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religious language - 20th century perspective, Religious language - 20th…
religious language - 20th century perspective
logical positivism
beliefs and the vienna circle
logical positvists were concerned iwth the relationship between the use of language and knowledge, rejjecting as meaningless what they saw as non cognitive (fact free) claims
influence of wittgenstein
early in his career, he suggested that meaningful language us connected with the things we know from our senses
the logical positivists caught on to this idea and used it to challenge religion: how could religious language link with sense experience
ayer on the existence of god
ayer does not just deny gods existence -; he denies the possibility of gods existence altogether on the grounds that there is no way of empirically verifying his existence
would argue none of the traditional arguments for the existence of gof as none of them conclusively prove the existence of god
the verification principle
analytic propositions
verificationists like ayer believe that statements can only be meaningful if they can be demonstated, and these can be divided into two types
analytic - true by defenition
synthetic - truw by conformation of the senses
ayers view of religious claims
ayer thought that religious claims are non cognitive and impossible to verify, so they are meaningless
he does not say that they are false, it is more that they cannot really tell us anything
how is it problematic?
it requires conclusive proof through observation or experience, meaning that some obviously meaningful statemenst are meaningless
for examplethe statement 'dinosouras lived on earth' would be meaningless because we have not observed or experienced them
wittgensteins views on language games and forms of life
how language games may permit religious language to be deemed meaningful yet not cognitive
wittgensteins view on conception
wittgenstein advocated that we should not talk about what we cannot understand, famously saying 'whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent'
meaning depemding on the scenario
suggested that the meaning of words is determined by the language game that the words are part of
different language games
religious language
scientific language
chess analogy
use of language is partaking in a game, to use a word, you have to understand how it works
you might be able to say that a chess peice is called a 'king', but without understanding the rules of chess, you could never use the peice
to argue about language is meaningless, you cannot play chess if your opponent is playing checker
discussion about the factual quality of religious language in the falsification symposium
flews argument
white swan example
the statements all swans are white is often used to show how a propostition can be false, we may see hunderds of white swans, but this does not prove the statement
statements such as 'all swans are white' are meaningful because they can show to be false
religious beliefs
religious people tend to refuse the possibility of their statement being false and so make their statements meaningless
'god loves all humans' example
someone may start by saying that god loves all humans
if that person were to witness a child dying of inoperale cancer, they would be right to use that as evidence that the claim god loves all humans is false
hares argument
the blik
A ‘blik’ is a particular view about the world that may not be based upon reason or fact that cannot be verified or falsified; it just is and we dont need to explain why we hold out ‘blik’
Car example
Hare talked about trusting the metal of a car. This ‘blik’ about the car meant that we would quite happily drive or be driven in a car because we have the blik that the metal is strong and that it is safe to drive at high speed in the car
Conclusions
Hare argues it is possible yo agree to a proposition which is not falsifiable but is nonetheless meaningful
According to hare, we all have fundamental beliefs or principles on which we base our actions and which we will never give up
Mitchells theory
Mitchell claimed that religious belief, and therefore religious language, is based upon fact, although they are not straightforwardly verifiable or falsifiable
Resistant movement example
‘A member of the resistance movement is met one day by a man claiming to be the leader of the resistance movement
The fighter is suitably impressed and pledges his loyalty to the stranger.
As time goes on, the fighter sees the leader helping out the resistance, but at other times he is apparently helping out the enemy
The fighter nevertheless carries onhis belief that the stranger is, in fact, the leader of the resistance movement
Conclusions
Religious belief is based upon facts, but that belief cannot be verified/falsified in the simplistic way that the logical positivists demand
Mitchell vs Hare
Hares’lunatic’ has no reason for mistrusting dons, and wont allow anything to count against his belief
Mitchells fighter, however, is willing to admit that thing count against his belief in the leader and grounds hos belief in reason and fact
Religious language - 20th cent
2 uses of language
Cognitive - truth claims, asserting facts, something that can be known as either true or false
Non cognitive - do not describe facts and cannot be determined as true or false
Logical positivists
-The Vienna circle, met regularly to discuss issues rising in logic
the believed hat theological interpretations of events and experiences belonged in the past = to an unelightened time when god was the explanation for everything
the only useful form of evidence for investigation was that which was available to the senses and that which could be tested via science
this is where the logical positivist were born
A.j Ayer
Using the ideas of Wittgenstein and the Vienna circle he set down rules to judge if the language we use means anything
statements are meaningful if they fall into analytical and synthetic
Analytic = meaningful
True by definition. All bachelors are unmarried men.
