Religious Language Flashcards
Logical positivism
Philosophical approach adopted by the Vienna circle which avoided metaphysics as meaningless and believed the task of the philosopher was the logical analysis of sentences, separating the meaningful from the meaningless
A.j Ayer
Book: truth and logic
‘ why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are’
Verification theory
Logical positivist argue that its philosophers task to analyse logical structure of sentences and determine wether it’s meaningful
Once you say something that a scientist could investigate and verify the sentence is correct and your job is over
Tautologies
Sentences which the definition of the subject necessarily contains the he meaning of the predicate
True by definition but contains no factual information e.g. A square has four sides
Empirically verifiable proposition
A sentence whose truth can be determined by observation
Strong verification principle
The strong principle requires conclusive empirical evidence
Weak verification principle
States that one must be able to state what empirical evidence would make a sentence probable
Ayers verification principle re religious Lang
He rejects metaphysical language as meaningless
Doesn’t believe in via negative either
All discussion re god was nonsensical inc atheism
Critics of verification principle
Committing ourselves to form of foundationalism ( all knowledge is based on truth ) and we don’t need further justification
Swinburne solution
Argues against logical positivism
Claims that there are sentences which do have meaning but aren’t verifiable in any way e.g. Toys come out at night
Who was Ludwig Wittgenstein
1889-1951
Austrian philosopher
Statements very obscure and only have scattered notes
Doesn’t believe speech is essential to religion
Language game
A particular discourse about a game
Wittgenstein’s term for a usage and meaning of term depends on its use in game
Wittgenstein fideism
Fideism- belief that all that is required in religion is faith which has and needs no justification. This belief is considered heretical by the Catholic Church
Falsification
Karl poppers theory that a proposition is scientific if one can state what evidence would prove it false
This is a principle of demarcation ( a dividing line ) between science and non science
Popper and the falsification debate
Opposed basic assumption of the Vienna circle that what mattered was to be able to prove scientific propositions true
He said science shouldn’t be about proving our views or we’ll make no progress and it’s the wrong approach
Should look to verify theories not falsify
