1.6A- Religious Language- 20th Century perspectives Flashcards
What is logical positivism?
-Logical positivism is the name given to a group of philosophers, mathematicians and scientists who, in the 1930s, held a series of discussions surrounding the differences between scientific language and the use of language in non-scientific subject areas.
-It’s leader was Moritz Schlick, who had been appointed Professor of Science at the University of Vienna in 1922.
-He alter created a group that met to discuss the links between the sciences and philosophy. They later became known as the Vienna Circle.
The verification principle
-The logical positivists used a verification principle (later known as the strong version) to categorise statements. A statement was meaningful if:
A.) It could be verified by an actual experience, e.g. I can verify that I am sitting on a chair because I can see and feel this (synthetic, empirical evidence)
B.) It is true by definition, e.g. a square must have four sides (analytic statement or it is a tautology).
-Therefore, any talk about God or ethics was meaningless because it was not true by definition and could not be verified by immediate sense experience. However, this version of the verification principle has several weaknesses.
-You cannot make statements about history because there are no observations possible today to verify facts about Robin Hood, for example.
-Scientific laws are meaningless- since you can be in only one place at one time, you cannot verify certain scientific facts, such as the tempature water boils at.
-Works of art or poetry also fail the verification principle because they express an opinion and are not factual. The logical positivists were left with few factual statements they could discuss.
Swinburne’s criticism of the verification principle
-Swinburne argued that universal statements, such as ‘all ravens are black’ or ‘all humans are mortal’, cannot be verified in practice, yet we consider them to have meaning.
Ayer and strong vs. weak verification
-Ayer was one of the foremost English philosophers of the twentieth century.
-Ayer was initially influenced by Wittgenstein’s analytic philosophy, but quickly formed his own path.
-Ayer distinguished between strong verification and weak verification: “A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if and only if its truth could be conclusively established in experience. But it is verifiable, in the weak sense, if it possible for experience to render it probable.”
Problems with Ayer’s strong verification
-Ayer goes on to point out that strong verification is impossible. We can never conclusively make any statement about the world, as our senses can be mistaken even about what we think is in front of us.
-Ayer points out that historical statements and the general conclusions of science would be unverifiable.
Ayer’s weak verification principle
-The weak principle, adopted by Ayer and others, states that one must be able to state what empirical evidence would make a sentence probable.
-But, it was possible to state what observations would make the statement probable, so it was possible to say that the sentence was significant- it was verifiable in principle, though not in fact.
Ayer and religious language
-It is important to notice that Ayer is not simply arguing that theists are talking nonsense when they say ‘God exists’. So too are atheists. If to say ‘God exists’ is meaningless, then to say ‘God does not exist’ is no less nonsense. Nonsense does not become sense by adding a negative.
-Nor would Ayer accept agnosticism as meaningful
-For Ayer, the question itself is meaningless. Religious faith is nonsense, genuine religious experience impossible.
-Ayer argued that religious belief in God was always without meaning, as was atheism. All discussion of the issue is nonsensical.
-Whereas Richard Dawkins treats religious beliefs as failed scientific hypotheses, devoid of proof. Ayer would not waste his time trying to disprove faith, in the way Dawkins does.
-For him, there is nothing to be investigated, as religious claims are meaningless, so there is strictly nothing significant to say on the issue.
Vincent Brummer
-Argued that to treat the sentences of faith as if they were scientific sentences- as the verification theory does- is to commit an error of understanding.
Wittgenstein’s work as a whole
-In his early work Wittgenstein attempted to set out principles to demonstrate what could and could not be expressed in language. However, although he was quite convinced at the time that he has found answers to many philosophical problems with this work, in late life Wittgenstein began to think that he might have been wrong about the limitations of the meaningfulness of language, and that his criteria for determining meaningfulness might have been too narrow.
-Wittgenstein’s later work explored the ways in which language can have meaning in different ways and on different levels.
-He also explored the idea of language usage in different contexts, showing how groups of people, when they are all engaged in the same activity, can use words with a meaning that they might not have in a different context.
Wittgenstein’s language games
-Wittgenstein noticed the importance of context when we use language. The same words used equivocally can mean something very different, such as ‘key’.
-Wittgenstein thought it would be useful to think of language in terms of a game, which we know how to play once we understand the rules. He thought that the analogy of a game would be useful as a way of highlighting and explaining the scope and limitations of language.
-We can say that we know what a word means once we can use it in-context, he argued.
-Learning a language is like learning a game, where we understand how and when to use particular words by seeing how they are used. We accept that words are used in certain ways because we recognise the role they have in the whole game.
-Wittgenstein uses the example of a chess piece. We might learn that a certain piece is called a ‘king’, but we will not really understand this until we have played chess and understand the significance of the king within the game.
