.
Calvinism versus Arminianism
Calvinism
v.
Arminianism
T—Total Depravity
Limited Depravity
(man is bad due to sin)
(man is good and bad)
U—Unconditional Election
Conditional Election
(God saves who He choses to)
(man saves himself)
L—Limited Atonement
Unlimited Atonement
(Christ died for the Elect)
(Christ died for all)
I—Irresistible Grace
Resistible Grace
(God’s grace cannot be resisted)
(Man can resist God’s grace)
P—Perseverance of the Saints
No Perseverance
(God will keep you in the faith)
(Man can lose faith and salvation)
Van Til was a strong Calvinist. Notice for the Calvinist, God does it
all. For the Arminian, he/she
is in charge and God more or less becomes his/her servant—God does
not do it all, man either
does it or “cooperates” with God.
Why I Believe in God
This is a simple pamphlet showing the transcendental method. The transcendental
method
is defined as “Transcendental reasoning is concerned to discover what
general conditions
must be fulfilled for any particular instance of knowledge to be possible:
it has been central
to the philosophies…of Aristotle and Kant. Van Til asks what view of
man, mind, truth,
language, and the world is necessarily presupposed by our conception
of knowledge and
our methods of pursuing it.” (Bahnsen 5-6) Another way you might want
to think about this
is what kind of structure makes man, mind, truth, and language possible
at all—as a coherent
entity that produces knowledge.
Five Main Themes in Van Til
1. Creature/Creator distinction. Man is created
and necessarily relies upon his/her Creator.
The Creator relies upon
man in no way.
2. Belief versus Unbelief. If one is not in a state
of belief, they are in a state of unbelief.
There is no middle ground.
3. No Neutrality. There is no neutral worldview.
Every single person has a worldview and they
argue from it. The atheist
has a worldview with metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical
posits. The Christian does
the same, as does the Buddhist, etc…
There is no neutral worldview
from which other worldviews can be judged.
4. Sin Blinds. Van Til refers to this as wearing
colored glasses. Going back to the ‘T’
in Calvinism, Van Til believes
that sin so utterly affects one’s thinking that they
cannot see the simple evidences
and truths of Christianity.
5. Autonomy versus Theonomy—Man either believes
himself to be his/her own law
or he/she believes that
he/she relies upon the Law of God and His Will.
The Transcendental Argument
1) God is the All-Conditioner.
2) If God is the All-Conditioner, then his/her experience
is unified.
3) Unification of experience gives experience meaning.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
C—God as the All Conditioner gives his/her experience
meaning.
The Unintelligibility Argument
1) Man is the All-Conditioner.
2) If man is the All-Conditioner, then his/her experience
is dis- unified.
3) Experience that is disunified has no meaning.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
C—Man as the All-Conditioner gives his/her experience
no meaning.
We need to analyze two quotes to understand what Van Til is doing in
these
two arguments.
“On the other hand, by my belief in God I do have unity in my experience.
Not of
course the sort of unity you want. Not a unity that
is the result of my autonomous
determination. But a unity that is higher than mine
and prior to mine.”
“Looking about me I see both order and disorder in every dimension
of life. But I look
at both of them in the light of the Great Creator
who is back of them.”
Unity in experience—causal connections between events, conceptual continuity,
logical necessity, moral absolutes and others. All
of these unify my experience, I
know that if I put gasoline on a fire it will flame
up, I know the concept of ‘dog’ I
have stays the same, it doesn’t change, I know that
‘tautologies’ will always
be true, and I know that moral absolutes like “You
should not murder” holds for all
of us. Not only do these unify my particular experience,
they unify yours as well.
Van Til believes that only by presupposing God can
we have this kind of unity.
God is the All-Conditioner, he makes the unity of
our experience possible. We are
his Creatures in His Creation.
Without presupposing God, we have disunity. “Man by contrast either
imposes his
own unifying ideas of his own mind on an external
reality not controlled by his
mind.” This is form of epistemological subjectivism.
“Or (man) respects the
particularity and novelty of every fact in the world,
in which case nothing can be
said about it using unifying concepts or uniform
principles. Imposing a ‘system’ in
advance discards the need for scientific research;
respecting the individuality and
novelty of experience destroys the intelligibility
of those facts in advance.” (B, 140)
Translation: There are two points here. 1) Man’s mind may impose unifying
ideas on
reality, however there is no guarantee that they
unify reality. Thus his unification is
not objective and there is no unification between
the individual and reality. 2) If
every fact in the world is unique, there is nothing
to unify those facts because they
share nothing in common. The science claim is interesting.
