religious language

Question 1

cognitivism

Answer 1

religious claims, e.g., ‘God exists’:
- aim to describe how the world is
- can be true or false
- express beliefs that the claim is true

Question 2

non cognitivism

Answer 2

religious claims, e.g., ‘God exists’:
- do not aim to describe the world
- cannot be true or false
- express attitudes towards the world

Question 3

arguments for/against god

Answer 3

• arguments concerning the existence of god typically assume that cognitivism is true
• ‘god exists’ is true or false, a statement of fact
• the belief that god exists can be supported or rejected on the basis of reasoning
• god is a being that exists independently of (and prior to) human beings and our beliefs

Question 4

argument for non cognitivism

Answer 4

• people do not normally acquire religious beliefs by argument or testing evidence
• when someone converts to a religion, what changes is not so much intellectual beliefs, but their will, values, way of living
• therefore, ‘God exists’ does not state a factual belief, but expresses a non cognitive attitude

Question 5

objection to non cognitivism

Answer 5

1. • it means that religious belief cannot be criticised by facts or evidence
     - it cannot be true or false, probable or improbable
     - but what about the problem of evil
     - religious belief is not cut off from reason
     - reply - religious belief still needs to ‘make sense’ of human experience (but what does this mean, given that it does not say anything cognitive)
2. • non cognitivism contradicts what most religious believers believe they believe
     - believers use religious language to state truths, they have disagreed and argued over truths that do not have an obvious practical implication
     - reply - religious people often do not treat their religious beliefs as ones that are supposed to be responsive evidence, they are principles to guide them in life

Question 6

logical positivism

Answer 6

• the job of philosophy is to sort meaningful from meaningless questions
• it is the job of science to answer these questions and tell is what the world is like

Question 7

verification principle

Answer 7

• a statement only has meaning if it is either;
  1. an analytic truth
  2. empirically verifiable
• Ayer argues statements like ‘God exists’ are not analytic truths, nor are they empirically verifiable/falsifiable
• therefore, according to verificationism, religious language is meaningless

Question 8

Ayer on God

Answer 8

• ‘God exists’ is not analytic: nor can it be deduced from a priori claims, the ontological argument does not work
• ‘God exists’ is not empirically verifiable: it makes no predictions about our empirical experience, no experiences count towards establishing or refuting the claim
• therefore, ‘God exists’ is meaningless as it lacks cognitive meaning, so it lacks meaning (Descartes would say the idea of god verifies his existence - trademark argument)

Question 9

response from Hick: eschatological

Answer 9

• eschatological verification: a statement that can be verified after death, or at the end of time
• Hick argues ‘God exists’ is not empirically verifiable in this life
• many religious claims are about things beyond the limits of human life and such claims are falsifiable because it is possible to verify them after we die
• ‘God exists’ is not necessarily meaningless because it is eschatologically verifiable: of ‘God exists’ is true then it can be verified after we dies, but if ‘God exists’ is false then it is falsifiable

Question 10

is the afterlife meaningful

Answer 10

• what does it mean to talk of an afterlife - for it to be meaningful, at least the concept of personal existence after death must be coherent
• what could an experience of god be - Hick argues experience of personal fulfilment and relation to god (enough to establish God exists through experience)

Question 11

rejecting the verification principle

Answer 11

• according to the verification principle, the principle itself is meaningless
• if the principle is meaningless, it is not true
• if it is not true, it cannot show that religious language is meaningless

Question 12

Ayer’s response

Answer 12

• the principle is intended as a definition
• whether it is the right definition of meaning is established by arguments about its implications
• objection - if we are not convinced by the implications, we will not accept it as a definition
• the principle provides no independent support for thinking that religious language is meaningless

Question 13

falsification

Answer 13

• falsifiable statements are meaningful, and capable of being true or false
• unfalsifiable statements are meaningless, and not capable of being true or false
• a statement is falsifiable if it is inconsistent with some possible observation, otherwise the statement is meaningless
• a claim is only meaningful if it is falsifiable
• advantage - generalisations (e.g., ‘all swans are white’ is not verifiable, but it is falsifiable)

