Religious language Flashcards
what is cognitive
Factual EG. A triangle has 3 angles which add up to 360 degrees
What is non cognitive
Expressions of value/opinion/feeling/emotion EG. “Ouch”
What is univocal
The word has exactly the same meaning at all times
What is equivocal
The same word is used with multiple completely different meanings eg. love
When we use human words to describe God what is this called
anthropomorphisation
An example of a myth
Jonah and whale
Who suggests language is like a game
Ludwig Wittgenstein
What did Wittgenstein say.. to use language is
To use language is to participate in a game where we both know and accept the rules
What did DZ Phillips say to develop Witt’s ideas
Religious language is meaningful to those who genuinely use it
What is the basic principle of via negativa
Talk about God in the negative in order to not anthropomorphise him
Who came up with via negativa
Pseudo Dinoysius
What did Ayer develop
verification principle
What types of verification are there
Strong verification Logic Tautology Experience Weak verification
What was the group of philosophers in Vienna in 1920s
Vienna Circle
What was the central principle of the Vienna Circle
Logical Positivism
What is logical positivism
A movement in philosophy that believed that the aim of philosophers should be the analysis of language, particularly the language of science. They believe that statements only have meaning if they can be verified empirically or are tautologies.
what does it mean if something is verified empirically
It means something can be verified by observation and experience
What is tautology
A tautology is a logical statement that we can know to be true by definition
An example of a tautology
A bachelor is an unmarried man
What is the verification principle
The belief that statements are only meaningful if they can be verified by the senses. There are strong and weak forms of the principle. Two types of statements are meaningful analytic statements, and synthetic statements
What is weak verification
Weak verification refers to statements that can be shown to be probable by observation and experienced.
What would the verification principle believe about God
It is completely meaningless. This means Ayer is both denying and accepting that God is meaningless. He argues that for a statement to be meaningful it must be either a tautology ( a priori) or verifiable in principle (a posteriori)
Some evaluations of the verification principle
- Many philosophers have said that you cannot verify the phrase ‘statements are only meaningful if they are verified by sense experience’ as this statement cannot be verified by sense experience.
- It is possible for statements to be meaningful without being verified. Swinburne gives an example of toys in a cupboard that only come alive at night when nobody can see them-it is meaningful because it can be understood but equally unverifiable.
What is falsification
The demarcation ( a dividing line) between the scientific and the non-scientific.