-There is no point in arguing about how language is used.
-The ‘Lebensform’ or ‘form of life’ of a chess player has its own rules.
Wittgenstein and ‘Lebensform’
-The meaning of the term is best understood in its context, when it is being used. Wittgenstein used the term ‘Lebensform’ or ‘form of life’ to denote the context in which language might be used.
-Music is a ‘form of life’, as is reading maps and also typing on a computer.
Wittgenstein and religious language
-As with a game, according to Wittgenstein, the more people participate in religious behaviour, the more they will understand the language and the special meanings and nuances of its use.
-Other aspects of games can also be used in this analogy: with religion, as well as with games, there is the concept of developing skill, of having goals, of achieving success, of training and practice, of emotional commitment and loyalty.
-His was more of a non-cognitive (non-factual) approach.
-As you become more immersed in the community of Christianity (Christianity as a Lebensform) you will develop a deeper understanding of what certain statements such as ‘God loves us’ means in this context, and you will be able to apply it to your own life and understand its implications.
Language games as non-cognitive: Don Cupitt
-For Cupitt, God is not something that exists but simply a reality within the community of faith.
-Cupitt argues that Christianity involves a special form of life, with special values and meanings.
-He recommends his own non-metaphysical approach as the best way to live. Cupitt’s view is often called non-realism (or ‘theological non-realism’), which is concerned not with asserting the objective existence of God (which Cupitt calls ‘theological realism’), but with the meaning of God in people’s lives.
-For Cupitt and his followers God exists in us- faith is a stance on life.
-For Cupitt, our lives on earth are transformed by our sense of the meaning of God. Cupitt claims that there is no God ‘out there’.
-We have only the meaning within the community of belief and its significance in our lives, but there is nothing else that is God.
Language games as cognitive: D.Z. Phillips
-Phillips builds upon an idea from Wittgenstein about forms of live.
-It is not always clear whether he treats religion as a whole as a ‘form of life’ or rather uses particular terms as forms of life. Both elements appear in his work.
-For Phillips, as for Wittgenstein, the philosopher’s task was not to comment on the truth of religious statements, but to question and clarify their meaning within the discourse of faith.
-Unlike Cupitt, Phillips does not deny the objective existence of God. He simply denies that it is part of the philosopher’s task to determine God’s existence. Phillips argued that to ask whether God exists is a question in the religious form of life, rather than a scientific one.
-Phillips argues that as philosophers we can only look, coolly, at the meanings and grammar of sentences in religious sentences.
-For him, there is a reality beyond the game with which we are confronted, whereas for Cupitt the only reality of God is found within the language game. Phillips thought emphatically that God was real.
Similarities between Aquinas and Wittgenstein
-Both Aquinas and Wittgenstein are interested in uses of language.
-For Aquinas, to avoids the problems of univocal and equivocal use of words, we can only talk about God through the analogies of proper proportion and attribution.
-Wittgenstein emphasised that the correct use of words depended on their context, or language game.
Differences between Aquinas and Wittgenstein
-Aquinas’ use of the cataphatic way involves saying something positive about God in a cognitive sense, that God exists or is in some way loving. If you take a noncognitive view of language games (as Cupitt did), Aquinas would simply be playing the analogy language game.
-However, you could also argue that Aquinas and Cupitt are playing different language games so neither can be criticised because they are in parallel forms of life.
-Wittgenstein asked questions about how we use language whereas Aquinas asked, how can we talk accurately about God? So, perhaps they are answering different sorts of questions.
Karl Popper and the creation of the falsification principle
-Karl Popper, a philosopher of science, created the falsification principle to describe how scientific statements can be separated from non-scientific statements.
-Unlike the logical positivists, who would need evidence from all times and places to verify whether a statement is true or false, the falsification principle only needs evidence that would falsify it or show it to be wrong
The creation of the ‘falsification symposium’
-Flew applied the falsification principle to religious language in the ‘falsification symposium’.
-The falsification symposium consists of a series of essays, starting with Flew and followed by responses from R.M. Hare and B. Mitchell.
-They discuss whether religious language can be classified in the same way as scientific statements, in which case we should be able to identify what evidence could be used to falsify them.
-Each philosopher uses a parable or story to illustrate his view.
Flew’s parable for the ‘falsification symposium’
-Flew argues that this is how believers use religious language.
-They make a statement which sounds like a scientific claim, such as ‘God created the world’ or ‘God loves us like a father’ but they refuse to accept evidence that would falsify it.
-By qualifying (adding to/’changing the goalposts’) their statement, as in the parable of the invisible gardener, the original assertion has completely changed- it has “died the death of a thousand qualifications.”