Synthetic = meaningful if it can be verified using empirical evidence, test the truth using our senses
Not part of a definition. Additional pieces of information are needed. For example the statement Herbert is a bachelor needs empirical evidence to back it up
Verifiability theory
If a statement is neither analytical nor empirically verifiable, it therefore says nothing about reality = meaningless or not “factually significant
Statements have to be capable of being tested and understand what conditions are needed to call them, ‘true or false’
in other words, in order for any statement to be meaningful it has to be verifiable using empirical methods
Verification principle and religious language
any religious language or clam about god such as ‘god created the world’ or ‘god answers my prayers’ cannot be verified as true or false by senses = meaningless
religious experience are meaningless as they are not verifiable because one is recounting emotions
Ayer is not arguing that such statements are not important, just that they are unverifiable and therefore have no factual significance
Evaluation of verification
Problems with verification
Swinburne - people generally accept that ‘all ravens are black’ but no way yet to confirm this statement - cannot be proved true or false - yet still is meaningful
strict scientific views mean that statements people say - eg im not feeling well - are meaningless even if they make perfect sense because they are based on emotion and feelings subjective to the individual
can’t always trust senses always - plato
verification is unverifiable - ‘statements are only meaningful if verifiable by sense observation’ is itself unverifiable
not everything needs to be true or false to have meaning
Falsification principle - Anthony flew
Flew drew on observation from the logical positivists and suggested that rather than focusing on verifiability, the focus instead should be on falsifiability
it is not about presenting empirical evidence in support of something but instead asserting something and at the same time knowing what evidence can count agains it
this is how alibis work in court - if a defendant can show what they were doing at the time, this rules out their participation in the crime
Discussion points
Is the verification principle successful
Locke and humes support
Arguments support the verification principle
As empiricists, they argue that truth and knowledge should be known via our senses.this form of reasoning goes back to the early Greek philsopher Aristotle
Weak verification
A.J Ayers theory of weak verification states that to be meaningful, a statement does not have to be verifiable but instead must be shown to be true within reasonable doubt
Weak verification means we can make statements about history, scientific theories and human emotion but not religion and ethics
The theory is not meaningful
The statement of the theory itself does not pass the test as a meaningful statement
The verification theory cannot be verified by sense experience and so is not a meaningful synthetic proposition
Problems with analytic proposition
The idea that all meaningful synthetic statements have to be empirically verifiable also causes practical problems
Many of the claims in science, such as the existence of black holes, cannot be verified by sense experience
History cannot be tested
Many historical statements about past events cannot now be tested using the senses
Bummer believes that scholars such as hume and Dawkins are wrong to assume that if something s not scientific or measurable then it is somehow not significant
Poppers view on verification
Pointed out that if meaning depended upon strong or weak verification, then the whole of science would be wiped out. This is because none of the general laws of science are actually verifiable
Instead we can only accept a statement u to the point where it is falsified, the verification principle is not successful
Does the falsification symposium help us to understand religious language?
Tillich symbol argumrnt
Argues god is not ‘a being’ but ‘being itself’ and that religious language is not cognitive but symbolic
Symbols are not the same as facts. So it is wrong to criticise the as they were. Symbols cannot be verified or falsified. These doesn’t mean symbols are meaningless, even if they are unverifyable
They can be effective or ineffective ways of drawing religious believers to the power of being
Bliks can be meaingfuk
In the same way, a ‘blik’ could be intensely meaningful to a person who has one
Critiscims of the falsification principle
Flews falsification principle can be critiscised for many reasons
Could argue that flews confidence in empirical evidence as the final test of meaning is, in itself, unfalsifiable
Swinburnes view of assertions
Swinburne argues that we do no not have to be able to specify what would count against an assertion for hat assertion to be meaningful
Aquinas vs wittgenstein
Both held the belief that god is essentially unknowable
The way language is understood
Both argued that religious language has to be understood in a particular way if it to have meaning
Aquinas
Religious language has to be understood analytically
Wittgenstein
Religious language is best understood by those who are within the ‘game’ or ‘form of life’ of religion. Those who use religious language regularly, within a community of believers, find meaning in that language, which others outside that language game might thin meaningless
Wittgenstein life commitment
Argued that religious language isn’t just the asserting of facts,but a commitment to a way of life
So it would seem that wittgensteins non cognitive approach makes more sense than a cognitive approach. This is because much of the language used to describe the nature of god is metaphysical and byond our realm of understanding
Aquinas: factual statements
In aquinas’view, religious language puts forward factual statements about supernatural reality
This fits with most believers understanding of what they are doing when they say god exists - they are asserting a fact
For example, when a religious person claims that gd is omnipotent, they are aiming to say factually that god is all powerful