20th century perspectives Flashcards
What is the Vienna Circle?
A group of elite philosophers and scientists drawn from the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna, chaired by Moritz Schlick. The Vienna Circle had a profound influence on 20th-century philosophy, especially philosophy of science and analytic philosophy.
What is the verification principle?
A statement is only meaningful if it can be proven through direct observation or by logic using deductive reasoning. All other statements are meaningless. This made all religious and ethical statements meaningless e.g. God is love is meaningless because it could not be proven true by direct observation and is not analytical.
Who created the verification principle?
The verification principle came about in the 1920’s and 1930’s from a group of philosophers known as logical positivists such as Schlick. The logical positivists believed that empirical evidence was always needed to ascertain the truth of a statement unless it was an analytical statement. They came from a background where scientific truth was important and reality was in this world - following Aristotelian thinking.
What did the logical positivists mean by a meaningful statement?
A statement was meaningful if it could be proven true (verified) by the senses. These are known as synthetic statements. This was known as the Verification principle.
What are cognitive statements?
All statements which can be proven true through empirical evidence are known as cognitive statements. Cognitive statements are factual and add to our knowledge.
What are meaningless statements for logical positivists?
All statements which were not analytically or synthetically true are meaningless e.g God is love is a meaningless statement. They are not cognitive and meaningless.
Strengths of the verification principle -
- Dependence on the use of logic is good because it is not open to interpretation. Once definitions have been agreed upon, it can not be argued with.
- Knowledge must lie in this world as there are no other worlds. Truth must be found in studying this empirical world. Aristotelian thinking.
- Science can now answer questions which religion used to. Religion is just used when we can’t find an answer. Religious statements are therefore meaningless.
- We can not know of things which are outside of this world. To talk of anything being spaceless, immutable and timeless can hold no meaning because we can not grasp such concepts. There is no point in discussing them.
Weaknesses of the verification principle -
- Just because a statement is logically true, it does not make it true in reality (Granny Smith)
- This world is impermanent. It is always changing and so empirical evidence is unreliable. What is true of empirical evidence at one time may not be true another time.
- Our senses can deceive us. We can not rely upon our senses for finding the truth.
- Even science does not have direct observable evidence for all of its claims e.g black holes. Also, most historical knowledge is not now directly observable, so it too must be meaningless.
- We can never test enough to know that a statement is completely true e.g “All frogs have hearts on the left side”. Unless we can test every frog which has ever lived, we can never be certain that this is true.
- A statement can be meaningful to somebody if it impacts on them in some way e.g it influences the way that they live their life. The logical positivists need to rethink the use of the term meaningful.
- The verification principle fails its own test. It cannot be proven true through observation that something is only meaningful if it can be proven true through observation!
What did Ayer do?
Ayer was a logical positivist. He refined the verification principle to overcome the problems of concluding that historical and scientific statements are meaningless because they cannot be verified. He made two distinctions within the verification principle.
What was Ayer’s first distinction within the verification principle?
Statements are meaningful if we can verify them in theory and in practice. In some cases, we can directly observe if something is true. However, other things are more difficult to verify in practice but could be verified in theory. In other words, we would know how to set about verifying them through sense experience or observation, even though it probably would never happen in practice.
What was Ayer’s second distinction within the verification principle?
Ayer distinguished between weak and strong verification. Strong verification are those statements which can be verified by direct observation and lead to a definite conclusion. Weak verification are those statements which can not be verified by direct observation but other observations (second hand) help to verify them. This tends to lead to a probable conclusion e.g. 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust can not be observed directly by us now because it is in past but it can be verified indirectly through historical sources. Indeed historical statements nearly all come under the category of weak verification
Strengths of Ayer
- Follows Aristotle’s thinking that only what we can experience can be real. There is no evidence that reality lies outside of this empirical world. This would be supported by Richard Dawkins
- Teleological argument - weak verification - looking at regularity in the world to work out god exists
Weaknesses of Ayer -
- Religious experiences are strong verification for the individual.
- The Bible is weak verification as a secondary source and if Ayer is to include historical documents under this, he must include the Bible and some of the books of the Bible are historical.
