Religious language as cognitive but meaningless ( logical positivism) Flashcards
Logical positive emeged?
Logical positivism emerged in the 1920s with a group of philosophers who became known as the Vienna Circle.
These philosophers aimed to establish a common criterion of meaningful language and divided it into 3 categories.
Analytic def?
These are statements derived from reason, such as mathematical statements or tautologies (something that already explains itself), e.g., water is wet .
Synthetic definition?
Statements derived from observation of the material world (empiricism)
Meaningless definition?
End statement that does not fit into the previous 2 categories
What did this give rise to?
verification principle, which was that a statement that can not be verified through either observation or reason is meaningless and not open to philosophical analysis.
Aj Ayer and verification?
A.J. Ayer was a British philosopher known for his work “Language, Truth, and Logic” and his logical positivist views. He identified challenges with the Vienna Circle’s classification, noting that their rules could render some historical and scientific statements meaningless, as they can’t guarantee facts about past events. To address these issues, Ayer refined the verification principle by introducing specific categories, including verification in practice, the verification island principle, strong verification, and weak verification.
Verification in practice def?
where one can check the truth of the statement in reality
Verification in principle def?
we know what we would have to do, but doing so may be impractical.
Weak verification?
some evidence can be said to count towards the proposition ( idea you put forward) , whereas with strong verification, the evidence put forward will be conclusive.
Falsification?
requires how to prove something wrong
The philophsy?
Antony Flew claims that religious statements are meaningless because the believers allow nothing to pass against their claims.
the garden?
Flew, influenced by philosopher Karl Popper, emphasized the importance of falsification in science, arguing that disproving a claim is often quicker than proving it true. He adapted John Wisdom’s parable of the invisible gardener to illustrate this point. In the parable, two jungle explorers debate the existence of a gardener in a remote garden. After failing to find evidence, the nonbeliever concludes there is no gardener, while the believer insists the gardener is invisible and intangible. Flew argues that an invisible gardener is indistinguishable from no gardener at all.
Criticism ( verification)?
According to its own principles, the verification principle is a meaningless statement because it cannot be empirically verified, nor is it an analytical statement. Under this principle, historical knowledge and universal scientific statements, like “all metals expand when heated,” are also deemed meaningless if subjected to verification. However, John Hick argued that Ayer’s verification principle could render religious statements meaningful.
Eschatological verification?
The verification principle allows statements like “there is life after death” to be potentially verified after experiencing death. This is illustrated in the parable of the celestial city, where two men walk the same path—one believes it leads to a celestial city, while the other thinks it leads nowhere. Their claims remain unverifiable until they reach their destination, yet both can be meaningful because they can be verified in principle.
