1.9 Twentieth Century Perspectives

Question 1

what is a cognitive statement?

Answer 1

statements about God can be known to be either true or false

Question 2

what is a non-cognitive statement?

Answer 2

statements about God are not subject to truth or falsity

Question 3

what is the verification principle?

Answer 3

• the belief that statements are only meaninful if they can be verified by the senses
• Strong forms associated with the Vienna Circle, weak forms associated with A.J. Ayer

Question 4

what is logical positivism?

Answer 4

a movement in philosophy that believed that the aim of philosophers should be to analyse language, particularly the language of science

Question 5

what two ideas influenced verificationism?

Answer 5

1. Empiricism: Hume’s emphasis on a priori knowledge and rejection of metaphysics
2. Focus on language: Wittgenstein quotes about language (although misunderstood by verificationists) suggested that focusing on language would provide a way forward for the philosopher

Question 6

what was the Vienna Circle and their main ideas?

Answer 6

• a group of philosophers who met in the 1920s and 1930s
• a statement is only meaningful if it is able to be verified by an actual experience
• scientific claims about the world are meaningful but religious and ethical claims are not
• as well as religious and ethical statements this form of the verification principle rules out historical statements, scientific laws and claims about art or beauty

Question 7

what is Ayer’s interpretation of the verification principle?

Answer 7

• he accepted the basic idea behind the principle
• but he argued for a statement to be meaningful it has to either be a tautology or could hypotheticlally be verified (verifiable in principle, the part of his idea that separates it from the regular verification principle)
• hypothetically verifiable means we are not required to conclusively prove something by direct observation we merely have to say how it would be possible to verify it
• Ayer’s position is therefore theological non-cognitivism: religious statements express emotive attitudes or ethical exhortations, but they do not have factual content

Question 8

what are the strengths of Ayer’s verification principle?

Answer 8

• he widens the principle from the vienna circle and allows historical claims and scientific laws to be seen as meaningful
• some argue that it is right to exclude religious and ethical claims as they are different to other types of statements
• his ‘verifiable in principle’ idea, known as weak verification, seems more sensible than completely ruling out history

Question 9

what are the weaknesses of Ayer’s verification?

Answer 9

• there is still a certain degree of agreement in art about what is beautiful and in ethics over what is right suggesting it is not completely meaningless
• as pointed out by Alvin Plantinga in his book “God and other minds” the verification principle fails its own test - to say ‘statements are only meaningful if they are tautologies or verifiable in principle’ is neither a tautology nor verifiable in principle
• Ayer responded to this challenge by saying it is not a statement but a theory but that doesn’t really seem to hold…

Question 10

what was Hick’s response to Ayer?

Answer 10

• eschatological verification
• religious statements are meaningful eschatologically
• at the end of all things, it will be possible to verify God’s existence

Question 11

what was the falsification symposium?

Answer 11

a series of articles writte in the 1950s which included and responded to Antony Flew’s presentation of falsification

Question 12

what inspired Flew’s falsification?

Answer 12

• Karl Popper in the 20th century
• devised the falsification theory as a test for what is science and what is pseudo-science
• if a theory cannot be subject to tests that would show how it could be false then it is not a real scientific theory (like Freud’s Oedipus complex)

Question 13

what is falsification?

Answer 13

the principle that a statement is a genuine scientific assertion if it is possible to say how it could be disproved empirically

Question 14

what did Flew argue using falsification?

Answer 14

• religious language cannot be falsified and therefore religious statements are not statements at all
• he used the story of the invisble gardener by John Wisdom to conclude that religious claims about the world aren’t really cliams at all as they cannot be tested
• when challenged the believer waters down their claims and shifts the goalposts
• what would have to happen in order for God to be disproved?

Question 15

what is a quote from Flew to show the implausibility of the invisible gardener?

Answer 15

how does what you call an invisible, intangible. eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even no gardener at all?

Question 16

what was R.M. Hare’s response to Flew?

Answer 16

• the murderous dons
• a lunatic is convinced all the dons want to kill him, no matter who he meets he is convinced they are trying to lull him into a false sense of security
• Hare argues that Flew is wrong to apply scientific criteria to theological language (influenced by Wittgenstein)
• he argued we all have basic beliefs called bliks, some reasonable others not, religious belief is a blik as it cannot be tested
• religious statemetns have meaning to the individual (again, Wittengstein) but this may be inadequate to religious believers who see themselves to be making claims about reality as a whole

Question 17

what was Basil Mitchell’s response to Flew?

Answer 17

• the parable of the mysterious resistance fighter
• a man meets a stranger who claims to be the undercover leader of the resistance, despite sometimes questionable actions the man remains firm in his belief that they are on the same side
• Mitchell partly accepts Flew’s point but argues that the believer does not allow the evidence to decisively count against belief as they are committed to faith in God
• Mitchell rejects the idea that religious beliefs are bliks and rather suppots Flew’s idea that religious statements are assertions or claims but unlike Flew sees a genuine role for faith

Question 18

what is Hick’s view on falsification?

