Religious language - verificationists

Question 1

What is the verification principle?

Answer 1

A statement is only meaningful if it can be proven through direct observation or by logic using deductive reasoning. All other statements are meaningless.

Question 2

Give an example of deductive reasoning.

Answer 2

All unmarried men are bachelors, Steve is an unmarried man, conclusion - Steve is a bachelor.

Question 3

What was the consequence of the verification principle?

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

Who were the logical positivists?

Answer 4

A group of philosophers from the 1920s and 1930s whose roots were in another group called the Vienna Circle.

Question 5

What did the logical positivists believe and why?

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

Name a logical positivists.

Answer 6

Schlick

Question 7

What are synthetic statements?

Answer 7

Statements that can be proven true (verified) by the senses.

Question 8

What is a cognitive statement?

Answer 8

all statements which can be proven true through empirical evidence - they are factual and add to our knowledge

Question 9

For verificationists what are religious statements?

Answer 9

Meaningless and not cognitive

Question 10

What are the strengths of the logical positivists?

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

What is the weakness of the logical positivists use of logic?

Answer 11

Just because a statement is logically true, it does not make it true in reality

Question 12

What is the issue with the logical positivists use of empirical evidence?

Answer 12

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.”

Question 13

What is weak about the logical positivists saying statements are meaningless?

Answer 13

A statement can be meaningful to somebody if it impacts on them in some way.

Question 14

What problems with verification did Ayer attempt to overcome?

Answer 14

The problems of concluding that historical and scientific statements are meaningless because they cannot be verified.

Question 15

What distinctions within the verification principle did Ayer make?

Answer 15

Verify them in theory and in practice
Weak and strong verification.

Question 16

What is verification in theory and in practice?

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

Give an example of what you could verify in practice and in theory.

Answer 17

In practice - Kate has brown hair
In theory - Leopards have spots

Question 18

What is strong verification?

Answer 18

Statements which can be verified by direct observation and lead to a definite conclusion e.g. Kate has brown hair.

Question 19

What is weak verification?

Answer 19

Statements which can not be verified by direct observation but other observations help to verify them. This tends to lead to a probable conclusion.

Question 20

Give an example of weak verification.

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

What are the strengths of Ayer?

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

What are the weaknesses of Ayer?

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

Give John Wisdom’s parable.

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Explain Wisdom’s parable.

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

What is Wisdom trying to claim with his parable?

Answer 25

Religious language is meaningful according to the weak verification principle. Wisdom’s response is cognitive.

Question 26

What is strong about Wisdom’s response?

Answer 26

Empirical evidence is used in the form of his garden analogy. A lot of other arguments for God are based on our empirical experience of the world (cosmological and teleological arguments). Paley and Aquinas would support Wisdom.

Question 27

What are the weaknesses of Wisdom’s response?

Answer 27

It is still a big leap to go from the fact that there are flowers to the assumption that there is a gardener.
Wisdom implies that there are lots of flowers and not many weeds. There is not a balance of flowers and weeds in the garden. There are far more weeds - as Mill and Paul would point out - Parable is bias to belief in God.

Question 28

Give John Hick’s parable.

Answer 28

Two people are on a journey. One is convinced that it leads to the Celestial city, while the other believes that it leads nowhere: but since this is the only road there is, both must travel it. Both have similar experiences on the road, but each interprets them differently from the other. One lives in the expectation of the final destination, while the other has no such expectation. One sees trials and comforts seen by God, while the other simply sees them as either good fortune or bad. Only when they reach the end will the truth be known.

Question 29

Explain Hick’s parable.

Answer 29

When we die the truth of God’s existence will be verified, not falsified. This is known as “eschatological verification”. Religious statements will be proved true but not false at the end of our lives. He is responding to Ayer and is a cognitive response.

Question 30

What is a strength of Hick?

Answer 30

He does not make an presumptions and says that we will find out in the end, where as the others do not support this view. Also, this supports biblical evidence that there will be an afterlife e.g. parable of the sheep and the goats.

Question 31

What is a weakness of Hick?

Answer 31

He does not take into account that falsification could occur as religious statements may be not true.