Religious language - verificationists Flashcards
What is the verification principle?
A statement is only meaningful if it can be proven through direct observation or by logic using deductive reasoning. All other statements are meaningless.
Give an example of deductive reasoning.
All unmarried men are bachelors, Steve is an unmarried man, conclusion - Steve is a bachelor.
What was the consequence of the verification principle?
This made all religious and ethical statements meaningless e.g. God is love is meaningless because it could not be proven true by direct observation and is not analytical.
Who were the logical positivists?
A group of philosophers from the 1920s and 1930s whose roots were in another group called the Vienna Circle.
What did the logical positivists believe and why?
That empirical evidence was always needed to ascertain the truth of a statement unless it was an analytical statement. They came from a background where scientific truth was important and reality was in this world - following Aristotelian thinking.
Name a logical positivists.
Schlick
What are synthetic statements?
Statements that can be proven true (verified) by the senses.
What is a cognitive statement?
all statements which can be proven true through empirical evidence - they are factual and add to our knowledge
For verificationists what are religious statements?
Meaningless and not cognitive
What are the strengths of the logical positivists?
Dependence on the the use of logic is good - not open to interpretation.
Aristotelian thinking - knowledge must lie in this world as there are no other worlds
Science can now answer questions which religion used to
We cannot know of things which are outside of this world.
What is the weakness of the logical positivists use of logic?
Just because a statement is logically true, it does not make it true in reality
What is the issue with the logical positivists use of empirical evidence?
This world is impermanent. it is always changing so empirical evidence is unreliable.
Our senses can deceive us - Plato
Even science does not have direct observable evidence for all of its claims
Most historical knowledge is not now directly observable, so it too must be meaningless
We can never test enough to know that a statement is completely true e.g. “All frogs have hearts on the left side.”
What is weak about the logical positivists saying statements are meaningless?
A statement can be meaningful to somebody if it impacts on them in some way.
What problems with verification did Ayer attempt to overcome?
The problems of concluding that historical and scientific statements are meaningless because they cannot be verified.
What distinctions within the verification principle did Ayer make?
Verify them in theory and in practice
Weak and strong verification.
What is verification in theory and in practice?
In practice - in some cases, we can observe if something is true.
In theory - we would know how to set about verifying them through sense experience or observation even though it probably would never happen in practice.
Give an example of what you could verify in practice and in theory.
In practice - Kate has brown hair
In theory - Leopards have spots
What is strong verification?
Statements which can be verified by direct observation and lead to a definite conclusion e.g. Kate has brown hair.
What is weak verification?
Statements which can not be verified by direct observation but other observations help to verify them. This tends to lead to a probable conclusion.
Give an example of weak verification.
6 million Jews died in the Holocaust cannot be observed directly by us now because it is in the past but it can be verified indirectly through historical sources. historical statements nearly all come under the category of weak verification.
What are the strengths of Ayer?
Follows Aristotle’s thinking that only what we can experience can be real. There is no evidence that reality lies outside of this empirical world. This would be supported by Richard Dawkins.
What are the weaknesses of Ayer?
Religious experiences are strong verification for the individual. The Bible is weak verification as a secondary source and if Ayer is to include historical documents under this he must include the Bible and some of the books of the Bible are historical. Naturalistic fallacy - assumes truth only lies in this world and in nature.
Give John Wisdom’s parable.
Two people return to their long neglected garden and find, among the weeds that a few of the old plants are surprisingly vigorous. One says to the other “it must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these weeds.” The other disagrees and an argument ensues. However, in Wisdom’s parable there is much more realistic evidence of a possible gardener.
Explain Wisdom’s parable.
Religious language is based on empirical evidence (e.g. teleological argument) and a believer will interpret this according to their beliefs. A non believer looks at the weeds (e.g. moral and natural evil) and interprets this according to their own beliefs.
