20th Century

• falsification


  providing evidence to determine that something is false
• demythologising 


  removing the mythical elements from a narrative to expose the central message
• symposium 


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


  providing evidence to determine that something is true
• empirical 


  available to be experienced by the five senses
• logical positivism


  movement that claimed that assertions have to be capable of being tested empirically if they are to be meaningful
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

  • He continues to influence, and incur debate in, current philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture, and even political thought.
  • devise philosopher
  • mostly recognized in the Philosophical Investigations, who took the more revolutionary step in critiquing all of traditional philosophy including its climax in his own early work
• what we don't know we can't talk about

  Wittgenstein
• The Vienna Circle:

  • led by Moritz Schlick
  • group met regularly and discussed issues arising in logic in mathematics, in the newly developing social science and philosophy
  • followed 19th century writer Comte
  • generally believed theological interpretations of events and experiences
• Wittgenstein pt2:

  • Wittgenstein as a philosopher was keen to establish the limits of human knowledge and imagination and to work out where the line should be drawn between what people could know and understand - beyond the grasp of human knowledge
  • inspired the the Vienna Circle
• Comte:

  • claimed that people's thinking was passed through various stages over time
  • abandon what he saw as old-fashioned ways of explaining things in favour of more sophisticated ideas
  • metaphysical era
  • held the view that a theological was of looking at reality was outdated and unnecessary in a scientific age
  • a claim was meaningful if it could be tested using sense experience
• Problems of the verification principle:

  • how do you verify historical events
  • how is science the constant on all placed on the earth
  • art + music -- meaningless
  • principle itself is not verified therefore not meaningful
• A.J. Ayer (1910-1989)

  • British Philosopher
  • pushed ;ogical positivism, and so established himself as the leading English representative of the movement
  • tradition’s rejection of the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge, and so he saw the method of philosophy to be the analysis of the meaning of key terms, such as ‘causality’, ‘truth’, ‘knowledge’, ‘freedom’, and so on. The major portion of his work was devoted to exploring different facets of our claims to knowledge
• A.J Ayer and logical positivism:

  • took up the ideas of Wittgenstein and the Vienna circle to create rules by which language can be judged by to see if it means anything
  • he articulated that the main argument of logical positivism - statements are only meaningful if they fall into two categories they are either analytical or synthetic
• What was A.J. Ayer's book called?


  Language, Truth and Logic
• When was A.J Ayer's book released?


  1936
• A.J.Ayer and the weak verification principle:

  • scientific claims could possibly be verified in the future
  • historical claims could be verified by someone else
  • religious (theological) claims as they are meta physical cannot be verified in any circumstances
• Who created the strong verification principle?


  the Vienna Ciricle
• Strong Verification Principle:

  • analytical statements - propositions that are true by definition. A PRIORI.
  • synthetic statements - given information beyond just defining our use of language. A POSTERIORI. Has to be empirically proven

  They attacked rationalism, which often happened to form the basis for religious belief.
• Wittgenstein's early work:

  • reality is not all completely intelligible to us - but some accepts are hard to conceptualise
  • people should've confined themselves to the concepts that can be conceptualised
  • attempted to set out principles to demonstrate what could and could not be expressed by language
• Wittgensteins later work:

  • language can mean different things on different levels and or ways
  • language is a process which has changed overtime
  • believed that language should be thought of as a game -- "language games"
  • he used the term 'Lebensform' meaning 'form of life'
  • different levels of context - have to participate in the game to understand
  • he used the example of a chess piece - we understand once we learn the rules of chess
• Wittgensteins later work: cont'd

  • Wittgenstein showed that language makes statements that a groundless
  • definitions are groundless beliefs - but they shape the way in which we understand the world to an enormous extent - similar with religious language and or beliefs
  • D.Z. Phillips - religious language is just a way of defining the rules of the game of religion, religious language is meaningful for those who genuinely use it
• Wittgensteins later work: pt 3

  • the more people that participate - the more the language is understood
  • special meaning and nuances of its uses
  • religious language is not necessarily about facts - its a more non-cognitive approach
  • if you participate in Christianity - language such as 'God loves us' means something in the language game
• John Hick and the Celestial City:

