20th Century Religious Language: Comprehensive Study Notes
Verificationism and Logical Positivism
Definition and Origins:
Verificationism is the primary method employed by the logical positivists.
Positivism: Originates from Auguste Comte’s view that only empirical knowledge (knowledge gained through the senses) is valid.
Logical: Reflects an analytic focus on using logic to clarify language.
The Verification Principle:
The principle claims that for a statement to be factually significant (‘synthetic’), it must be empirically verifiable.
Factually significant statements require one to know how to verify them as true or false through experience.
A.J. Ayer’s Expansion: Ayer also allows analytic statements (e.g., mathematics and logic) to be considered meaningful because they are true by definition.
Cognitive Significance: If a proposition is neither analytic nor empirically verifiable, it lacks ‘literal’ or cognitive significance.
Forms of Verification:
‘Hard’ Verification: Early logical positivists held that a statement is meaningful only if it can be conclusively verified through experience.
‘Weak’ Verification (Ayer): Ayer argued ‘hard’ verification was too strict because universal scientific laws cannot be verified with absolute certainty. He proposed that a statement is meaningful if experience can show it is probably true or false.
Direct Verification: This involves immediate observation, such as the statement ‘I see a key’.
Indirect Verification: This involves statements connected to experience that can be tested in principle, such as ‘this key is made of iron’.
Verification in Practice vs. In Principle:
A statement is meaningful if there is a possible way to verify it, even if we cannot do so currently.
Example: Claims about the dark side of the moon were once unverifiable in practice (before space travel) but were always verifiable in principle.
Hick’s Eschatological Verification (AO2)
John Hick’s Argument:
Hick argues that verificationism does not actually undermine religious metaphysical statements.
He does not attack the verification principle itself but argues that religious language is verifiable in principle eschatologically.
The Process: Upon death, individuals will discover whether there is an afterlife and a God. While unverifiable in practice while alive, it satisfies Ayer’s criteria of verifiability in principle.
Counter-Arguments to Hick:
Verifiable Conditions: Ayer knew the dark side of the moon existed and that a rocket could physically go there. We do not know that the afterlife is a ‘place’ that exists or where observer conditions might exist to verify religious language.
The Problem of Annihilation: If death results in annihilation, there is no moment of realization. Therefore, religious language would remain unverifiable.
Imagination vs. Fact: It is insufficient to merely imagine observation conditions; one must know they exist and how to access them in principle. Hick is accused of allowing imagination to run free, which Ayer considers a trespass into meaninglessness.
The Self-Refutation of Verificationism (AO2)
The Test of the Principle:
The verification principle states: to be meaningful, a statement must be analytic or empirically verifiable.
The Paradox: The verification principle itself is neither analytic nor empirically verifiable.
Defenses and Failures:
Rudolf Carnap: Attempted to defend the principle as analytic. However, this fails because one can deny the principle without logical contradiction.
Empirical Statement: If it is an empirical statement about how meaning functions, it appears false, as many people find non-verifiable metaphysical language highly meaningful.
Ayer’s Response: Ayer eventually admitted the principle is not a factual statement but a ‘tool’ or a ‘methodological stipulation’ adopted for processing data.
Evaluation of Ayer’s Defense:
By defining it as a tool, Ayer undermines his original goal of ending debates between rationalism and empiricism. He can no longer say metaphysical language is categorically meaningless, only that it is meaningless to the specific tools of empiricism.
He moves from proving his epistemology superior to merely assuming it.
Falsificationism (AO1)
Karl Popper’s View:
Popper argued verificationism is an incorrect account of science. Science works by making predictions that are falsifiable.
Example: Einstein’s prediction about Mercury’s orbit was scientific because it could have been contradicted by observation.
Critique of Pseudoscience: Popper criticized Freudian and Marxist theories because they interpret all evidence as confirmation, making them unfalsifiable.
Antony Flew and Religious Language:
Flew applies falsificationism to religious language, agreeing that it is cognitive (expressing beliefs about the world).
The Logic of Assertion: Asserting is equivalent to denying ‘not ’. If a statement cannot be imagined false, it denies nothing and therefore asserts nothing.
Parable of the Gardener: Adapted from John Wisdom. A believer claims a gardener exists to explain a plot of land. As tests (electric fences, bloodhounds) fail to detect the gardener, the believer qualifies the claim (he is invisible, intangible, scentless).
‘Death of a Thousand Qualifications’: Flew argues the claim becomes indistinguishable from there being no gardener at all. Thus, religious language fails to make a testable difference to reality.
Basil Mitchell (AO1)
Cognitive Meaning and Falsifiability:
Mitchell argues most theistic belief is based on evidence (personal experience) and is falsifiable by counter-evidence (the existence of evil).
The Error of Flew: Mitchell claims Flew’s mistake was thinking falsification requires knowing ‘in advance’ what would falsify a belief.
Parable of the Resistance Soldier:
A soldier in a civil war meets a stranger who claims to be the resistance leader. The soldier is deeply moved and convinced.
