The vienna circle and the verification principle
- Created by: Abitracey
- Created on: 15-02-13 14:16
View mindmap
- The Vienna Circle and the Verification principle
- Views of the Vienna Circle
- Came up with the verifcation principle; a statement is only meaningful if it is able to be verified by an actual experience or is a tautology.
- The logical positivists believed that any statement that cannot be proved or verified is literally nonsense.
- The logical positivists have thier origins ina group called the Vienna Circle.
- They believed that some statements were meaningful and others were were not.
- Tautology= logical statement that we can know to be true by definition.
- Was this a new idea?
- The Vienna Circle shared the view that science would provide knowlege and that areas such as metaphysics, religion and ethics should be avoided.
- The Vienna Circle thinkers were claiming that the existence of God is a meaningless issue; it is nonsense and cannot be discussed in any meaningful way.
- Empiricists such as Locke and Hume had argued that truth and knowlege were to be found with using empirical evidence.
- It is not only the religious believer that has problems here. The atheist and agnostic are making equally meaningless statements.
- Difficulties with the verification principle
- Scientific laws are also meaningless. To say that gravity is constant at all places on earth is impossible to verify as i can only be in one place at one time.
- Richard Swinburne pointed out that universal statements cannot be verified.
- The strong form of the verification principle is too rigid. It suggests that we cannot make statements about history.
- Any statement about works of art is nonsense.
- Views of the Vienna Circle
Comments
No comments have yet been made