Religious Language Flashcards
Define Cognitivism within Religious Language
Cognitivist ( moral language is true or false)
Cognitivism = moral judgements eg ‘murder is wrong’
- Aim to describe how the world is
- Can be true or false
- Express beliefs that the claim is true
Cognitivism argues religious claims ie ‘God exists’ is a ‘truth claim’ as cognitivism;
Aims to describe the way the world is, can be true or false + expresses attitudes toward the world whereas
Define Non-Cognitivism within Religious Language
Non-Cognitivist (religious language is not true or false)
- Do not aim to describe the world
- Cannot be true or false
- Express attitudes towards the world.
Non-cognitivism argues religious claims are not ‘truth claims’ as non-cognitivism:do not describe the world, can’t be true or false and express attitudes toward the world.
What do Non-cognitivists argue about religious beliefs/lanaguge?
An argument for non-cognitivism:
People don’t normally acquire religious beliefs by argument or testing evidence. When someone converts to a religion Its not intellectual belief, but they’re values + morals.
Thus religious claims like ‘god exists’ doesn’t state a factual belief but expresses a non-cognitive attitudes.
Thus non-cognitivists would argue they provide a more plausible understanding of what were saying when were talking about God.
What would Cognitivists respond to the Non-Cognitivist argument and what would the counter be?
Cognitivist objection to Non-cognitivism:
- Religious beliefs cannot be criticised by facts and evidence if religious language is not true or false, probable or improbable. What about the argument from design or the problem of evil? Religious belief is not cut off from reason.
Non-Cognitivists would respond that;
- religious beliefs still need to ‘make sense’ of human experience. If religious language isn’t cognitive (true or false) then the statements are meaningless, if you’re not expressing belief then it doesn’t make sense as its meaningless.
Objection:
- Non-cognitivism contradicts water most religious believers believe they believe! Believers use religious language in order to state truths. They have disagreed/ argued over truths that don’t have obvious practical implications ie ‘god is a male not female’
What is Verificationism + the challenge posed by it?
Verificationism is a theory put forward by A.J Ayer which agues In order to judge if a statement (ie religious statements) are meaningful we use the Verification Principle.
Challenge posed by Verificationsim:
- If we reject Non-cognitivism about religious language we must say that religious language is cognitive (if it is meaningful at all). Theres limitations on what we can meaningfully talk about eg we can meaningfully talk about what is ‘true’ unless we can somehow establish that truth?
What is the Verification Principle?
The verification principle;
- A statement only has meaning is it is analytically or empirically verifiable
Analytically verifiable: if it is true or false just in virtue of its meaning (by definition)
Empirically verifiable: If empirical evidence would go towards establishing that the statement is true or false.
We don’t have to be able to acquire the evidence in practice but in principle eg. ‘the moon is made of cheese’ is empirically verifiable as we can go up to the moon and see if it is.
We don’t need to prove the statement, only raise or reduce its probability. Eg extreme scepticism, we can never prove it 100% but can make it the likely probability.
What does A.J Ayer argue about God + Religious language?
‘God exists’ is not analytic
Nor can it be deduced from a apriori claims
The ontological argument doesn’t work
‘God exists’ is not empirically verifiable
‘God exists’ makes no predictions about our empirical experience (evidence)
No experiences count towards establishing or refuting the claim
Therefore ‘God exists’ is meaningless. It lacks cognitive meaning + so it lacks meaning.
Therefore the claim ‘god exists’ is meaningless
Explain Hicks Objection to A.J Ayers argument about God + Religious language being meaningless
Hicks ‘Eschatological verification’
Hick responds to Ayers’ argument that religious claims cannot be verified empirically. Hick understands verification to involve removing rational doubt or uncertainty about the truth if some proposition through experience.
Verification: removing rational doubt, innocence or uncertainty through experience
Claims; involve predictions about experience under conditions. ‘God exists’ makes no predictions about our experience in this life, but does make predictions about our experience in life after death
So religious language is verifiable in principle because we will know eventually whether its accurate. Eg life after death, in heaven or hell we’ll be able to coherently conceive that experience.
Hicks also Rejects the Verification Principle:
The VP Fails itself.
According to the verification principle the principle itself is meaningless. VP argues the liam of a statement only has meaning if it is analytic or can be empirically verified, and yet the VP cant be empirically verified or analytically. So it in itself is meaningless
What does A.J Ayer respond to Hicks argument against the Verification Principle?
Ayer claims that the principles are intended as a definition - not as a hypothesis about meaning and accepts that the principle isn’t obviously a ‘literal meaning’.
- Thus the Verification Principle is only as conniving as the arguments that are intended to show it is the right definition of ‘meaningful’ - it’s a tool that can be used but isn’t always relevant.
- The verification principle is just a definition + talking about the meaning of religious language. It may not always be relevant to use for everything i.e. religious language or the meaning of religious language. So we can reject it, it’s intended as a definition to help guide us.
