3. Religious Language: Verification Principle

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  • Created by: Alasdair
  • Created on: 17-06-17 10:51
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  • 3. Religious Language: Verification Principle
    • Logical positivists
      • Vienna, 1920s
      • Concerned with relationship between use of language and knowledge
      • Rejecting non-cognitive language as meaningless
    • A. J. Ayer
      • Language, Truth and Logical - 1936
      • "A statement which cannot be conclusively verified cannot be verified at all. It is simply devoid of meaning"
      • Analytical propositions (a priori)
        • True by definition because this is required by the word
          • E.g. A triangle has 3 sides
          • E.g. because they are mathematical (2+2=4)
      • Synthetic propositions (a posteriori)
        • True by confirmation of senses
          • e.g. I can see it is raining
      • Strong verification
        • An assertion only has meaning if it can be verified according to empirical information, anything else is meaningless
      • Weak
        • Developed to allow historical facts to have meaning
        • Some evidence is enough to make a statement meaningful
          • E.g. eyewitness accounts
      • Religious claims are meaningless as they are non-cognitive and cannot be verified
    • Criticisms
      • Hick
        • Eschatological verification, talk of  God may be verifiable in principle
        • Convincing evidence is not apparent now but may be in the future
          • i. e. when we reach the "Celestial City" (heaven)
      • Swinburne
        • Propositions which non-one knows how to verify are not meaningless
          • e.g. toys hat come out at night when you are asleep.
            • it is not possible to prove or disprove this but this doesn't mean it is meaningless
      • The weak form of verification would support some religious statements
        • e.g. some historical evidence for the existence of Jesus and his acts
        • Evidence of possible design could support "God as creator"
      • Ayer's creation of the weak verification principle may suggest that the verification principle has gaps

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