Cognitivism

A cognitivist says that religious claims aim to describe how the world is and so can be true or false. They are stating something factual about the world (truth apt).

Religious claims express beliefs that such-and-such is the case. For instance, a cognitivist account would suggest that someone who claims that “God exists” is stating that “God exists” is a true fact about the world. They are stating something factually significant.

A non-cognitivist account suggests that religious claims do not try to describe the world and cannot be true or false (in the sense that they are not stating facts). Instead, they express an attitude towards the world, a way of understanding the world or relating to the world, rather than a belief that is true or false. Nothing factually significant is being expressed. (So we might talk of belief in God rather than belief that God exists)

Non-cognitivists need to give an account of how religious language is meaningful without depending on stating factual claims

Logical Positivism

A group of linguistic philosophers who were often referred to as the Vienna Circle, they were forward thinking and defined the foundations of debates on linguistic philosophy.

The basis of their philosophy was to categorise language. They distinguished between meaningful and meaningless statements.

Meaningless statements include the arts, metaphysics, religion, ethics

Verification Principle

For a statement to be meaningful it has to analytically true or empirically verifiable.

• “God exists” isn’t analytic, nor can it be deducted from a prior claims

  • The ontological argument doesn’t work either

• “God exists” isn’t (hypothetically) empirically verifiable.

  • No experiences count towards establishing or refuting this claim.

    • We don’t even know in principle what it would take to empirically prove it

  • God is beyond the empirical

• “God exists” is meaningless → RL is meaningless too

Ayer’s Weak Verification

Ayer developed the Weak Verification Principle to deal with problems with the Strong Principle (see above)

Problems: Scientific laws & Historical statements can’t be verified. To verify: “Water boils at 100C” you need to test ALL water

Solution: A statement can be “verifiable in principle”. I know what evidence would be needed, and it’s hypothetically possible to obtain this.

Responses

1) According to the Verification Principle, the principle itself is meaningless. If it’s not true, then it can’t show that religious language is meaningless

Response: The VP is only meant to act as a definition rather than an empirical hypothesis about meaning. It’s not a criterion of “literal meaning”, but used to explain specific cases like ethical or religious language

2) Theists could argue that one can empirically argue that God exists by studying the design of the natural world & proving God is the designer. Or scientifically testing the origin of miracles & proving this must have been done by God

Response: It’s inference at best - not direct empirical evidence

Hick: Eschatological Verification

• Meaningful

• Cognitivist

HIck agrees with Ayer that “God exists” isn’t a claim that we can verify through our current experiences. But he develops a different version of verification which he argues makes the claim meaningful

To Hick, verification is the process by which our rational doubt or uncertainty about a proposition’s truth is removed through experience.

If God and the afterlife exist, then when we die we’ll be able to experience God & the afterlife, verifying their existence.

Parable of the Celestial City

• Two men are travelling together along a road. One believes leads to the Celestial City, the other nowhere. When they turn the last corner, it’s apparent that one has been right all along…

• The life of both the theist and the atheist is a matter of interpretation of the same experiences, it’s only at death that the truth will be revealed.

Criticisms

1) Does this show that “God exists” is actually meaningful? The concept of personal existence after death is not something we can show to be logically possible. We must be able form some conception of what an experience of God could be. It’s difficult to ascertain what an empirical verification of God in the afterlife would involve.

2) Not falsifiable - can only verify that God does exist

Evaluation/Response from Hicks:

We already have some sense of this since we are aware that our experience in this life is ambiguous - it doesn’t establish or disprove God’s existence. He suggests that na experience of our personal fulfilment and relation to God could serve as verification.

Flew: Falsification Principle

A claim is meaningul is we know what empirical evidence would count against it to prove it is wrong

A claim is falsifiable if it is logically incompatible with some empirical observations/evidence to the contrary.

Flew asserts that religious statements are meaningless because nothing counts against them. “There is nothing that can refute the belief of a believer.”

Avantage: It cope well with generalisations.

The claim “all swans are white” is in danger of ebing meaningless according to the verification principle (no experience will ever prove it true. The falsification principle is better, we know just finding one black swan will disprove it.

Disavantage: Some claims are impossible to falsify

Ex. There are three successive 8s in pie. As soon as we find them, we’ve verified it, but can never show that it’s false as the series is infinite.

Ex. There is a Yeti

Ex. The see will one day encraoch on the land - future

Parable of the Gardener

• Two people return to their neglected garden, seeing some plants are doing well. One says this must’ve been the work of a gardener, the other disagrees

• They set up camp and even patrol with bloodhounds. Each time the believer remains unconvinced, modifying the gardener to be invisible and ntangible

• The skeptic asks how such a gardener differs from an imaginary gardener, or no gardener at all

Summary

• Religious belieers will never refute their belief even when evidence may render their beliefs false.

  • “Death of a thousand qualifications”

• Flew argues empirical assertions but be cognitive to be meaningful.

  • If you’re not prepared to accept that anything could count against your claim, then saying “god exists” states nothing at all

  • No evidence you raise that falsifies their claim counts!

  • The claim becomes meaningless

Evaluation

Strength: An argument is stronger if we are able to test it against contrary evidence

Criticism:

1) Thinking your belief is falsifiable and it actually being so can be difficult to predict. This is not meaningful criterion.