This goes back to #1.
If your subjective system gives you unity, why do
you need science? Your system
already limits your discovery because there is no
necessary correspondence with
reality. Your system tells you everything you need
to know. The “individuality and
novelty” claim of the last sentence is strong. If
everything is an individual and
unique in experience, why would we count those as
facts? Facts require some kind
of unification. Cal Poly is a university is a fact
which requires unification of the
concept of ‘university’, otherwise what would Cal
Poly be? A school, once again that
requires a unified concept. If you really want to
push this argument to its strongest
conclusion, there is just a sequence of experiences,
all individual. Yet, this requires
a unified concept of ‘experience’ and ‘individual.’
Summary: Four arguments for the existence of God have been presented.
Three of them are
conceptual: ontological, cosmological, and transcendental. Two of them
are empirical in some
sense: teleological and transcendental. A unique property of transcendental
arguments is that
they are both conceptual (what are the necessary preconditions for
experience) and empirical
(what is our experience actually like). These two should correspond.
We also considered a
non-rational argument through the ideas of Kierkegaard called 'fideism.'
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Philosophy of Religion--Strong Atheism
Instructor: Scott Dixon
A.J. Ayer: The Meaningless of Religious Language
Ayer’s Arguments Against the Possibility of Religious Knowledge
Argument#1
The argument needs to be understood with the presupposition
that premises for the
existence of God are not
certain.
1) If the premise is empirical,
then it is only probable.
2) If the premise is a tautology/a
priori, then it is certain.
3) God cannot be deduced
from a tautology/ a priori proposition.
4) Premise (1) is not certain.
5) Deductive arguments require
certain premises.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
C—Therefore there is not
possible to demonstrate by deductive arguments that God exists.
Translated: The conclusion follows if we take the
prime mark of deduction to be that premises
logically guarantee the truth of a conclusion. This logical guarantee
follows if the premises are
certain, so is the conclusion. However, by empirical premises aren’t
certain so they can’t be used,
and God cannot be deduced from a tautology. So these two combined make
it impossible to
demonstrate that God exists through a deductive argument.
Argument #2
Ayer next considers whether or not an argument can
be given for the existence
of God that is merely probable
versus being certain.
1) If the existence of God
is probable, then the proposition that He exists
would be empirical.
2) Empirical manifestations
of God do not equal a transcendent being.
3) If the empirical manifestations
are not equal to a transcendent being,
then there is something not being defined empirically.
4) If something cannot be
fully defined empirically, then it is a
metaphysical concept.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C—God is metaphysical concept
and thus is not probable because
probable concepts are capable of having a truth-value, something
metaphysical concepts are not.
Translation: The crucial premise here is (2). Ayer’s
idea is that you can take a sum total of
physical manifestations of God, yet they will never equal the total
concept of God. Or more
simply, a) # of physical manifestations + b) God’s other qualities
that are not empirically
manifested = the total concept of God. However, since there is no (b)
on Ayer’s account
(this is what cannot be defined empirically), there is no equivalency.
The previous then implies the concept of God being a metaphysical concept
because it is not
fully definable empirically. And since empirical statements and tautologies
are the only types
of meaningful statements, i.e. they are capable of having a truth-
value, the metaphysical
statement including “God” has no truth-value.
Ayer on Religious Language
Ayer’s view here is very fair about various positions on God.
A) theism: God exists—a metaphysical statement
B) atheism: God does not exist—a metaphysical statement
C) agnostic: I don’t know if God exists—a metaphysical
statement
Since ‘God exists’ is a metaphysical statement, ‘God
does not exist’ is one as well.
‘God exists’ does not have a truth-value, nor does ‘God does not exist.’
Agnosticism is the
view that either (A) or (B) is true, but that one does not know which
is true. However, if (A)
and (B) are both metaphysical statements without truth-values, (C)
will not have a truth-value
either. Thus all three are metaphysical statements that are neither
true nor false.
