The Verification principle and Critiques Flashcards
Who uses the verification principle?
Logical positivists
What is positivism?
A type of empiricism which claims that only scientific knowledge is valid.
What is a logical positivist?
Someone who believes that only scientific language can be meaningful because it is empirically verifiable.
What is Ayer’s Verification Principle?
To be meaningful a statement must either be analytic or empirically verifiable.
What does analytic mean?
True by definition.
What does empirically verifiable mean?
Can test if it’s true by experience.
In order to be empirically verifiable, what must a statement be?
A statement must either be verifiable in practice or in principle (we know there is a way to verify it even if we can’t currently do it)
What conclusion does this lead us to regarding religious language?
All religious language must be meaningless because it is neither analytic or empirically verifiable.
What is the name of Hick’s critique of the verification principle?
The eschatological verification.
What does Hick argue about religious language?
Religious language is verifiable in the afterlife, when we die we will see god and then we will know.
What is Hick’s parable?
The celestial city; there are two travellers on the road (life) one believes there will be a celestial city at the end (afterlife) and the other doesn’t. When they reach the end, they will discover one was right all along.
What is Hick arguing about God and religious language?
God is verifiable in principle because there is a way to verify God even if we are unable to do so in life.
What is the response to Hick?
If there is no afterlife then we won’t ever know, if death is an annihilation then there won’t be a moment of realisation.
So what has Hick shown and also failed to show?
He has shown that religious language is possibly verifiable in principle but not actually verifiable in principle.
