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Post 20th century language - Coggle Diagram
Post 20th century language
Two types of language used- cognitive something that can be known as true or false and non cognitive cannnot be determined as true or false
A. J. Ayers verification principle he sets down rules to judge if language we use means anything
Starts with logical positivists
Thus statements are meaningful if fall into anaylitic and synthetic
For Ayer mathematic statements are meaningful, synthetic statements are not meaning ful until they can be proven
Any religious claims about god cannot be verified therefore they are meaningless with no factual significance
Problems with verification principle
Swinburne claims that people generally accept ‘all ravens are black’ but no way to confirm the statement , cant be prove but it is still meaningful
Ayers strong verification says that something can be verified conclusively by observation, this means that no statement can be made about history as these cannot be verified as fact with sense- through second hand info
“Statements are only meaningful if verifiable by sense observation “ is itself unverifiable
Falsification principle was put forward by Antony flew uses a similar arguement to alibis , if something can be falsified.
Flew uses the parable of gardener , in this neat garden one thinks someone must be keeping it this way, when the gardener is not seen, the first one changes his view. This is applicable to god.
Peter vardy gives the example of a friend talking about her boyfriend and no matter how awful he is they will never accept there not right for each other.
R. M. Hare agreeed that flew had succeeded in demonstrating the failure of religious language to make meaningful truth claims, he suggested that when people use religious language they should treat it like a blik (a personal interpretation)
A blik is an view that the lunatic would see the world and nothing could change it, the importance of a blik is that they are not falsifiable, no evidence or arguement can demonstrate the falseness of a blik
However flew pointed out that many religious believers intend their claims to be congnative, hares approach doesn’t work.
Mitchells parable of the partisan, meeting a stranger and trusting them. he argues religious belief claims are cognitive, for Mitchell, the partisans trust in the stranger is not groundless because they make a deliberate choice to trust them
Problems with Mitchell’s parable, the partisan meets the strange and has ground to trust him whereas a religious believer never met god face to face
Wittgensteins language games- tries to demonstrate what can and cannot be expressed in language, for Wittgenstein he believed that many aspects of reality we can experience with our senses yet others we cannot
People should limit their selves to talking only about those parts of reality that can be conceptualised. However Wittgenstein changes this and says word meaning c,es from the situation words are used, he uses the example of chess, rules from chess wouldn’t work in any other context.
Lebensform or the form of life is the words given to signify the context in which language might be used,