God as a Proper Name
Proper names denote individuals. ‘Scott W. Dixon’
denotes me and only me given a certain
history. Each proper name corresponds to an object. Ayer says, “ The
mere existence of the
noun is enough to foster the illusion that there is a real, or at any
rate a possible entity
corresponding to it. It is only when we inquire into what God’s attributes
are that we discover
that ‘God,’ in this usage, is not a genuine name.”(116) Ayer’s point
is that transcendent objects
and their attributes are not real in the empirical sense. For names
to refer, it must be empirical;
thus, ‘God’ is not a genuine name because it fails to refer to an empirical
object.
Religion and Science
Religious language does not express significant propositions; thus it
is without a truth-
value. Scientific language does express significant propositions; thus
it has a truth-value.
Scientific language and religious language have no common ground, thus
they have no
relation to each other.
Ernest Nagel: Defending Atheism
History: Nagel (1901-1985) was a philosopher of science
with sympathies for the
Logical Positivist Movement. He taught at Columbia
and might best be known for
his popular book called "Godel's Proof" which explained
the nature of Godel's
Incompleteness Theorems in an understandable way
to a broad audience. Among
hisother works are
An Introduction to Logic and
Scientific Method (with M. R.Cohen,
1934),
Sovereign Reason (1954), Logic
without Metaphysics (1957),
The Structure of
Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific
Explanation (1961), and Observation
and Theory in Science (with others, 1971).
Defending Atheism
This paper contains two major sections. There is a negative section
where Nagel criticizes
classical arguments for the existence of God. Following that, he goes
on to provide a positive
section on why he believes atheism might be true. One other thing you
want to notice about
this paper is the way he sets it up. This paper is a prime example
of how to write philosophy:
1) He begins by defining his terms (p.139); 2) He then discusses what
follows from those
definitions (pp. 139-140); 3) He further clarifies a particular conception
of atheism that he is
interested in (p. 140); and the begins his critique. 1-3 set the foundation
for his critique to come
forth in a meaningful way.
Nagel on the Cosmological Argument
1. Every event must have a cause.
2. Event C must have been caused by event B which
must have been caused by event A....
(this a backwards progression).
3. 2 entails an infinite progression.
4. An infinite progression of an actual series of
events is unintelligible.
C--Thus there must be a first cause who is God to
save intelligibility.
Critique #1: He is not concerned with the truthfulness
of premise 1.
1. Every event must have a cause.
2. God does not need a cause because He is self-caused.
3. If God is self-caused, then there is no reason
the world is not self-caused.
C--There is no reason the world is not self-caused.
Critique #2: He challenges premise 4 by appealing
to modern mathematical
conceptions of infinity. I suspect he is drawing
up Cantor's Diagonal Proof where
the set of real numbers (rational and irrational
numbers) is larger than the set of
integers (or rational numbers), that is, the
uncountably infinite set of real numbers
is "larger" than the countably infinite set of
integers and thus cannot be put into a
one-one correspondence.
The parallel comes
in when we consider the notions of
uncountably and
countably. If you can't
count the events and causes, then it is not
clear why you need a first cause. The notion
of uncountably lets in there being no
necessary beginning, nor a necessary end. And
if this is the case, you don't God
for the beginning or the end of time or creation.
Thus Nagel's point is that the
cosmological argument presupposes a finite progression
whereas not only is
an infinite progression intelligible, and infinite
progression that is uncountable
is intelligible given Cantor's proof. Thus,
he disputes premise 4.
Nagel on the Ontological Argument
1. If God is omnipotent, then He is a perfect being.
2. A perfect being is one whose nature is perfect
and complete in every respect.
3. If we have the idea of a perfect being, we have
just defined it.
C--God must exist by definition because we have
the idea of God as a perfect being.
Why? By premise 2, if God failed to exist He
would not be complete nor perfect.
He would lack an attribute or quality of His nature.
Critique: Drawing upon Kant, Nagel focuses upon the
word 'exist.' Kant would argue
that premise 2 does not contain the attribute of
'existence.' Or to be succinct,
existence is not an attribute. Take any idea you
wish, does that idea entail that the
content of that idea exist in reality? If we have
the idea of a $100 bill, does that
mean it exists in reality? We have the idea of a
$100 bill but that is separate from
it actually existing. Thus, God as one that is perfect
and complete by definition does
not entail that God exists in reality.
