21st century perspectives

• The vienna circle

  • logical positivists
  • a statement that can’t be verified is meaningless
  • verification principle - debate meaningfulness
• Vienna Circle - Verification Principle

  • analytic, by fact
  • synthetic, by experience
  • non-cognitive statements about God are meaningless, cannot be verified
• cons of verification principle

  • too rigid
  • can‘t make statements about history
  • Swinburne, universal statements cannot be verified
  • too subjective
• Ayer - Weak Verification Principle

  • supports vienna circle
  • you should be able to verify any statements you make
  • the criterion of verifiability
• Evaluation of Verification Principle

  • Hick - two travellers analogy, statements verified at the end of the journey (eschatological verification)
  • Swinburne - no need for verification, toys in the cupboard analogy (can be understood but is unverifiable)
  • Kuhn - truth now in science can later be proved wrong
• Wittgenstein - Fideism


  faith is more important than reason
• Wittgenstein

  • language games, language use is like playing a game with rules
  • believed there are some things in life that are intelligible to us
  • “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent“ - if you don’t know about it, don’t speak about it (this means it is meaningless according to the vienna circle)
• Wittgenstein - Chess Analogy

  • our words are moves we make when playing our language game, if you don’t know chess you can’t play it
  • either inside or outside of the game
  • you can’t play chess if others are playing drafts
• Wittgenstein - The steam train analogy

  • can‘t understand controls if you are not the driver
  • can only learn if attempted
  • you must have desire or it will never have meaning to you
  • resembles fideism
• D.Z. Phillips 


  religious language can only be understood within the language game, it can only be judged by those who accept the rules and is only meaningful to those who use it.
• D.Z. Phillips


  argues our perception of religious language as literal is problematic.
• Language Game Theory 


  PROS

  • non-cognitive
  • allows judgement against context
  • provides boundaries

  CONS

  • can’t be empirically tested
  • isolates the uninitiated
  • who makes the rules?
• Falsification Principle 


  assess whether evidence can disprove statements, aims to improve on the limited verification principle.
• John Hick - Falsification Principle


  ‘in order to say something which may possibly be true, we must say something which may possibly be false.’
• Popper’s astronomy against astrology

  
  

  • ‘the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, refutability, or testability.’

  • if a theory is impossible to prove, it is not valid at all.
• Flew’s Parable -

  • two explorers who discover a clearing in the jungle, they debate whether there is a gardener.
  • after tests, they find there is a gardener.
  • the problem with religious language is that it can’t be falsified and is not a genuine statement.
  • how does what you call an invisible gardener differ from an imaginary gardener?
  • his analogy claims that religious believers “shift goalposts” so much that statements are insignificant - known as the “death of a thousand qualifications“
• Evaluation

  • AGAINST Mitchell, argues we have to place our trust in things sometimes, and give them our commitment even when we lack sufficient evidence to know that they are true.
  • AGAINST Hare, argues that Flew does not understand nature, eg. you can’t convince a lunatic.
  • FOR Hare, agrees with Flew that religious language is not “bliks” (not falsifiable or verifiable) but assertions.
  • AGAINST Hick, we can verify but can never categorically falsify statements.