Religious Language Flashcards
Hume’s ‘Fork’ (a two-pronged fork)
We can have knowledge of just 2 sorts of thing: matters of fact and the relations between ideas
Cognitive language
Conveys factual information, synthetic
Non-Cognitive language
May be relevant to facts but it’s truth doesn’t depend on it’s correspondance to empirical evidence
May convey emotion, give an order, make a moral claim
Philosophers
Hume, Wittgenstein, Schlick, Ayer, Popper, Flew, Hare, Hick, Tillich, Aquinas
Falsification principle (Popper/ Flew)
A sentence is factually significant if there is some sort of evidence which could falsify it
Verification principle (Ayer, LP)
The meaning of a statement is its method of verification. Verification is by sense experience
The parable of the gardener (Popper, Flew)
There are two gardeners, a theist and an atheist.
What are Bliks? (R.M. Hare)
Bliks are assumptions about the world
Logical Positivists say that language is meaningful only if it is…
Logically true or empirically verifiable
Synthetic propositions
Propositions that are true depending upon evidence . It is therefore meaningful because it can be empirically verified
Analytic propositions
Propositions that are true by definition/ by the words are used and these are meaningful because they are self-evident
Quote from Wittgenstein
“whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent”
According to the Logical Positivists, why are metaphysics and theology meaningless ?
Because there is no evidence to support them, therefore they are not synthetic/ they are not true by definition
Book by Logical Positivist A.J. Ayer
‘Language, Truth and Logic’ (1936)
Ayer on the meanfulness of RL
Atheism and theism are equally nonsense, since neither can be shown to be true on the basis of evidence. The statements God exists and God does not exist are both meaningless because there is no sensory evidence to support them. ‘God’ is a metaphysical being, that is not of this world, so is not discoverable by sensory experience or describable using scientific language.
Ayer’s version of the Verification Principle (Language, Truth and Logic, 1936). It follows the ideas of the Logical Positivists
A statement is meaningful if and only if it is analytic or empirically verifiable.
It is not about whether a statement is true or false only whether a statement is meaningful.
Verification in practice is when there is a direct sense experience to support a statement.
Verification in principle happens when we know how a statement can in principle be tested empirically.
Religious statements cannot be verified either in practice or in principal there is no evidence by which we could show these claims to be true or false so they are literally meaningless.
Ayer dismisses moral statements in the same way he thinks they are nothing more than expressions of approval or disapproval.
Strengths of the verificationist challenge
It is straightforward, it is in line with science, it demands a sense of reality in what we say about the world
Weaknesses of the verificationist challenge
Response to the straightforwardness of RL
The demands are too narrow, in effect it rules out all sorts of language as being meaningless: moral/ethical statements, aesthetic statements, statements about ancient history and statements about religion. Yet how many people really see these as meaningless?
The VP only works as an argument when discussing matters of fact not those of interpretation hopes fears or anything else that involves the complexities of human engagement with the world. Human engagement with the world is at least as important to us as matters of verifiable fact
Weaknesses of the verificationist challenge
Response to the fact RL is in line with science
Much of science deals with entities that cannot be directly observed, such as quarks and strings, so how can their existence be verified by the VP ?
Science does not exclusively work through verification. According to Karl Popper, it works primarily through falsification.
Weaknesses of the verificationist challenge
Response to VP demanding a sense of reality
It is a valid criticism of some religious language but religion makes it very clear proposition about God and the origin of the universe full stop religion and science both offer valid hypothesis based on our observation about the world . Add examples