  • eschatological verification -- religious beliefs can be verified in principle if true at the end of our lives but not falsified
  • One man believes in a celestial city (afterlife) whereas the other doesn't, but no one knows till the end
• Problem with the weak verification principle:

  • hicks eschatological argument
  • Keith Ward -- religious statements shouldn't be excluded
  • Historic evidence of Jesus existing
• Falsification Principle:

  • originated by Karl Poppers - 'philosophy of science'
  • theory comes first and then it is possibly falsified
  • any theory that is impossible to disprove in science is no theory at all
  • FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER - Richard Dawkins --- } existence of God can't be disproved just like a flying spaghetti monster
• Anthony Flew and theology of falsification:

  • In a symposium - Flew presented "theology and falsification" -- invited responses from colleagues R.M Hare and Basil Mitchell
  • statements should be FALISFIABLE
  • Parable of the Invisible Gardener (originally from John Wisdoms paper)
  • religious believes end up with a description of God that has no content
  • Religious believers when challenged (as seen in the parable) cannot admit that they are wrong as they keep adding thousands of modifications
  • when theists talk of God they refuse to rule out any affairs
• WEAKNESS OF FLEW: WW2

  • Flew wrote his idea of falsification 5 yrs after ww2 ended -- he was right to question if God was loving due to the attrocities
• R.M. Hare's response:

  • agreed that Flew had succeeded in demonstrating the failure of religious language to make meaningful claims
  • HOWEVER - when people use religious language they should not be interpreted as truth claims in a cognitive sense - - should be seen as Blik
  • LUNATIC PARABLE
  • Blik - describe a mans unfalsifiable conviction
  • we all have our own bliks
  • Religious language is unfalsifiable
  • religious claims are expressions of personal attitudes or commitments to particular ways of life
• Basil Mitchell:

  • parable of the partisan
  • argued that religious beliefs, statements and commitments do have a factual content - cognitive
  • evidence for a loving God is incomplete, but there is factual content to religious assertions
  • believed that bliks are groundless
• Did any of the participants in falsification present a convincing approach to the understanding of religious language:

  • Flew argued that Hare's assessment of religious language as non-cognitive has problems - religious believers intent to be cognitive
  • Hare - convincing as a non - cognitive approach opens new possibilities to faith. Tillich - God is a being in its self and therefore religious language can't be cognitive
  • Blik's are important - But -- C.S. Evans says that there is no way to judge is a Blick is right or wrong
  • Mitchell's response is closer to how a religious person would defend
• How do the ideas of Aquinas on religious language compare to that of Wittgenstein:

  • both shared concerns about the extent to which human language is adequate to convey ideas about God
  • both believed that God was unknowable
  • both argued that religious language has to be understood in a particular way if it is to have meaning
  • Aquinas - rl has to be understood in an analogical manner.
  • Wittgenstein - rl is best understood by those within the game
• Cognitive vs Non - Cognitive:

  • C - more popular with religious believers - as they make assertions about their faith refer to God as an actual being
  • HOWEVER = are claims made truthful -- no evidence
  • NC - God loving us is not a fact, wittgensteins approach doesn't help resolve big questions, for Wittgenstein meaning comes from the context in which it is used
• What has been the influence of non-cognitive approaches to religious language on the interpretation of religious texts:

  • threaten + challenge the Christian faith
  • Bible contains assertions - making it factual to some degree
  • the way nc approaches religious language suggest that the religious text -- not factual
  • nc adopted as a way to address the challenge to religion such as modern science -- mythological way of understanding the world
  • Bultmann - new testament writes were not making accurate historical accounts --- expressed beliefs through myths -- advocated for demythologising
• To what extent is Aquinas' analogical view of theological language valuable in the philosophy of religion:

  • still very popular within Christianity -- especially catholicism
  • truth claims of Christianity as cognitive
  • revelation of God through the Bible and individuals provide support for "God's love" - modern philosophers argue that there needs to be more
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