2) Many religious believers can cite reasons to falsify their religious statements - if someone lost their whole family

3) Atheists suffer “death by a thousand qualifications” too

4) Mitchell suggests people can choose to have meaningful beliefs even when the evidence is inconclusive

Mitchell:

He accepts Flew’s cognitivism and his argument that for an empirical claim to be meaningful, we must allow somehting to count against it - Falsifiablity

However he disagrees with Flew’s claim an assertion is only meaningful if we are willing to withdraw it in the light of certain experiences.

He criticised Flew because he said that religious believers don’t need to subject their faith to empirical testing. Religious beliefs are deeply connected to evidencebut are also held with trust, even in the face of contradictory evidence.

Religious faith involves commitment that persists even when the evidence isn’t clear-cut, but it isn’t blind - it’s tested by expereince, even if not abandoned in times of doubt.

Having faith makes faith meaningful, therefore RL is meaningful

Parable of the Stranger

• A member of the resistance meets a Stranger who earns his trust.

• Sometimes the Stranger is seen helping members of the resistance, and the partisan is grateful. Sometimes he’s seen as a policeman handing over patriots and the partisan still trusts him.

Summary

The religious believer does occasionally doubt his belief (like the Partisan) rather than ignore evidence. It’s just that they have yet to see conclusive evidence which falsifies their beliefs.

Theists have beliefs which have not (yet) been falsified, rather than unfalsifiable beliefs.

Criticisms

1) Flew - The problem of evil is soluble

2) The evidence is too compelling

Evaluation

• There has been no conclusive proof against no God, nor for his existence

• Many religious believers can cite reasonst o falsify their relgiious statements (if they lose their whole family)

• Athiests suffer death by a thousand qualifications too

• It’s still falsifiable (Mitchell’s Argument)

• Hare’s response to religious language

Hare’s “Blicks”

• Takes a non-cognitivist approach

• Concludes religious language is meaningful in other ways

Parable of the Paranoid Lunatic

• A lunatic is convinced all dons want to murder him

• His friends introduce him to the most respectable dons to convince him

• The lunatic replies it was only the don’s scheming and deception.

• However many kindly dons are produced, the reaction is the same

What’s a “Blick”?

An alternative way of characterising religious language. The disagreement between the theist and atheist is a difference in their blick

When a person has a strong conviction or attitude of the world that no evidence can count against. It has a strong impact on their life, so is meaningful & empirical testing is irrelevant.

Ex. likened to Phobias - no amount of reasonable evidence can count against this

Summary

• Agrees that many religious statements are unfalsifiable

• Yet belief without allowing possible states of affairs to count against it can still have meaning

• Doesn’t mean there isn’t a real difference between a theist & atheist. The skeptic returning to the garden has an interest, just lack the theist’s concern.

Flew is mistaken in treating religious statements as if they offered “some sort of explanation as scientists often use the word”.

Religious beliefs aren’t the type of assertion to be shown to be shown true or false. They’re part of someone’s attitude or view of the world - their blick.

Criticisms

1) This doesn’t go against Flew or Ayer’s criticism since it proves they aren’t “factually meaningful”

2) Theists instead make assertions and factual statements about the world. → Think of Swinburne’s Design Argument

3) The analogy suggests theists’ beliefs are like the beliefs of lunatics, so far from rational or meaningful

3) We surely need a clear criteria of when one’s “blick” requires intervention!

Evaluation

It’s unclear if Hare thinks bliks (and RL) are cognitive or not.

There is truth in the matter (whether dons are trying to kill you) so it seems blicks can be true or false, suggesting they’re cognitive

Yet bliks can’t be falsified so Hare claims they work more like attitudes or commitments - suggesting they’re non-cognitive

Flew’s Objection

• Hare’s theory fails to make sense of what religious believers actually say.

• If religious claims aren’t assertions, then:

  • “You ought to do it because it’s God’s will” →

  • “You ought to do it”

• “God’s will” is an expression of a blik. This isn’t what religious believers mean.

Non-Cognitivist:

• “God exists” isn’t a statement of fact

  • Does have meaning as an expression of a non-cognitive attitude or commitment.

  • They present the world in a certain light and support commitments to act in certain ways and to mature as a spiritual being

Summary

1. We can’t criticise or support religious beliefs using evidence

2. If religious claims aren’t stating facts about the world then we can’t say they aren’t true

3. Design Arguments & the Problem of Evil are both irrelevant - althought this may be cutting religious belief off from reason too much

4. A

Ludwig Wittgenstein

• Initially a supporter of Logical Positivism

  • changed his mind claiming it failed to capture the complexity of language and was too limiting

• The “Function of Language”

  • Words have many different meanings depending on the context, there is no single theory of meaning

  • The meaning of words come from their context and is how they obtain meaning.

  • Learning a language is like learning a game, once we know the rules, we can participate.

• Religious language is meaningful to those who are religious and enter into the language the game of religion. It has it’s own “form” of life.

• He accepts that religious language si non-cognitive and anti-realist but this doesn’t deter from it’s meaning

Evaluation

Advantages:

1. recognises the non-cognitive nature of religious language.

2. Unites believers in a common practice

3. Anybody can be initiated into the rules of the game

4. A good defence of RL

Disadvantages:

1. People from different faiths play their own language games, so is it really accessible?

2. People can be easily excluded

Reinterpreting religious belief rather than analusing it.

Diminishes the importance of what you believe: religious believers woudl argue there are very real difference about what they believe.

Heated debates within a faith about points of doctrine seem to suggest religious language is inteded to be true and not ust expressive.