Answer 18

• prefers verification to falsification
• argues the two are not opposites
• if religious belief is true, it can be verified eschatologically yet if it is false it cannot be shown to be false therefore verification is a better test

Question 19

what is Swinburne’s view on falsification?

Answer 19

• also argued verification is better than falsification for religious language

Question 20

what was Wittgenstein’s view on religious language?

Answer 20

• many of the problems that philosophers have wrestled with have been caused by a failure to pay attention to language
• the meanings of words are not rigid and fixed, what is more important is how a word is used
• the use of language helps create our perspective of the world

Question 21

what are language games?

Answer 21

• language is like playing a game with rules
• in our groups we have agreed rules about how words are used
• religious language is a game
• to suggest that the best explanation of evil is that God doesn’t exist wouldn’t fit within the rules of the game
• religious statements are meaningful to those within the group despite the fact that the statements are not cognitive

Question 22

what are strengths of Wittgenstein’s theory?

Answer 22

• he recognises that religious and scientific statements are two different types of things and should be treated differently
• meaning is not fixed but changes with its use and context
• it recognises that there are beliefs that we have that are groundless yet they still shape our world (like Hare’s bliks)

Question 23

what are weaknesses of Wittgenstein’s theory?

Answer 23

• a believer might argue that their statements are cognitive and to dumb it down to ‘games’ trivialises the issue
• critics claim Wittgenstein over-analyses language: ‘he takes apart a perfectly working clock and then wonders why it doesn’t work’ [Gellner]

Question 24

how does a non-cognitive approach affect the interpretation of religious texts?

Answer 24

• a non-cognitive approach would suggest that ‘Jesus rose from the dead’ is not a historical claim but a way of seeing and understanding the world
• for some Christians this approach is too extreme and weakens key aspects of the religion
• but religious believers do interpret some texts symbolically such as the Genesis accounts
• therefore the key to religious texts is not their literal truth but their function within faith communities

Question 25

what is an alternative view of religious langauge?

Answer 25

• narrative and myth
• Hans Frei, 20th century theologian
• highlighted the importance of narrative and myth in religious language
• truths are conveyed behind the narratives and myths of religions

Question 26

Vincent Brummer?

Answer 26

• Believes that to treat sentences of faith as scientific sentences is to make an ‘error of understanding’

Question 27

DZ Philips?

Answer 27

• Religious language is meaningful for those who actually believe it, and does not need to be verified or justified to those who believe
• Analogical language to describe God is not useful as he is not like anything in the universe

Question 28

Richard Dawkins

Answer 28

• R.M. Hare’s ‘Bliks’ are simply brainwashing, religious Bliks only exist as a form of indoctrination (thus are not meaningful)

Question 29

David Hume

Answer 29

If a statement does not contain any abstract reasoning (as seen in maths) or any experimental reasoning, then it says nothing at all

Question 30

John Hick

Answer 30

eschatological verification
- all can be verified after death and thus religious language is meaningful
- applicable to both atheists and theists

Question 31

Paul Tillich

Answer 31

• Religious language is not cognitive but symbolic
• Symbols do not need to be verifiable or falsifiable, they are simply effective in capturing belief or representing faith e.g. the Cross and some people interpret Genesis symbolically

Question 32

CS Evans?

Answer 32

• Hare’s Bliks allow for no concept of right and wrong and thus the notion of value becomes meaningless
• if there are no facts supporting religious claims then they are simply expressions of a worldview without ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ values

Question 33

Swinburne

Answer 33

• against Flew
• we do not have to be able to specify what would count against a statement in order for it to be meaningful e.g. we can argue against some scientific theories for the universe, but that does not render them meaningless

Question 34

Rudolf Bultmann

Answer 34

• Writers of the New Testament were never trying to make a record of historical fact, rather express beliefs through mythological language
• Advocates for ‘demythologising’ the Bible in order for Christianity to become more of a vital part of the modern world

Question 35

Bertrand Russell

Answer 35

• Obsession with the meaning of words is similar to ‘someone who takes apart a clock and then wonders why it does not work’

Question 36

Ernest Gellner

Answer 36

• Language games are circular:
• Meaning of the word is derived from its language game
• Meaning of the language game is derived from the words which constitute it

Question 37

Patrick Sherry

Answer 37

• Many language-game theorists interpret the games too strictly, if Christianity is a language game, the question ‘does god NOT exist?’ is included in this game
• thus, non-believers can also include themselves in this language game

Question 38

Kai Nielson

Answer 38

• The notion of language games means that there is no room for criticism from outside the game
• Thus, the religious language game is simply FIDEISM (the idea that knowledge depends on faith or revelation)