Religious Language

• What is philosophy of language about?

  - Philosophy of language seeks to understand the relationship between language and reality.

  - The study of specifically religious language seeks to understand how language about religious topics relates to reality.
• Cognitivism

  - Cognitive statements are statements that primarily state factual information.

  - Their primary purpose is to make a claim about the way the world is.

  - A typical cognitive statement will clearly and straightforwardly state something.
• Cognitivism


  - Statements do not have to be true to be cognitive.
• Non-Cognitivism

  - Non-cognitive statements are statements it would be inappropriate to treat as though they were intended to state facts.
• Examples of non-cognitive language

  - Performative statements, orders, metaphors, expressions of how we feel, questions.
• Importance of interpretation

  - Many phrases should be treated as though they were either cognitive or non-cognitive depending on how we interpret them.
• Cognitive Interpretation of 'Everything is going to be okay'.

  - It is my prediction about the future that the bad event you're worrying about won't happen.
• Non-Cognitive Interpretation of 'Everything is going to be okay'

  - Something we say to reassure someone and make them feel better.
• Criterion of Meaning

  - An attempt to set a standard for what separates meaningful language from meaningless language.
• Consequences of Picture Theory

  - Because language is all about swapping pictures according to early Wittgenstein, then the only things we can talk meaningfully about are things we can observe and make pictures of.

  - For example, we can't talk meaningfully about "an infinitely big object." - Neither of us have ever seen one, so we can't talk meaningfully about it.

  - As tempting as it might be to start thinking about it, and coming up with theories and analogies

  (doing philosophy, basically) Wittgenstein says that this is the way to madness - we'll just get more and more confused without coming up with any useful answers. So we shouldn't even start.
• The Vienna Circle

  - Wittgenstein's ideas were taken up by a group in Vienna, led by Moritz Schlick.

  - Made up of visionary and influential philosophers, scientists and mathematicians of the century.

  - They together constructed and popularised logical positivism.
• Logical Positivism

  - Close link between what is observable and what is meaningful.

  - They believed that only two types of statement could be meaningful.
• Logical Positivism: Synthetic Propositions


  - Statements that depend on empirical evidence (information from our senses).
• Logical Positivism: Analytic Propositions


  - Statements that are true by definition and are self-evident.
• The Verification Principle

  - A statement is only meaningful if it is possible to verify the statement (check whether the statement is true) using our senses.
• Types of Verification: Verifiable in practice

  - We could check this right now.
• Types of Verification: Verifiable in Principle

  - It's basically possible to check it, but we currently can't.
• Types of Verification: Not Verifiable (and therefore meaningless)

  - It could never be checked.
• Verificationism and Cognitivism

  - Verificationism is all about empirically checking whether statements are true or false. To be meaningful, statements have to be the sort of thing that can be checked with our empirical senses to see if they're true. These are cognitive statements.

  - The only chance religious statements have of being meaningful is if they are cognitive.
• Consequences of the Verification Principle

  - Ideas of logical positivism were popularised by A.J. Ayer.

  - In his book 'Language, Truth and Logic', he argues for truth of logical positivism and goes on to show how this means that most of traditional philosophy needs to be abandoned as meaningless.

  - Philosophy should not waste its efforts on these things, because they are not meaningful and can so never be answered.
• What category do religious claims fall in for Ayer?

  - All claims about a transcendent God are in the category of 'never verifiable' according to Ayer.
• What is Falsification?


  - Proving that something isn't true.
• What is the link between falsification and science?

  - If something isn't falsifiable, it isn't testable.

  - If it's not testable, it's not scientific.
• The Falsification Principle

  - A statement is meaningful if there is some form of evidence from our senses that could falsify it.
• Falsificationist Approach to the claim that religion makes people give to charity

  - A falsificationist would be forced to start their search by looking for as many selfish religious people as possible.

