Religious language 20th century Flashcards
What are the Logical Positivists also known as?
The Vienna Circle
What do the Logical Positivists believe?
If language is to be meaningful, its claims have to be capable of being tested using the five senses.
What would the Logical Positivists say about the claims ‘God exists’ and ‘God is love’?
They would claim that these phrases would not be meaningful as they could not be tested against the five senses - there is no empirical evidence to prove these statements.
What is a denotative statement?
Where the word stands for something, it is a label.
What is a connotative statement?
Where a word carries other associations with it.
What is a cognitive statement?
Aims to literally describes how a word is.
What is a non-cognitive statement?
It’s aim is not to convey facts, it is used to describe emotions, feelings and spirituality.
What did Comte and Mill say that influenced the Vienna Circle?
Comte and Mill were impressed at the power of science and wanted to universally extend the use of the scientific method to all areas of intellectual inquiry.
Comte coined the phrase positivism = use of empirical data.
What was Hume’s fork analogy and how did this influence the Vienna Circle?
Hume claims that there are two categories of knowledge:
An analytical statement = true by definition.
A synthetic statement = can be verified.
This influenced the empirical grounding of the Vienna Circle’s claim.
What is Bertrand Russel’s teapot analogy?
Russel imagines that there is a teapot orbiting the sun, but it cannot be detected.
It would be unreasonable to expect people to believe as it cannot be disproven.
The burden of proof falls on the person making the claim, not on others to disprove it.
How has Russel’s teapot analogy influenced the logical positivists?
Russell’s analogy shows how events must be proven by empirical evidence.
What two things does the strong verification principle require from a statement if it is to be meaningful?
It is true by definition (analytical)
It can be verified by actual experience (synthetic)
What would the strong verification principle say about Jesus?
It would reject any account of Jesus as it cannot be tested against the five senses.
What are two reasons as to why the strong verification principle doesn’t work?
You cannot make statements about history because you cannot immediately verify it with empirical evidence.
Scientific laws are meaningless - many of these laws are based on theory, where you assume laws act in the same way.
What are Swinburne’s two examples of things we cannot verify but we accept?
‘all humans are mortal’
‘all ravens are black’
They cannot be verified in practice, but we consider them to have meaning.
What is Swinburne’s toy analogy?
What if toys in a cupboard came alive every night but returned before everyone saw them.
You wouldn’t know, so it cannot be falsified but would still be true.
He says the same applies to God.
How do Brummer and DZ Phillips reject the strong verification principle?
They say that faith statements should not be treated in the same way as scientific claims.
The verification principle is too narrow.
What is Ayre’s weak verification principle?
He claims that the strong verification principle is too restrictive, so adds to this and claims that statements are meaningful, only when used in theory.
This means that certain claims do not need to be tested.
What does Hick suggest about the meaningfulness of religious language?
He suggests that believers would be able to verify statements about God and heaven at the end of life’s journey.
So, religious statements can be verified in principle and are meaningful.
What does Swinburne suggest about the meaningfulness of religious language?
He suggests that statements are not meaningless just because they cannot be empirically verified.
What does Wittgenstein say about ‘language games’?
He noticed the importance of context and how the meaning of a word depends on how it is being used.
In order to talk about a game, you need to know and understand the rules of that game.
The meaning of religious language depends on the ‘game’.
‘God is love’ is meaningful to those in the Christian ‘game’.
Wittgenstein’s language games are successful?
Does consider context and context does matter when having meaningful conversations.
It means no one from another group has much right to openly criticize such language.
It is more empathetic - there is not expectation to know certain things.
Wittgenstein’s language games are not successful?
This can be used to justify bad things eg. racism, claiming that it is simply their language game.
It prevents discussion between two games eg. science and religion.
What does Ayre say about religious language being meaningful?
Religious language is not meaningful.
Statements have to be capable of being tested and understand what conditions are needed to call them true or false - it has to be empirically verifiable to be meaningful.
Eg. ‘God is perfect/immutable/ transcendent’ = beyond human sense experience and is no verifiable.
It could only be proved in theory (weak verification).
What is a quote for Ayre’s views about verification?
‘the criterion we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability’
What is a quote that Ayre says in order to show how religious language is meaningless?
‘such a reality have all been devoted to the production of nonsense’
What do Brummer and D.Z Phillips say about religious language being meaningful?
Faith statements should not be treated in the same way as science, they are not meaningless.
What does Swinburne say about religious language being meaningful?
Statements are not meaningless just because they cannot be empirically verified.
What does Hick say about religious language being meaningful?
Believers would be able to verify statements about God and heaven at the end of life, religious statements are not meaningless.
What does ‘the meaning of a word is its use in the language’ mean?
The meaning of a word is determined by the way it is used in a language game.
What is Swinburne’s criticism of Ayre?
Uses the example: people general accept that all ravens are black but there is no way to confirm this - it cannot be proven to be true or false yet it is still meaningful.
What is Flew’s falsification principle?
Claims that it is not about presenting empirical evidence that is in support of something, but about knowing what evidence could be used against it.
For example: if you are teaching a class, you CAN NOT be baking a cake as well - proves what you cannot do.
What is John Wisdom’s parable of the invisible gardener?
Two explorers find a clearing in a jungle that has lots of flowers and plants.
One believes there is a gardener whereas the other one doesn’t.
When the gardener is not detected, even when they have tried everything, the other explorer says that the gardener is invisible.
What does the parable of the invisible gardener show when developed by Flew?
This analogy is used to explain religious view.
People go on believing about God but there is no experience to falsify this; there is always an answer.
Believers then begin altering their statements about god when they are being challenged (like the gardener) = statements no longer resemble the original claim made about God.
Regarding the parable of the invisible gardener, what does Flew claim about ‘a death of a thousand qualifications’?
Flew: ‘their belief in God dies the death of a thousand qualifications’.
The original belief about God is lost due to the amount of qualifications that are used to justify the idea. (Eg. ideas surrounding the problem of evil).
