religious language Flashcards
What is AJ Ayer’s verification principle?
Something is meaningful (worth studying if it is a tautology or can be verified in practice. This principle was used to determine what subjects are worth studying and according to the principle all religious language is meaningless.
What is an issue with AJ Ayer’s original verification principle?
The principle dismisses some scientific theories that cannot be verified right now such as there is a dark side to the moon.
What is the weak verification principle?
Something is meaningful if it is a tautology or it can be verified in principle.
Why is the weak verification principle an improvement over the original?
Some scientific statements such as there is a dark side of the moodn were meaningless according to the original as we cannot verify it right now. However we can verify it in principle as we could fly there in a rocket if we had one making it meaningful.
Why does Hick disagree with Ayer on religious language being meaningless according to weak verification?
Eschatological verification is the idea that there is a condition in which religious belief can be verified. We can die and see if god exists meaning it is verifiable in principle.
What is a problem with eschatological verification?
If we need to die in order to verify a claim this seems like the claim is meaningless as we cannot express our findings if we are dead.
What is an issue with the verification principle as a whole?
According to the principle, the principle itself is meaningless therefore meaningless which seems like a paradox as if it is meaningless we should not use it as a tool.
What is the falsification principle?
Karl Popper put forth the idea that a statement is only meaningful if we know what evidence could be used to count against it.
What is ment by cognitivist approach to language?
Meaningful language is based on fact and thus can be shown to be true or false.
Why is falsification more Rigourous then verification?
A statement can have lots of evidence pointing towards it being ture but if there is one piece that prooves it false it is meaningless.
What did Popper say about statements that claim something is real?
A statement speaking about what is real must be falsifiable if it is not then the statement is not about reality.
How did Flew apply the falsification principle to religious language?
All religious statements are meaningless as there is nothing we can do to falsify claims about god.
What is the analogy of the gardener?
Two people return to a garden they have not visited in a long time. 1 says there is a gardener who maintains the garden but the other rejects this as there is so much wrong with the garden. They create experiments to proove there is no gardener such as setting traps but the one who believes in the gardener qulifies his belief with statements like the gardener is invisible, intangeable, etc.
How does Flew apply the gardener analogy to religious language.
Flew suggests there is no difference between this gardener and no gardener at all and the same goes for god. constant quallifactions render religious language meaningless because they die “the death of a thousand quallifications”. There is nothing one can say to a religious believer that would falsify their claim thus religious statements are meaningless.
Why does RM Hare disagree with cognitivist approaches to language?
Bliks are things we believe that are not verifiable or falsifiable but we live our lives according to such as my wife loves me. Statements like this cannot be verfied useing cognitivist theories however Hare argues they still have meaning as we live our lives according to them.