The soldier maintains faith even when the leader is seen helping the government (evidence against the belief), thinking the leader may be a double agent.
Conclusion: There is a point where continuing faith becomes ‘ridiculous,’ but the specific amount of counter-evidence needed to reach that point may not be known beforehand. Religious belief is a rational assessment of the balance of evidence.
Evaluation: Mitchell vs. Flew (AO2)
Flew’s Rejoinder:
Flew invokes the logical problem of evil. If evil is logically inconsistent with the God of classical theism, then any amount of evil should falsify the belief immediately.
Counter-Response:
Alvin Plantinga’s Free Will Defense: Claims it is not logically possible for God to remove evil without removing free will, suggesting the logical problem of evil is not sound.
Evidential Problem of Evil: Most philosophers focus on this, which does not imply any amount of evil disproves God, only that the extent of evil makes God’s existence improbable.
Evaluation of Mitchell:
Mitchell successfully shows religious belief is sensitive to evidence. People do abandon faith due to evil (e.g., the death of a child or the scale of World Wars).
If the world were even worse (e.g., if Hitler had won), more people would lose faith, showing the dependency of belief on empirical factors.
Hare’s Non-Cognitive ‘Bliks’ (AO1)
R.M. Hare’s View:
Ayer and Flew are wrong to assume religious language attempts to describe reality. It is a non-cognitive expression of a ‘Blik’ (an attitude, emotion, or worldview).
Parable of the Paranoid Student: A student is convinced professors want to kill him. No amount of evidence (kind behavior) changes his mind because he interprets that evidence through his paranoid Blik.
Humean Psychology: Hare is influenced by David Hume’s view that ‘reason is a slave to the passions.’ Expressions like ‘God exists’ are rationalizations of internal emotional states.
Critique of Hare (AO2):
Flew’s Critique: Theists intend to express cognitive beliefs. Arguments like Aquinas’s Five Ways are based on observation and reason, not just personal feelings.
Aristotle and Virtue: Aristotle argued we can control emotional habits to align with reason.
Jonathan Haidt: Reason is like a rider on an elephant (emotions); while often dragged along, the rider can exert long-term influence.
Swinburne’s Critique of Ayer and Flew (AO2)
Theory of Meaning:
Richard Swinburne argues that if we understand the words and the syntax of a sentence, it is meaningful.
Parable of the Toys: We understand what it would mean for toys to come alive when no one is watching, even though we cannot test or imagine how to verify it.
Scientific Analogy:
Ayer and Flew are too radical for modern science. Physicists discuss inflation theory, dark matter, and string theory. These are scientifically meaningful but may be impossible to verify or falsify.
If theoretical physics is meaningful, the ‘God hypothesis’ (supported by fine-tuning or miracles) should also be considered meaningful.
Wittgenstein’s Language Games (AO1)
The Theory:
Wittgenstein moved away from his earlier ‘picture theory’ of meaning toward ‘Language Games’.
Meaning is not found in referring to reality across all contexts but in use within a specific social context.
Rule-Governed activity: Language follows social rules like a game. One must be socialized into the ‘religious form of life’ to find religious language meaningful.
Religion and Science are different language games. Religious language seems meaningless in a scientific context only because the rules are being misapplied across contexts.
Wittgensteinian Fideism (AO2):
Claims religion is a totally separate language game from reason or science.
Theological Precedent: Tertullian famously asked, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ arguing faith is separate from Greek philosophy.
Critique and Evaluation:
Natural Theology: Aquinas and others argue reason and evidence (e.g., anthropic fine-tuning) support belief. This fuses scientific and religious meaning.
Average Theist Belief: When a theist says ‘God created the world,’ they usually mean the same physical world that science studies. Aquinas handles this through analogy, attributing qualities like ‘creator’ to God that are proportional to human experience but greater.
Reductionism: Wittgenstein is accused of ‘theological anti-realism’—stripping religion of its vertical dimension and connection to a transcendent reality.
Cross-Cultural Universals: Features like mystical experience and ethical insights suggest religion is linked to something objective (God, pluralist reality, or natural forces) beyond a purely constructed social ‘form of life.’
Exam and Question Preparation
Cognitive vs. Non-Cognitive:
Cognitive: Ayer (meaningless), Flew (failed assertion), Hick, Mitchell, Aquinas (all meaningful).
Non-Cognitive: Hare, Wittgenstein (both meaningful).
Key Comparisons:
Aquinas vs. Wittgenstein: Contrast natural theology (reason-based) with Fideism/Language Games. Use Karl Barth to critique the reach of natural theology.
Verification vs. Falsification: Link them as rejecting metaphysical meaning, but show how Mitchell or Hare rejects both.
Application to Religious Texts (e.g., The Bible):
Non-cognitive approach: Rudolf Bultmann (demythologization) interprets the Bible as existential commitment.
Cognitive approach: Traditionalists like Aquinas or William Alston argue items like heaven/hell require cognitive interpretation.
Symbolism: Paul Tillich argues symbols participate in a higher reality, though critics claim they are purely non-cognitive mental states.