Religious Language 20th Century

Question 1

Who were the vienna circle ?

Answer 1

logical positivists - group of mathematicians, scientists and philosophers who met in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s.

Question 2

what did the vienna circle analyse ?

Answer 2

language , particularly scientific statements, to decide what is meaningful and worth discussing and what kind of statements were empty and meaningkess

Question 3

What is the verification principle ?

Answer 3

statement is meaningful if =
- it could be verified by an actual experience 3
- it is true by definition

Question 4

What did Ayer argue about statements about God , ethics and art
;

Answer 4

remain menangless because they cannot be verified in principle and are therefore worth not discussing

Question 5

What does the strong verification principle argue?

Answer 5

since religious language cannot be verified by sense experience now, it cannot be talked about as true or false.
‘God is good’ = not true by definition , it is not a tautology or an analytical statement , therefore its meaningless.

Question 6

What is swinburnes analogy ?

Answer 6

toys in the cupboard analogy
Uses it to show that statements are not meaningless just because they cannot be empirically verified.

Question 7

Whos theory is language games ?

Answer 7

Wittgenstein