Religious Language ; C20 perspectives and philosophical comparisons Flashcards
Logical Positivism
In the 1920s, a group of philosophers developed a form of scientific reasoning known as logical positivism.The logical positivists were concerned with the relationship between the use of language and knowledge, rejecting as meaningless what they saw as non-cognitive (fact-free) claims.
Vienna Circle
meetings regularly took place in Vienna and as such, the group became commonly known as the Vienna Circle.
Influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein
VC/LP were influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Early in his career, Wittgenstein suggested that meaningful language is connected with the things we know from our senses.The logical positivists caught on to this idea and used it to challenge religion: how could religious language link with sense experience?
A.J Ayer on the word ‘God’
The term ‘God’ is a metaphysical term ( outside of human sense proportion) And if ‘god’ is a metaphysical term, then it cannot even be probable that God exists. For to say that ‘God exists’ is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false. And by the same criterion, no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal significance.’
Ayer on the existence of God
Ayer does not just deny God’s existence; he denies the possibility of God’s existence altogether on the grounds that there is no way of empirically verifying his existence.
Because of this, Ayer would disagree with all the traditional arguments for the existence of God as none of them conclusively and empirically prove the existence of God.
The Verification Principle
Verification means checking a statement to see if it’s true. The verification principle simply states that: “a statement which cannot be conclusively verified … is simply devoid of meaning.”
Analytic propositions
Verificationists like Ayer believe that statements can only be meaningful if they can be demonstrated, and these can be divided into two types:
Analytic propositions, which are true by definition, either because:
This is required by the definition of the words used – e.g. ‘this circle is not a square.
They are mathematical – e.g. ‘2+2=4’.
Synthetic propositions
Synthetic propositions are true by confirmation of the senses.
E.g. ‘I can see that it’s roast for lunch on a Thursday’.
Ayer’s view of religious claims
Ayer thought that religious claims are non-cognitive and impossible to verify, so they are meaningless.
He does not say that they are just false; it is more that they cannot really tell us anything at all.
Flaw of verification: requires conclusive proof
But for many logical positivists, even A.J. Ayer himself, the principle is problematic. As it requires conclusive proof through observation or experience, it suggests that obviously meaningful statements are meaningless.
For example, statements that we make such as ‘dinosaurs lived on the earth’ can’t be verified through observation or experience, so we cannot accept the statements as meaningful.
Modifications to the verification principle
a weaker version of the verification principle was brought into play. This weaker verification makes two modifications.
Statements that attempt to say something about the world are meaningful if it is possible in principle to gather the evidence i.e. do we know how such statements could be verified?
Conclusive proof is not always possible. So statements that attempt to say something about the world are factually meaningful if experience and observation can establish statements as probable.
Wittgenstein’s view of conception
Wittgenstein advocated that we should not talk about what we cannot understand, famously saying: “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.”
In short, while we may not be able to sense or conceptualise some things, they may still have truth or reality. But to conjecture ( an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information) on such points is ultimately meaningless.
Meaning depends on the scenario
Wittgenstein suggested that the meaning of words is determined by the language game that the words are part of (so the meaning of a word would depend on the scenario it was used in).
For Wittgenstein, words perform a function in a language; they do not signify an object.
Wittgenstein’s chess analogy
For Wittgenstein, the use of language was like partaking in a game. To use a word, you have to first understand how it works.
Wittgenstein’s classic example was the game of chess. You might be told that a piece is called a ‘king’, but without understanding the rules of chess, you could never use the piece.
He also stated that to argue about how language is used is meaningless. If you want to play the game, you must accept the rules. You cannot play chess if your opponent is trying to play checkers.
Rules of language
Wittgenstein suggested that language, and therefore the rules of that language, can be seen from two sides:
Those who are inside the game and therefore know the rules.
Those who are outside the game and therefore do not know the rules.
Language games
Wittgenstein’s main point is that the meaning of a statement is not to be understood by the steps you would take to verify or falsify it, but by the context ( forms of life)in which it is used.
Wittgenstein believes that there are different contexts in which language is used. These he calls language games.
Religion is one and science, for example, is another.
The Falsification Symposium: Flew’s Argument
After he encountered difficulties with the verification principle, Anthony Flew developed the idea that a statement could be verifiable if the empirical evidence that would prove it was false was known .Statements are meaningful because they can be shown to be false.
White swan example
He applied this idea to religious language.The statement ‘all swans are white’ is often used to show how a proposition can be false. We may see hundreds of white swans but this does not prove the statement. However, when we see one black swan, we know that the proposition is false.Statements such as ‘all swans are white’ are meaningful because they can be shown to be false. This statement is synthetic and empirically testable.
Flew on religious beliefs
Flew argued that religious people tend to refuse the possibility of their statement being false and so make their statements meaningless.
They will not allow evidence to discredit their beliefs and so their statements are meaningless.
Flew is protesting about a tendency he observed amongst religious believers to shift the goalposts of statements about God.
‘God loves all humans’ example
For example, someone might start by saying that ‘God loves all humans’.
If that person were to witness a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat, they would be right to use that as evidence that the claim ‘God loves all humans’ is false.
Flew observed that religious believers would then retort ‘…but God loves humans in an inscrutable way, a different way to the way we love.’
In Flew’s opinion, this second statement has no meaning because it doesn’t allow for anything to falsify it.
The Parable of the Invisible Gardener
originally told by John Wisdom. It was later developed by Antony Flew, The idea/essence of the story is as follows: Imagine two explorers come across a clearing in a forest in the clearing there are both pretty flowers and also weeds growing. One explorer says to the other, “There must be a gardener because there are flowers growing.” The second explorer doesn’t believe this because a good gardener would remove the weeds from the area. But he is willing to test this, so they set a number of traps, Each time a new trap is installed the gardener is not seen. So is there a gardener? Well the first explorer’s answer is that the gardener is first evasive, the explorer then takes more qualities away from the gardener and says that the gardener is now silent, then invisible, and undetectable. The main point of the parable is that the second explorer then replies, “What’s the difference between that (an invisible gardener) and no gardener at all?” This is of course an analogy which is meant to be compared to God, and how some people say that God can’t be detected and so perhaps they are just guessing rather than knowing with any evidence that God exists.
The Falsification Symposium: Hare’s Argument
The philosopher RM Hare came up with a response to falsification. This was called the theory of ‘bliks’. Hare used a parable to illustrate his point.
Parable of the lunatic
‘A certain lunatic is convinced that all dons want to murder him. His friends introduce him to all the mildest and most respectable dons that they can find, and after each of them has retired, they say, “You see, he doesn’t really want to murder you; he spoke to you in a most cordial manner; surely you are convinced now?” But the lunatic replies “Yes, but that was only his diabolical cunning; he’s really plotting against me the whole time, like the rest of them; I know it I tell you.” However, many kindly dons are produced, the reaction is the same.’
Explanation of the ‘blik’
The paranoid student cannot imagine being wrong; his statement ‘all dons want to murder him’ is unfalsifiable.
And yet, Hare argues that this belief remains very meaningful.
So a ‘blik’ is a particular view about the world that may not be based upon reason or fact and that cannot be verified or falsified; it just is and we don’t need to explain why we hold our ‘blik’.