We might think of this also in the following way.
Remembering back to our issues
in conceptual analysis there are questions of fact
and questions of concept. It
seems that what this argument draws upon is a confusion
of concept and fact.
Is God a perfect being? We may have the concept
of God as a perfect being,
yet there needs to be another argument for the fact
of God. Does God exist? The
argument builds existence into concept and in the
process, turns a question of
concept subtlety into a question of fact.
Nagel on the Design Argument
D1--Organisms are well suited
to the tasks of survival and reproduction.
D2--Organisms are intricate
as is the environment in which they exist.
D3--The intricacy did not
happen by random chance nor accident; it was
planned.
----------
---------
Thus, organisms and their
environment were created by intelligent design.
Analogous Argument
W1--The watch is well suited
to the task of measuring time.
W2--The watch is an intricate
environment.
W3--The intricacy did not
happen by random chance nor accident; it was
planned.
--------
--------
Thus, the watch was created
by intelligent design.
The argument trades upon
the arguments being alike: the world and the watch
are alike in intricacy and
planning. It is an argument by analogy.
Critique: The argument is disanalogous because we
never come across a watch
that hasn't been made by somebody and 'being made'
is different between biology
and the watch. A watch is constructed from bare
materials, but saying that
organisms construct in the same way is false. My
parents no more made me from
scratch than yours did.
Biological adaptation accounts for variations and
selection of traits without appeal
to an intelligent designer. Thus the complexity
of biology is able to make sense of
selection and survival, and in the process, gives
a natural order where an
intelligent design need not be appealed to for explanation.
Nagel on Kant and the Mystics
Kant: This is a moral argument for the existence
of God. We need God to guarantee
morality as something that is ideal. Without God
grounding it, we have no reason to
be virtuous or good.
Critique: Postulating God has no guarantees and thus
we have no way of knowing
how what is good or being virtuous would be realized.
Mystics: This is an experiential argument for the
existence of God. I know God
exists because I've have an intimate, subjective
experience with Him. These
feelings are then taken as a validation of the existence
of a supernatural being.
Critique: An experience is just that an experience.
For experiences to have
objective nature, they must be able to be verified
under controlled conditions and
be confirmed by independent observers. Otherwise,
they are subjective and no
further inferences are able to be justified, that
is, arguing from an experience to
the existence of something like God causing that
experience.
Nagel on Theodicy
Theodicy--the problem of evil, how can an all-good God allow evil?
Nagel believes that the very thesis of theism shows
an incoherency between
God's attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and
omnibenevolence and
reconciling them with evil in the world. How can
an all-powerful, all-knowing,
and all-good God allow evil in the world? If God
is all-powerful, why can't He get
rid of evil? If God is all-knowing, why can't He
know that evil conflicts with his other
attributes? If God is all-good, how can He allow
evil to exist when evil is the
negation of good?
Critique: Human history shows evil exists. It is
not clear how a omnibenevolent
being is revealed in this history because of the
inconsistency. Thus, we have no
reason to suppose an omnibenevolent being exists
or has been at work in history.
Positive Atheism
Nagel puts forth a few conceptions that are inherent
to philosophical atheism. He is
no longer criticizing theism at this point, but
instead is drawing out a few general
ideas that most philosophical atheists hold to.
1. Non-physical entities like souls, do not exercise
a causal effect on the material
body. To achieve an understanding
of what goes on in the universe, we must
look to a naturalistic explanation.
Bodies, matter, and the like are what we need
to analyze.
2. Empiricism is the way we achieve knowledge. "But
there is substantial agreement
among them that controlled
sensory observation is the court of final appeal in
issues concerning matters
of fact."(146) The sciences can explain all that is
empirical without reference
to God or a Deity.
3. Utilitarianism is the correct moral theory. Because
it deals with actual human
capacities and those in
relation to others in society, it is the best standard
for evaluating moral claims
and judgments. Nagel notes this places man into
a necessary relationship
with others in society and all's well-being must be
considered in contrast to
the theistic model which is individualistic.
Thus, in 1-3 we have naturalism, empiricism, and
utilitarianism as the positive
doctrine of atheism.
Summary: Both Ayer and Nagel argue strongly against atheism.
One uses language as his
primary instrument, where as the other deals with traditional philosophical
problems and
how they are answered.