Taking a "fictionalist" stance towards a discourse

[Rupert]

In "The Myth of Morality", Richard Joyce basically advocates the idea that utterances which attribute predicates like "is morally forbidden" or "is morally good" fail to be true because there is in fact no way for any moral considerations to generate normative reasons for the agent that are totally independent of the desires held by the agent at the time of acting, but moral discourse is implicitly committed to the idea that genuine moral considerations do generate such reasons, as a non-negotiable component of the discourse. Consequently, the discourse is "flawed" by uttering such moral propositions with assertoric force with their current meaning we commit ourselves to having untrue beliefs. Nevertheless he acknowledges that there are various sense in which moral discourse is "important" and he wonders whether we could continue to get the same practical benefits out of it by continuing to engage in the discourse but taking a "fictionalist" stance towards the sentences uttered in the discourse, similar to what happens to when we read sentences out from a work of fiction without believing them to be literally true. Note that when we utter sentences about a fictional character they can still engage with out emotions even though we don't believe them to be literally true. Something like this is the way in which Joyce suggests a "fictionalist" stance towards moral discourse could allow us to continue to get practical benefits out of it.

People who feel a sense of attachment to religious discourse but have had the insight that there are no good reasons to think its central commitments to be literally true, then, might borrow this idea from Joyce and apply it to religious discourse, suggesting that there is some kind of value to be had from engaging in the discourse but taking a "fictionalist" stance towards it, that is, not believing the utterances made to be literally true. It is possible Wittgenstein's attitude towards religious discourse may have been similar to this. Wittgenstein wrote some remarks in his notebooks indicating that he was not fully committed to believing in the literal historicity of the Resurrection. In the early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, religious utterances are held to lack propositional content and to be attempts to express what can "only be shown, but not be said". At the same time there is meant to be some sense in which the discourse is "pointing to something very important", which apparently at one point even moved Wittgenstein to ask to be allowed to join a monastery. It perhaps cannot be denied that this "importance" was a real phenomenon at least in a subjective sense for Wittgenstein, even if maybe we think he shouldn't have tormented himself with guilt about his homosexuality for his whole life. But we don't know if this concern exhausted his whole sense of the importance of "the religious stance towards life". 

Still, this whole line of thought may move us to take a look at the phenomenon of religion from a different angle than just that of evaluating its truth-claims. Can we give an explanatory account of *why* the major religions have come to have such a significant effect on the culture of complex human societies for such a long time period? Is it best understood in terms of the religions "performing a function", or is it just random memetic evolution? People who are drawn towards religious belief are often inclined to talk of it filling an important human need. If a large proportion of humans have such a need then what would be the reason why natural selection should have given us this disposition? The corresponding answers in the case of moral discourse are a bit clearer, I think.