Many claims are verifiable but not falsifiable:
Therefore you can just reduce something being logically incompatible to ‘evidence against’ because all that does is reduce it down to verificationism.
Explain the University Debate: ‘Flews Challenge’
Flew gives a example to demonstrate how meaningful religious statements are;
- For a truth claim to be meaningful, there must be some possible state of affairs it denies or rules out so to meaningfully assert a claim, we must accept that it rules out some possible state of affairs. The occurrence of a state of affairs that a claim rules out demonstrates that the claim is false. Therefore to meaningfully assert a claim someone must be willing to withdraw it if the state of affairs it rules out were to occur.
(so if we’re gonna claim something or make a ‘meaningful claim’ we also have to have a painful way to reject it (falsify it) and if there’s something which does falsify it then we must accept this and reject the claims we made)
- what experiences would lead a religious believer to accept that ‘god exists’ is false? If there are no such experiences, the claim has no meaning.
Religious believers refuse to specify which state of affairs lead them to withdraw the claim that ‘god exists’. Therefore when religious believers say ‘god exists’ they don’t rule out any state of affairs. Therefore the claim ‘god exists’, when made by religious beliefs, is meaningless.
Flews uses his ‘Undetectable Gardner’ challenge:
- How is undetectable ‘gardner’ different from no gardner at all?
- The gardner is similar to God and the concept of god, if we are giving all these qualifications for god’s existence i.e. exceptions why can’t we simply say god doesn’t exist. If there’s no way we can falsify it then why don’t we state the gardener and god doesn’t exist because without this falsification its not a meaningful statement to make.
Explain Flews ‘Undetectable Gardner’ argument
Flew states imagine there are 2 explorers in the jungle admiring the plants + one states that there must be some gardner that comes and tends to the plants. The other man doubts this is true + so they agree to wait to see if a grander shows up. It doesn’t, so they agree the gardner must be invisible + so agree to set traps but when no one is found the man states the gardner must be intangible and undetectable + the man states
‘whats the difference between a Gardner being invisible and intangible and no Gardner at all?’
The gardner is similar to God and the concept of god, if we are giving all these qualifications for god’s existence i.e. exceptions why can’t we simply say god doesn’t exist. If there’s no way we can falsify it then why don’t we state the gardener and god doesn’t exist because without this falsification its not a meaningful statement to make.
What type of Philosopher is Flew?
Flew is a Cognitivist about religious language
How does Michal respond to Flews Cognitivist Challenge?
Michal accepts Flew’s cognitivism and that he’s right that we must allow experiences to count against a claim, if the claim is to be meaningful. But this doesn’t mean that we have to withdraw it.
- Eg the trusting partisan.
So why do we continue to believe in god + talk of religious language when God acts against us on so many occasions. Its irrational to believe in god. However the religious person would argue this a part of the process of God in spite of instances where things don’t seem to be going our way.
This begs the question - When does counter-evidence become so strong that a belief becomes irrational?
- There’s no abstract answer.
Religious beliefs aren’t just provisional hypothesis but involve genuine commitment (to god)
We must count evidence against them but because of this evidence we aren’t required to withdraw our belief.
(So overall Michal is arguing for the existence of god because regardless of a belief being irrational thais doesn’t mean we have to withdraw it, religious language can still be meaningful regardless. SO religious language is meaningful)
Explain Michals ‘Trusting Partisan’ argument to demonstrate how religious believers will not relinquish or falsify there beliefs
Trusting Partisan:
Suppose there’s a war in which someone’s country has been occupied + he joins the resistance movement, one the partisan meets a stranger who tells him he’s the leader of the resistance.
- The Partisans impressed by the stranger + trusts him deeply however later on, the stranger acts in ambiguous ways sometimes helping support the resistance and other imes helping the enemy.
- But the Partisan because he trusts the stranger continues to believe the strangers on his side so must have some good reason for his ambiguous behaviour.
If the partisan refused to count the ambiguous actions of the stranger even as evidence against the claim that the strangers were on the side of the resistance, this would be irrational. Such a view would empty the religious language of its meaning.
Whilst he recognises these mixed signals he does not simply relinquish his trust in the stranger because of the mixed signals. This is the same case with religious believers belief in God.
How would Flew respond to Michals argument that regardless if a claim is proven false we do not need to withdraw it?
Flews response:
Flew accepts this qualification, but appeals to the problem of evil to argue that belief in god should be withdrawn, and if it is not withdrawn then our belf becomes irrational - there has to be some point where you need to withdraw your claim.
Michal keeps moving the goalposts (something must maker us withdraw our claim when there sufficient evidence against our claim ie god is good)
But this is no longer about the meaning of religious language, but the rationality of religious belief which isn’t the question we need to know if religious language is meaningful, not if things are coherent.