  - They may find some, and so would arrive at the conclusion that the original statement was false.
• Verificationist Approach to the claim that religion makes people give to charity

  - A verificationist could go out, find lots of people who were religious and gave to charity.

  - They could declare that they had proven this statement true because they'd found evidence in favour of it.
• Verificationism vs. Falsificationism

  - Verificationism: We set out to prove statements true (sometimes we fail to prove them true and realise they're false). If we can do this, the statement is meaningful.

  - Falsificationism: We set out to prove statements false (sometimes we fail to prove them false and realise they're true). If we can do this, the statement is meaningful.
• What does Falsificationism say about religion?

  - The relationship between falsificationism and religion was explained by philosopher Antony Flew with an extended metaphor about a garden.
• The garden

  - There is no evidence the non-believer can produce that will falsify the claim that there is a gardener. The believer just moves the goalposts every time.

  - According to falsificationism, the claim that 'there is a gardener' is a meaningless claim - there is nothing that can prove it false.

  - The parallel is supposed to apply to religion. It seems like no matter what happens, theists will somehow explain it away so they don't have to admit that God does not exist.

  - This makes religious language meaningless.
• Evaluating falsificationism

  - The falsification principle cannot be falsified.

  - Many religious, historical events (such as the Resurrection) are actually falsifiable.

  - Falsification is too limited in what it will count as meaningful - lots of things that aren't scientific are still really important and need to be discussed.
• Hick's Eschatological Verificationism

  - He is a cognitivist about religious statements - he thinks we should understand these as factual claims.

  - He would agree with the verificationists that in order for a claim to be meaningful, there has to be a way of checking it.

  - He thinks religious claims are meaningful.
• Hick's Parable of the Celestial City

  - Like Flew, Hick illustrates his argument with the use of a parable.

  - The Celestial City is Heaven, the King of the City is God in Heaven.

  - The journey to the city is life.

  - 'Turning the last corner' is death.
• Hick's view on religious claims

  - Hick believes that religious claims are verifiable in principle because they will be verified when we die and meet God.
• Hick's eschatological verificationism explained

  - Eschatology is the part of theology that deals with final judgement or the end of the days.

  - Hick's idea is that religious claims will be verified after death when we discover whether there is a God or not.
• Experiencing-as

  - Different people see the same physical collection of lines and colours, but experience it differently - although both are valid.

  - Hick's claim is that the journey through life is like this.

  - We are all confronted with the same world, but some experience God and some don't - and both are valid until the afterlife proves it in one way or the other.

  - He also points out that things such as NDE's might give positive evidence that there is a life after death.
• Objection to Hick

  - There seems to be something a bit suspicious about Hick's claim that verification through death is just the same as any other kind of verification in principle.

  - The question is whether we can put our finger on exactly what the difference is between these two

  cases.

  - If we can find something significantly different between eschatological verification and other types of verification in principle then we can disprove Hick's claim that the two are basically the same.
• Hare's Bliks

  - Hare uses the word blik to describe someone's fundamental assumptions. A blik is a way of interpreting the world - it is non-cognitive and non-falsifiable.

  - Bliks are the basis of our whole way of seeing and thinking about the world.
• Meaningful statements to Hare

  - Agreed that religious language may be non-cognitive, but held that religious statements are still meaningful and important.

  - If a person holds a belief, they cannot be proven to be true or false, yet it affects the way they behave and view the world, then according to Hare it is still meaningful. This is what he called a blik.

  - It has a unique meaning to the belief holder.
• Hare's Parable of the Lunatic

  - In the parable, the blik is the belief that all dons are trying to kill him.
• What features do bliks seem to have?

  - They are unfalsifiable. If we try to argue about someone's blik rationally, we won't get anywhere.

  - They affect the way we interpret the events that happen to us. People tend to see things that happen to them in terms of their blik.

  - They affect the way we act. Our bliks affect our interpretation of the world, so they will also affect how we respond to it.