(a) Distinguish between cognitivist and non-cognitivist account of religious language. Does the cognitivist account lead to any…

(a) Cognitivist and non-cognitivist accounts of religious language

The debate over religious language turns on truth-aptness. Cognitivism treats statements such as “God exists” as propositions with truth conditions: they can be true or false and represent facts. Non-cognitivism denies this property; it treats them as expressive, practical or functional, committing speakers to a way of life rather than asserting facts.

R. B. Braithwaite, in 'An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief' (1955), accepts the empiricist challenge but, following Wittgenstein, holds that meaning is given by use, and develops a non-cognitivist account. For him, religious assertions are declarations of intention to follow an agapeistic (loving) way of life, associated with 'stories' that the believer entertains in mind but need not believe to be literally true. It shapes moral and spiritual practice rather than describing entities. His critique of cognitivism presses a verificationist trilemma: religious statements are not empirical, since believers do not let any observation count against them; they are not logically necessary; and non-empirical, non-logical metaphysical statements lack factual meaning. Hence if religious claims are factual, they must be empirically testable; unverifiable metaphysical claims cannot masquerade as factual without becoming meaningless or reduced to empirical claims, losing distinctive content. This is a self-undermining contradiction: cognitivism wants religious language to be meaningful as factual, but the empiricist standard it must meet empties it. Yet his reductionism may understate religious commitment, since believers often make truth-claims about God, even if they resist ordinary verification.

(b) Must the ultimate cause have a physical manifestation?

I do not agree that an ultimate cause must have physical manifestation. The thesis confuses the mode of causation with the nature of the cause. In creation theologies, God causes the world without being a physical agent. In Aristotle, hylomorphism explains physical change through matter and form, but the Prime Mover is pure form, immaterial and unmoved; ultimate causation does not require embodiment. Incarnation theologies in Christianity and Vaishnavism give God physical or quasi-physical manifestation to mediate grace, revelation or devotion, not because causation demands matter. In Nyāya, God is the efficient cause (nimitta-kāraṇa) who arranges eternal atoms without being physical; in Advaita, Brahman is both material and efficient cause, but the world is its apparent transformation (vivarta), not a physical part of it. Views that seem to support the thesis, such as Spinoza's extension as a divine attribute or Viśiṣṭādvaita's world as God's body, show that God may have a physical aspect, not that causation requires one. Ramanuja's Vishishtadvaita affirms divine attributes and avatars, yet treats Brahman as inner controller and cause, not merely a physical body.

The stronger case is that ultimate causation may be pure spirit or non-dual reality. Plotinus’s One is beyond being and form; Shankara’s nirguna Brahman is attributeless, beyond space, time and physicality. Shankara distinguishes saguna Brahman, the personal God with attributes, from nirguna Brahman, the absolute ground. Saguna manifestation is useful for devotion and moral practice, but not metaphysically necessary for ultimate causation. To require physical manifestation would limit God to the created order and collapse cause and effect.

(c) Religious experience in Advaita Vedānta

Advaita Vedanta understands religious experience as direct realization of Brahman as sole reality. The world is not ultimately real in the same sense; it is the effect of maya, the power of superimposition that makes the one appear as many. The goal is moksha, liberation through identity-realization: “Aham Brahmasmi,” the self is Brahman. It is not an object or an event produced by effort, but the self-luminous (svaprakāśa) witness recognised when ignorance (avidyā) is removed. It arises from the great sayings of the Upaniṣads (such as 'tat tvam asi') heard by a qualified seeker (sādhana-catuṣṭaya), and is cultivated through sravana, manana and nididhyasana—listening, reflection and meditation. Later Advaitins and Vivekananda describe its culmination in samadhi, while Śaṅkara stresses that liberating knowledge comes from śruti, not from any special mental state. Savikalpa samadhi retains a subtle object or distinction, while nirvikalpa samadhi is wordless, non-dual absorption in which subject-object duality disappears.

Advaita also distinguishes jivanmukti, liberation while living, from post-mortem release. The jivanmukta remains in the world but acts without any sense of agency, free from egoic bondage. Critics such as Rāmānuja object that an objectless, attributeless consciousness cannot be experienced or known, and the ineffability of the experience makes it hard to verify. This differs from Dvaita, where the soul remains eternally distinct from God, and from Vishishtadvaita, where the soul is a real part of God’s body. Classical expositions by Shankara and Mandana Mishra, and modern interpretations by Radhakrishnan and Malkani, stress that Advaita experience is not merely emotional ecstasy but knowledge of non-duality. Ramana Maharshi and Vivekananda’s reinterpretation show how this insight can be lived ethically and socially.