B) Religious language as cognitive, but meaningless

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Logical Positivism

  • Developed from the work of the Vienna Circle (1920s)
  • Fundamental principle: only those propositions which can be verified (as true/false) empirically have meaning
  • "The meaning of a proposition is the method of verification" -Mortiz Schlick
  • Anything outside of basic logical/ scientific tenets is dismissed as meaningless, as it is unverifiable
  • Leaves tautological (self-explanatory) statements and those verified empirically (observations)
  • Logical positivists only accept 2 forms of verifiable language:
  • 1. Analytical propositions (a priori)- knowledge gained through logical definitions/ to deny would be a contradiction. E.g. 'all bachelors are married' = false
  • 2. Synthetic propositions (a posteriori)- knowledge could be verified through experience. E.g. could verify a bachelor by checking if they're married.

Verification (principle)

  •  Ayer (logical positivist) believed empirical methods had to be used to assess if a proposition in principle was verifiable and therefore meaningful
  • He argued propositions of science were meaningful- based on experimentation, but RL is meaningless
  • Realised we accept some scientific/ historical propositions which have not been verified with certainty. Introduced 2 forms:
  • 1. Strong verification- no doubt a statement is true
  • 2. Weak verification- some relevant observations to prove true/false
  • Some propositions we cannot…

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