-Since believers do not allow anything to count against their statement, it cannot be falsified or tested and, therefore, is not a genuine scientific claim.
Hare’s parable for the ‘falsification symposium
-Hare agreed with Flew that falsification was a sound principle for testing the scientific value of claims that attempt to convey factual information.
-He disagreed, however, that this was what religious language was trying to do.
-Hare argued that, although the unfalsifiability of religious language means that it cannot be regarded as making factual claims, it does not necessarily follow that it is absolutely devoid of meaning.
-Hare suggested that religious language does have meaning- not because it conveys knowledge of the world, but because it helps to shape the way that people think about the world.
-Hare’s parable of the lunatic student is as follows:
A certain lunatic is convinced that all the dons (distinguished gentleman) want to murder him.
His friends introduce him to all the mildest and most respectable dons that they can find, and after each one of them has retired, they say: “You see, he doesn’t really want to murder you; he spoke to you in a most cordial manner; surely you are convinced now?”
But the lunatic replies: “Yes, but that was only his diabolical cunning; he’s really plotting against me the whole time, like the rest of them; I know it, I tell you.”
However many kindly dons are produced, the reaction is still the same.
-Although the student’s statements are unfalsifiable, Hare denies that they are meaningless. These assertions are significant within the life and worldview of the student.
-Hare coined the term ‘blik’ to refer to this kind of belief.
-Hare describes a ‘blik’ as a frame of reference in which all evidence is interpretated. A blik is not based on evidence, so it cannot be either verified or falsified.
-This does not mean, says Hare, that bliks are meaningless, as they could still be true or false in reality.
-As the lunatic example demonstrates, his blik is insane, as opposed to other bliks that may be sane.
-The use that religious believers make of religious language to make assertions about their beliefs is also a blik and, according to Hare, is meaningful because it makes an impact on the ways in which believers view the world and
live their lives.
Flew’s, Hick’s and a religious response to Hare
-Flew dismissed Hare’s argument. He said that Hare has merely developed the blik concept as a ‘fraudulent substitute’ to disguise the meaninglessness of unfalsifiable assertions. Flew maintained that such assertions, whether called ‘bliks’ or not, were still meaningless for the reasons he had already given. Flew believed that Hare had not addressed his own original arguments but had tried to sidestep them with the concept of ‘bliks’.
-Furthermore, many religious believers would disagree with Hare and claim that their use of religious language aims to express truths about reality rather than expressing a worldview.
-Hick also argues there is no way to distinguish between a correct and incorrect ‘blik’, therefore they are unfalsifiable and meaningless.
Mitchell’s parable for the ‘falsification symposium’
-Mitchell responded to Flew in a rather different way from Hare.
-He suggested that, although religious language may not be straightforwardly falsifiable, religious believers can and do allow things to count against their beliefs.
-In Mitchell’s view, this could be a gradual process based in an accumulation of evidence over time.
-A religious believer may not always accept that evidence falsifies their assertions, but Mitchell argues that this does not mean that these beliefs would always be maintained regardless of the evidence.
-His point is that evidence is not irrelevant to religious language claims. In this sense, such claims can be viewed as meaningful.
Mitchell’s Parable of the Partisan can be summaried as follows:
Summary of quote: Partisan has a belief that a stranger is good, but two things happen. One thing is that the stranger helps, as well as going against them and hindering them. Despite this, the partisan believes the stranger is good.
‘The partisan admits that many things may and do count against his belief’, even though he maintains it. Mitchell attempts to demonstrate that religious believers do accept that there may be evidence against their beliefs. Believers may still hold on to the original belief, as the partisan and many religious believers do, but that does not mean that they think that no evidence could ever possibly show their belief to be false. Some religious believers might accept that there may be evidence or circumstances whereby their claims about God could be shown to be false. According to Mitchell, this means that statements of religious language can be seen to be meaningful truth claims, because they are therefore open to falsification.
Flew’s response to Mitchell
-Flew’s response was predictably negative.
-He though that the partisan was open to the possibility of evidence that was contrary to his belief in the stranger, but Flew argued that it is different for the faith that religious believers demonstrate.
-Knowing that humas are fallible, the partisan has reason to question his trust in the stranger.
-Religious believers’ trust in God is different because it is predicated on the acceptance that God is perfect but works in mysterious ways that are not easily understood. This, for Flew, is why religious believers will not allow any evidence to count against their religious language claims.
Hick’s parable of the celestial city
-Two men are walking down the road, one believes there will be a celestial city at the end, one doesn’t. Both describe their different viewpoints and emotions, and the truth will only be found out at the end of the journey, although this journey could never end. This is eschatological verification (that something can only be proven right).
