Language as cognitive but meaningless

Question 1

What is Logical Positivism?

Answer 1

Created by members of the Vienna Circle such as AJ Ayer and Wittgenstein.

Only language that is empirically verifiable is meaningful, menaing that religious and ethical language is meaningless.

Question 2

What is meaningful ANALYTIC languages?

Answer 2

Based on logical reasoning like maths or tautologies (a bachelor is a single man)

Question 3

What is meant by meaningful SYNTHETIC language?

Answer 3

Statements from EMPIRICAL observed world.

Question 4

What is MEANINGLESS language?

Answer 4

Any statement that isn’t analytic or synthetic.

Question 5

What did these theories give rise to?

Answer 5

The Verification Principle.

Question 6

What is the Verification Principle?

Answer 6

Something is only meaningful if it is analytic or empirically true.

Question 7

Who added to the Verification Principle and why?

Answer 7

AJ Ayer because the old Principle made some historical and scientific statements meaningless.

Question 8

What is verification in PRACTICE?

Answer 8

Verification in PRACTICE: Practically possible to check truth/ falsity of statement due to EMPIRICAL evidence.

Question 9

What is verification in PRINCIPLE?

Answer 9

Verification in PRINCIPLE: We know how to verify a statement in principle, it’s just not possible to.

Question 10

What is Weak Verification?

Answer 10

We have SOME empirical evidence that something is true/false. Probable.

Question 11

What is Strong verification?

Answer 11

We can prove for certain something is true or false with empirical evidence.

Question 12

What do all these points suggest about religious language?

Answer 12

It is meaningless because it’s not analytic or synthetic.

Impossible to verify statements or find evidence because we know of nothing to support it.

Question 13

What is an example of meaningless religious language?

Answer 13

‘God is good’ isn’t analytics because it’s not mathematical/tautology.

Not synthetic because it can’t be empirically proven as true/false.

Question 14

What is a weakness of the Verification principle (verifiability)?

Answer 14

• Verification Principle can’t itself be verified. No empirical evidence that meaningful statements are only analytic/synthetic.

Question 15

What is another weakness of the Verification Principle (historical)?

Answer 15

Had to add weak verification into the principle to allow hisorical events to be meaningful and previously seen as not analytic and we can’t go back in time to empirically prove so not synthetic, meaning only present events are meaningful.

Question 16

What is eschatological verification?
(weakness of verification principle)

Answer 16

JOH HICK says verification in PRINCIPLE makes religious statements meaningful.

Question 17

Why does Hick say they are meaningful?

Answer 17

After death, we can verify statements such as ‘God exists’.

Question 18

What analogy does Hick use?

Answer 18

Celestial city.

One traveller believes a celestial city lies at the end of a road. Another believes there is nothing. They only find out once they turn the last corner.

Question 19

How can Hick’s theory be challenged?

Answer 19

If there’s no afterlife, we can’t verify anything.

Question 20

What are some strengths of the Verification Principle?

Answer 20

• Verificationism fits with our scientific understanding of reality, esp in a modern day world.
• Not overly restrictive as weak verification exists

Question 21

What is the Falsification?

Answer 21

Proving something is false instead of true as it is quicker.

Question 22

What is the falsification principle?

Answer 22

A statement is only meaningful if it can be falsified.

Question 23

Who created the falsification principle?

Answer 23

Karl Popper.

Antony Flew later applied Popper’s theory to religious language.

Question 24

What analogy did Popper create about swans?

Answer 24

Verifying that ‘all swans are white’ is true means you have to find every white swan.

Falsifying means you only have to find one black swan.

Question 25

What analogy did Antony Flew adapt and use for religious language?

Answer 25

The Parable of the Invisible Gardener.

Question 26

What did the analogy say?

Answer 26

2 explorers come across a garden with flowers and weeds.

One explorer says a gardener must visit, the second says that there isn’t one.

They wait overnight and see no gardener. The second explorer believes they’re right, but the first explorer believes the gardener is actually invisible, scentless, soundless etc

Question 27

What is Flew trying to argue with this parable?

Answer 27

Religious believers can’t say what could prove their belief in God as false.
They will always find a way to try and prove his existence even if all evidence goes against them.

So, RL is meaningless.

There’s no difference in a reality where God/ the gardener exists or doesn’t exist.

Question 28

What does Richard Hare argue AGAINST the Falsification Principle?

Answer 28

Everyone views evidence from a different BLIK (different interpretation)

What is meaningful is the impact a belief has on someone, not whether it is verifiable or falsifiable.

Question 29

What does Basil Mitchell argue AGAINST the Falsification principle?

Answer 29

Religious believers do allow evidence to go against their beliefs but are alr committed to a faith.
Continue to TRUST God despite challenges e.g. evil

Question 30

What Parable does Basil Mitchell use?

Answer 30

The Partisan and the Stranger

Question 31

What does the Partisan and the Stranger say?

Answer 31

In wartime, a partisan meets a stranger who says they are part of a RESISTANCE movement.

Partisan trusts stranger. Then sees stranger helping both sides.

People think he’s crazy as the stranger helps police. But partisan carries on trusting the stranger despite evidence against him because of their initial interaction.

Question 32

What does Swinburne argue AGAINST falsification principle?

Answer 32

Some statements are meaningful even if they cannot be falsified. It is what statements mean to a religious believer that counts

Question 33

What is Swinburne’s ‘Toys in the Cupboard’ theory?

Answer 33

Imagine toys coming out of a cupboard and dancing when we aren’t watching.

Question 34

How is this important to religious believers?

Answer 34

We still understand what this statement means, even though we can’t do anything to falsify it.

Just as important for believers to understand a meaning as to falsify it.