Twentieth century religious language

Question 1

Define ‘logical positivism’

Answer 1

A movement that claimed that assertions have to be capable of being tested empirically if they are to be meaningful

Question 2

Define ‘cognitive’

Answer 2

Having a factual quality that is available to knowledge where words are labels for things in the world

Question 3

Define ‘non-cognitive’

Answer 3

Not having a factual quality that is available to knowledge, words are tools to achieve something rather than labels

Question 4

Define ‘symposium’

Answer 4

A group of people who meet to discuss a particular question or theme

Question 5

Define ‘falsification’

Answer 5

Providing evidence to determine that something is false

Question 6

Define ‘demythologising’

Answer 6

Removing the mythical elements from a narrative to expose the central message

Question 7

Philosophical discussion about meaning identifies two different ways in which a word or phrase means something, what are they?

Answer 7

Connotation: when the word carries other associations e.g. ‘window’ may be used to express an opportunity, they can convey unintended meaning and different meanings in different contexts
Denotation: when the words stands as something as a label taken at face value e.g. ‘X-ray’

Question 8

Who were the Vienna Circle?

Answer 8

A group of philosophers who met after the First World War at the University of Vienna until the 1930s, led by Moritz Schlick, discussions were varied from maths, science and philosophy

Question 9

How could the Vienna Circle be described in terms of Enlightenment?

Answer 9

They believed ‘God’ was just an excuse to explain what people couldn’t understand and it was time to move away to develop a greater scientific understanding

Question 10

Describe the ideas of Auguste Comte

Answer 10

• Before the Vienna Circle he thought that people’s thinking had passed through various stages over time
• Understanding science led people to adopt accurate and sophisticated ideas
• ‘Theological era’ of God has been replaced by ‘metaphysical era’ for science to ‘fill in the gaps’

Question 11

Describe Comte’s idea of a positivist era

Answer 11

When the only useful form of evidence for investigation was empirical evidence and that which could be scientifically tested

Question 12

How did Comte believe a statement could be meaningful? How did this impact the Vienna Circle?

Answer 12

It could be tested empirically, if not then it was meaningless - this view became known as logical positivism adopted by the VC

Question 13

Who was A.J.Ayer?

Answer 13

A British philosopher who went to the University of Vienna after graduating Oxford and wrote a very influential book ‘Language, Truth and Logic’ aged 26 in 1936 to set down rules by which language could be judged

Question 14

How did Ayer validate statements as meaningful?

Answer 14

The should be either analytical or empirical

Question 15

Logical positivists decided synthetic statements are meaningful by empirical validation, what are they?

Answer 15

Information beyond definition e.g. ‘Alex is allergic to shellfish’

Question 16

What was the main focus of Wittgenstein’s work?

Answer 16

To establish the limits of human knowledge and imagination, to work out where the line should be drawn between what people could know and what people could understand and what was beyond the grasp of human knowledge

Question 17

What is the verification principle? (Ayer)

Answer 17

If a synthetic statement is to be meaningful it has to be able to be tested empirically, even if the statement is false, it is meaningful. Therefore religious statements are meaningless

Question 18

Why could Wittgenstein not stay in Vienna during the war?

Answer 18

He had a Jewish descent and so spent most of his working life as a philosopher in Cambridge intrigued by the philosophical questions raised by maths and engineering

Question 19

What Wittgenstein believe was very important to realise?

Answer 19

Reality is not completely intelligible to us as some aspects can be spoke about or verified empirically but there are other aspects beyond our understanding e.g. nature of infinity and timelessness

Question 20

Give a quote from Wittgenstein

Answer 20

“Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must remain silent”

Question 21

Name one of Wittgenstein’s books and its aims

Answer 21

‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ 1921
Set out principles to demonstrate what could not be expressed through language to show the scope of human reason and philosophy but in later life he criticised his work and changed his theory

Question 22

Describe Wittgenstein’s later work

Answer 22

Explored how language had different meanings in different contexts, how words can indicate more than one idea and language is a process

Question 23

Describe Wittgenstein’s term ‘lebensform’

Answer 23

‘Form of life’ to denote the context in which language might be used

Question 24

Describe Wittgenstein’s language games

Answer 24

• Not implying that language is trivial
• Non-cognitive approach
• Conversation is the game and the people talking are the players e.g. in a religious context ‘God loves us’ as you become more immersed in Christian life you will gain a deeper understanding of what this means in your life

Question 25

What is the debate between logical positivists and those who want to defend religious language?

Answer 25

LPs think that religious language is meaningless and statements that sound like assertions were no more than ‘utterances’. Defenders of religious belief disagreed but made no further progress on the conclusion

Question 26

How did Antony Flew change the stalemate between logical positivists and defenders of religious language?

Answer 26

He raised newer issues and debates, in a symposium of Oxford philosophers in 1950, Flew presented ‘Theology and Falsification’

Question 27

Describe Flew’s ‘Theology and Falsification’

Answer 27

He suggested instead of insisting that a statement should be verifiable, it should instead be falsifiable so we do not have to provide evidence to prove a statement as true but we should know when making claims what we are ruling out as a result

Question 28

Describe the parable of the gardener by John Wisdom

Answer 28

Two explorers come across agarden of flowers and weeds, the believer says their must be a gardener but the sceptic disagrees, the two explorers wait for the gardener but they never appear, the believer then says the gardener must be invisible so they set traps but this too doesn’t show any presence so the believer says the gardener must be silent, invisible and intangible

Question 29

Describe Flew’s reaction to the parable of the gardener

Answer 29

If religious believers keep saying that God is different to us then the usual characteristics of a being don’t apply to God until they are challenged to the point where the description of God has no content
“Death by a thousand qualifications”

Question 30

Flew argues that when theists talk of God and his attributes, they refuse to rule out any state of affairs, what does he mean?

Answer 30

If asked ‘under what circumstances would your statement that God loves us be false?’ they wouldn’t be able to think of any so in order to claim ‘God loves us’ we would have to know a world in which God didn’t love us

Question 31

Describe R.M.Hare’s resonse to Flew’s ‘Theology and Falsification’

Answer 31

Flew has succeeded in demonstrating the failure of religious language to make meaningful truth claims but he believed that they should not be interpreted as truth claims in a cognitive sense but expressions of a ‘blik’

Question 32

What does Hare mean by the term ‘blik’?

Answer 32

Bliks describe the ways we see the world e.g. a lunatic is convinced all university dons want to kill him, no matter how nice they are to him he believes they are only pretending to be kind while they plot to kill him so there is nothing they can do to convince him otherwise. The lunatic’s unfalsifiable conviction is therefore his blik

Question 33

How did D.Z.Phillips develop Hare’s thinking?

Answer 33

By claiming religious statements are not cognitive truth claims but a different category altogether of language usage

Question 34

What does Hare believe religious claims are?

Answer 34

Expressions of personal attitudes or commitments to particular ways of life and not testable assertions

Question 35

Describe Basil Mitchell’s parable of the partisan

Answer 35

The partisan is a resistance fighter to their country being occupied by the enemy during war, the partisan makes a commitment to trust a stranger who says he will support him even if at times he has to act as the enemy. Even when faced with counter evidence the partisan trusts the stranger despite some doubts

Question 36

What is the aim of the parable of the partisan?

Answer 36

Because there is truth and falsity to be found in whether the partisan was right to trust the stranger, he has to survive the war to find out if he was right to do so. Mitchell is suggesting this is the parallel to belief in a loving God. There is no definitive test for God to love us we can only find out in the end