- Naturalistic fallacy-assumes truth only lies in this world and in nature. What if he is wrong?
What was Wisdom’s criticism of Ayer?
- Two people return to their long neglected garden and find, among the weeds that a few of the old plants are surprisingly vigorous. One says to the other “It must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these weeds.” The other disagrees and an argument ensues. However, in Wisdom’s parable there is much more realistic evidence of a possible gardener (orderly plants in a neglected garden.)
Meaning-Religious language is based on empirical evidence (e.g. design and purpose – teleological argument – Paley and the eye) and a believer will interpret this according to their beliefs. A non believer looks at the weeds (e.g. moral and natural evil) and interprets this according to their own beliefs. This is a response to Ayer, religious language is meaningful according to the weak verification principle. Wisdom’s response is cognitive (based on observable evidence and adds to our knowledge).
What is a strength of Wisdom?
Empirical evidence is used in the form of his garden analogy. A lot of other arguments for God are based on our empirical experience of the world (cosmological and teleological argument). Paley and Aquinas would support Wisdom.
What is a weakness of Wisdom?
It is still a big leap to go from the fact that there are flowers to the assumption that there is a gardener. (Second hand evidence, no gardener is ever seen).
Also, Wisdom implies that there are lots of flowers (evidence of good design) and not many weeds (evidence of bad design). There is not a balance of flowers and weeds in the garden. There are far more weeds-as Mill and Paul would point out!. This is biased towards his belief in God (non believer)
How did Hick respond to Ayer?
Two people are on a journey. One is convinced that it leads to the Celestial city, while the other believes that it leads nowhere: but since this is the only road there is, both must travel it. Both have similar experiences on the road, but each interprets them differently from the other. One lives in the expectation of the final destination, while the other has no such expectation. One sees the adventures on the journey as either trials and comforts sent by God, while the other simply sees them as either good fortune or bad. Only when they reach the end will the truth be known.
Meaning - When we die the truth of God’s existence will be verified, not falsified. This is known as “eschatological verification”. Religious statements will be proved true but not false at the end of our lives. He is responding to Ayer and is a cognitive response
What are the strengths of Hick’s argument?
He does not make any presumptions and says that we will find out in the end, where as the others do not support this view. Also, this supports biblical evidence that there will be an afterlife e.g parable of the sheep and the goats.
What is a weakness of Hick?
He does not take into account that falsification could occur as religious statements may be not true.
* Cannot be proven true until death
* What if Hindu beliefs are proven true? Reincarnation?
What is Flew’s falsification principle background?
Flew was influenced by the scientific method proposed by Karl Popper. Scientists must be able to state what evidence they would used to falsify a scientific assertion. If they could not, then it was a non assertion i.e. not a statement of fact. Flew agreed with Popper. He concludes that all religious statements are non assertions. They are not cognitive. He put forward his ideas in a debate with two other scholars in 1971.
What was Flew’s parable?
Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, “Some gardener must tend this plot.” The other disagrees, “There is no gardener.” So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. “But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.” So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. “But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.” At last the Sceptic despairs, “But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?”
What is the meaning of Flew’s parable?
He argues in this parable that religious believers will not allow any empirical evidence to falsify their beliefs despite the overwhelming evidence (all the weeds). They continue to qualify their belief in the face of opposing evidence. Flew says this is death by a thousand qualifications.
What example did Flew give?
Flew gives the following example: But then we see a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat. His earthly father is driven frantic in his efforts to help, but his Heavenly Father reveals no obvious sign of concern. Some qualification is made — God’s love is “not merely human love” or it is “an inscrutable love,” perhaps — and we realize that such suffering are quite compatible with the truth of the assertion that “God loves us as a father (but of course…).” We are reassured again. The religious believer is unable to tell you what empirical evidence could falsify their belief in God. Just what would have to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) to entitle us to say “God does not love us” or even “God does not exist”?
What is a strength of Flew’s theory?
There is a lot of evidence to support it concerning the way that believers respond to challenges (e.g. the Theodicies, claiming that God’s love is different to ours etc).