Question 14

objections to falsification

Answer 14

• many claims are verifiable, but not falsifiable (i.e., claims about what exists, or claims about probability)
• if we weaken falsifiable from ‘logically incompatible’ to ‘evidence against;, then there is no distinction from verification, which defines empirical verification in terms of raising or lowering the probability of a claim

Question 15

the university debate

Answer 15

• Flew - the objector
• Mitchell - response
• Hare - response

Question 16

Flew - invisible gardener

Answer 16

• attempts to show that religious language is unfalsifiable, and therefore meaningless
• explorer A’s theory is unfalsifiable - nothing could possibly prove this theory wrong, but nothing could prove it correct either
• because it is unfalsifiable, explorer A’s theory is meaningless
• Flew is arguing that ‘God exists’ is meaningless because it is unfalsifiable
• we cannot use the problem of evil as evidence against God’s existence because the religious believer just creates reasons (e.g., free will, soul making) as to why an omnipotent/omnibenevolent God would allow evil
• Flew argues that because the religious believer accepts no observations count as evidence against belief in God, the religious believer’s hypothesis is unfalsifiable and meaningless

Question 17

Flew - invisible gardener analogy

Answer 17

• two explorers find a clearing in the jungle, both weeds and flowers grow here
• explorer A says the clearing is the work of gardener, explorer B disagrees
• to settle the argument, they keep watch for the gardener
• after a few days, they have not seen him, explorer A says it is because the gardener is invisible
• so, they set up an electric fence and guard dogs to catch the gardener
• but, after a few days, they still have not detected him
• explorer A then says that not only is the gardener invisible, he is also intangible and makes no sound, no smell, etc.
• explorer B argued what it the difference between this claim that the gardener does not even exist

Question 18

Mitchell - resistance fighter

Answer 18

• in order for a statement/belief to be meaningful, it must be possible for some observation to count against it (i.e., it must be falsifiable in order to be meaningful)
• Mitchell argues just because there are some observations that count against a certain belief, that does not automatically mean we have to reject that belief
• Mitchell is arguing that we can accept that the existence of evil counts of evidence against the statement ‘God exists’ (and so it is falsifiable), without having to withdraw from belief in this statement
• Mitchell argues religious beliefs are not ‘provisional hypotheses (the believer is totally detached from), but nor are religious beliefs ‘vacuous formulae’ (the believer holds regardless of any evidence to the contrary)
• instead, reasonable religious beliefs are ‘significant articles of faith’ (accepts some conflicting evidence against the belief, but seeks an explanation of the conflicting evidence)
• the religious believer is invested in these beliefs and so does not withdraw from them as soon as the slightest evidence to the contrary turns up
• however, this is not to say that the religious believer would believe ‘God exists’ in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary - that would be irrational (‘vacuous formulae’)
• Mitchell is arguing that we can accept that the existence of evil counts as evidence against God’s existence (and so ‘God exists is falsifiable and meaningful) without withdrawing belief in God

Question 19

Mitchell - resistance fighter analogy

Answer 19

• you are in war, your country has been occupied by an enemy
• you meet a stranger who claims to be leader of the resistance
• you trust this man
• but, the stranger acts ambiguously, sometimes doing things that appear to support the enemy, rather than your own side
• yet, you continue to believe the stranger is on your side, despite this and trust he has good reasons for these ambiguously actions
• stranger = God, ambiguous actions = problem of evil

Question 20

R. M. Hare - bliks

Answer 20

• religious statements are basic fundamental beliefs that are not empirically testable - Hare calls these attitudes ‘bliks’
• a paranoid students who thinks university lecturers are trying to kill him
• you assure this student that university lecturers are not trying to kill him and provide evidence, yet the student still believes it anyway
• so, no amount of evidence/reassurance will convince the student that his blik is false/unfalsifiable
• despite being unfalsifiable, Hare argues that bliks are still meaningful to the person who holds them
• Hare argues that religious language - ‘God exists’ - may be unfalsifiable to people who have this blik, but it clearly means something
• it means enough to them that it affects behaviour
• a blik is unfalsifiable, but still meaningful to the person who holds it