religious language 20th century Flashcards
Moritz Schlick
Philosopher who the Vienna Circle gathered around.
A.J. Ayer and Anthony Flew inspired by…
the logical positivists
Verificationism
- Ayer’s theory
- Language can only be meaningful if it is cognitive, analytical, or verifiable.
Ayer’s first verification principle
- Practical verifiability (strong)
- Verifiability in principle (weak)
Ayer’s later verification principle
- Direct verification
- Indirect verification
Comte and Mill
Support verificationism as it fits in with a scientific understanding of reality. The immense success and power of science means that it is our only valid source of knowledge.
Swinburne verificationism
Statements can be meaningful without being verifiable. For example, toys in a cupboard coming alive at night when no one is looking is meaningful because it can be understood.
Brummer verificationism
Verificationism treats sentences of faith as if they are scientific statements and to do this commits an error of understanding.
Hick verificationism
If we accept a statement must be verifiable in order for it to be meaningful it doesn’t devoid religious statements of meaning. For example, life after death may offer a sense of experience and empirical evidence to be able to verify religious statements.
Falsification
- Karl Popper’s theory
- A statement is only meaningful if we know how to prove it as false.
The parable of the gardener
- Shows how falsification can work.
- Where there’s an invisible gardener that comes and tends to this area every day but you can’t prove or disprove it so it’s meaningless.
St Paul falsification
Religious belies are falsifiable as if someone found Jesus’ body it could prove that he didn’t actually rise from the dead.
Mitchell falsification
Religious belief is based upon the rational weighing of evidence so that religious language is cognitively meaningful. Most religious people have evidence for God in the form of their relationship with God.
Swinburne falsification
If we understand the words in a sentence then they are meaningful to us. For example, we know what toys are and what it would mean for them to come alive at night when no one is watching.
Hare falsification
Religious language isn’t an attempt to describe reality but instead a non-cognitive expression of a persons Blik.
Wittgenstein illness example
Language games could explain how people have two different truths about the same thing. For example, if 2 people are ill one person could see it as them being punished whilst the other doesn’t think of it as a punishment at all.
Aquinas
Wrote 5 cognitive proofs on God’s existence and even if they lack empirical evidence Aquinas clearly believed that his view was cognitive.
Swinburne and Polkinghorne
Science can not explain how the world is so fine-tuned for human existence. God is a better explanation for this.
Ayer language games
- Wittgensteinian fideism
- If each language game has it’s own reality then we should accept talk about things like fires and witches to be cognitive.
Nielsen
Ideas about reality and reason are ambiguous as they can only be given within there given discourse.
Falsification paragraph 1- meaningless God
- Is good because if religious beliefs about God are meaningless as it can’t be proved.
- However, St Paul argues that religious beliefs are falsifiable. For example, if someone found Jesus’ body it could be proved wrong.
Falsification paragraph 2- perfect test
- Persuasive as is a perfect test of whether someone believes about reality as if it was rational they would be able to prove it.
- However, Mitchell argues that religious belief is based on rational weighing of evidence. For example, someone’s relationship with God could be evidence. Use parable of stranger.
- However, this is unpersuasive as we can’t just count a religious person’s experience with God as solid evidence.
Falsification paragraph 3- science
- Follows science that there must be factual truth about a statement for it to be meaningful.
- However, Swinburne argues that if we understand something then it is meaningful.
- Furthermore, scientists don’t always know how to verify certain things but it doesn’t make it meaningless.
- However, meaning and understanding aren’t the same thing.
Falsification paragraph 4 - logical
- Persuasive as seems logical to deem something meaningless unless we can test and all agree on it.
- However, Hare argued that religious language is instead just an expression of a persons Blik. Shown in parable of lunatic.
- However, this argument fails as when a religious person says ‘God exists’ they mean it factually.
Parable of the lunatic
Parable of the stranger
Language games paragraph 1- contradictory position
- Good as explains how people can have two different truths about the same thing.
- For example, illness could be seen as a punishment or not a punishment.
- However, it could result in a contradictory position as to say God is a reality in a theists game but a non-reality in a atheists game doesn’t make sense.
Language games paragraph 2- difference
- Persuasive as explains difference between religious and science in a meaningful way.
- However, unpersuasive for religious people as when they say ‘God exists’ they do mean it in a scientific sense.
- Furthermore, Aquinas wrote 5 proofs on the existence of God based on observation of the universe.
Fideism
The view the faith alone can gain knowledge of God.
Language games paragraph 3- realistic
- Persuasive as seem to accurately capture the way that social life works.
- However, this can’t explain how people convert to a religion if they are not part of that language game.
Weak verification paragraph
- Weak verification opens argument for God’s existence as the teleological argument attempts to prove God’s existence through experience.
- However, Ayer overcomes this with his later version of the verification principle.
Verification paragraph 1- Hick
- Hick argues that if we claim a statement must be verifiable for it to be meaningful it doesn’t make religious statements meaningless. Life after death could be empirical evidence.
- However, this argument fails as life after death isn’t empirically verifiable as we may not have the same senses we have now.
