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RS: PHILOSOPHY - THEME 3, RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE (PART ONE) (VERIFICATION…
RS: PHILOSOPHY - THEME 3, RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE (PART ONE) (VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE)
VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE
VIENNA CIRCLE
logical positivism: the belief that experience is the only source of knowledge, and logical analysis can be done with the help of symbolic logic to solve philosophical problems
verification principle: the meaningfulness of a statement comes from whether it can be verified; if it can't be verified under any circumstances, then it's meaningless
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though not verifiable immediately, if something can be proven true/ false under certain conditions, a statement is still meaningful
ayer supports logical positivism; testing shouldn't need to be done, but we need to know what test could be done to find out a statement's validity
ayer implied if synthetic statements are only meaningful if tested empirically, they should be considered meaningless
logical positivists say statements of religious claims can't be proven true/ false, and therefore class them as meaningless
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STRENGTHS
logical positivists are good in their challenges in verifying/ falsifying religious language; it allows us to separate sense form nonsense
religious language can seem confusing and sometimes contradictory, so principles make sure religious claims have similar rules to other areas of life
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logical positivists base their ideas on posteriori evidence; this simply asks religious language to be consistent in its use of criteria to demonstrate meaning
some might say religious events defy logic; logical positivists require tests for something to be proven meaningful, so anything that fails them would be meaningless + illogical
some agree w/ FLEW when he said religious believers will never give up their claims; there is often little evidence to support them, and so FLEW might be right in observation
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