OCR RS Philosophy and Ethics A2

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Language = our way to explain concepts and to communicate.

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In philosophy of religion people try to explain concepts that can’t be seen or heard i.e. God. So problem arises = if we can’t see or hear him how can we talk about him?

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Also, if God is such a being then how do we apply the words we use to God, do they have the same meaning or another??

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Same Meaning: (i.e. Univocal) = the words we use mean exactly the same to God as when we use them for humans. Creates a problem = e.g. God = Faithful, but a dog can be called faithful too! So if words are Univocal then it has problem of bringing God down to a human level.

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Different Meaning: (i.e. Equivocal) = do words mean different things when applied to God? Problem is that when we use words like ‘God is holy’ it means something different from when I apply it to humans. So one can never know what a word means when applied to God. Another e.g. of Equivocal = ‘a bat’ could be 1) cricket bat or 2) flying rodent.

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If language is equivocal, it becomes ‘evocative and functional, rather than cognitive and descriptive’. (i.e. it becomes meaningless! Or hard to get!)

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So RL about God is split into two parts 1) theists talking about God in a meaningful way despite him being transcendent and ineffable (indescribable), 2) others who think that if talking about God is equivocal then it’s probably meaningless.

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The points above say that we speak about God cognitively (i.e. that our statement is either true or false and that it properly describes God). But others say that statements on God are non-cognitive (i.e. statements not based on true or false, this would include ethical, moral or emotive language – probably religious stuff too). Logical Positivists would therefore argue that there would be no point in studying non-cognitive statements because they are meaningless.

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Statements subject to true/false = ‘the cat is sleeping on the chair’ because you’d need to verify that. Statements NOT subject to true/false = ’ouch’ or ‘hurray’ as it would be weird to ask why is someone saying ‘ouch’ when you’ve just seen them hurt themselves.

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So some say that religious talk is meaningless and non-cognitive and not to be discussed in philosophy, because it’s not a matter of truth or falsehood (Wittgenstein).

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Verificationism = a philosophical movement which says that language is only meaningful if it can be verified by sense-observation or a tautology. Statements which cant be assessed = meaningless!

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Tautology = something which is true by definition.

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Sense-observation = gaining knowledge through your senses.

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Anything that is a Tautology doesn’t need to be proved because it makes sense by definition, hence the verification principle wouldn’t find tautologies a problem.

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This movement grew out of science and says you have to prove something through scientific experiment. They apply this way to language as well when someone makes a statement of fact.

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SVP: Moritz, Schlick and others said that if you cannot show with sense-observation how a statement is true, then the statement becomes meaningless. The aim of verificationists was to weed out those areas of science that are meaningless so they can avoid studying them.

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Another name for these verificationists = Logical Positivists and they originate from a group called Vienna Circle. To distinguish between meaningful and meaningless questions they created this verification principle.

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The verificationist idea were based on David Hume: said that unless a statement is Analytical (i.e. its internal logical provides it with meaning) or Synthetic (i.e. empirical evidence counts to show its truth), it is meaningless.

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According to logical positivists/verificationists saying ‘my car is red’ = meaningful because anyone could check it using senses. Whereas saying that the ‘statue is beautiful’ isn’t confirmable in exactly the same way.

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So for a logical positivist language that talks about God is meaningless because one cant show him to be a truth or falsity through observation or experiments.

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Important point to note! Agnostics and Atheists are also being criticised for their use of language. They make claims just like the religious believers do, a positivist would just argue its better not to discuss religion at all.

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Summary of the views of the Vienna Circle/Logical Positivists =

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Emerged in 1920’s, influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea (i.e. statements are meaningful if it can be defined or pictured in the real world). Also followed Hume.

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They derived a radical theory of language = the verification principle.

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They said; only statements that were verifiable by observation could convey factual information.

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Statements that one couldn’t verify could only be 1) tautologies or 2) meaningless.

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Problems with Strong Verification:

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Too rigid, suggests cant make statements about history e.g. there are no verifiable facts about Julius Caesar.

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Scientific laws = meaningless – e.g. gravity must be meaningless because I’m not in all places at once to ‘see’ it at work!

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Swinburne: universal statements cant be verified e.g. ‘all humans are mortal’ seem meaningful but dismissed as nonsense by the verification principle

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Ayer saw the above problems, so came up with a modified version of the VP.

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Still believed in the rejection of metaphysics as the Vienna Circle people wanted.

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He accepts the Analytic/A-priori and Synthetic/A-posteriori separation of Hume.

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But he didn’t deny that people claim other statements like “God answers my prayers”, it is just that such unverifiable statements do not have factual significance.

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Ayer’s difference from the rest of Vienna Circle = we don’t have to prove something via a direct observation. We just have to show how it could be verified (hence its called weak verification principle).

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E.g. ‘Eric is a bachelor’ is not conclusive at first, but Ayer says this doesn’t make it meaningless, because if we went and found Eric we could check the truthfulness of this.

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So remember verification is not about the truth or otherwise of a statement – it is about its provability.

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He is different from the Vienna Circle as they say that things we directly verify by experience = true, but that’s limiting. Ayer says that there are some things that can possibly be true, you just have to go out and look for its truth beyond doubt.

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This now allows us to make statements about history and make predictions in science so history and science = meaningful but religion and ethics = still meaningless.

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Problems with WVP:

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The VP itself is unverifiable. It is not a tautology and no evidence can show its truth!

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Some theologians and philosophers pointed out that sometimes statements cannot be verified at the present time, but can be one day. E.g. Life After Death can be verified after death in the future = Eschatological Verification (John Hick).

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Aims to overcome the problems of the verification principle.

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Instead of demanding a statement to be verifiable the FP says that someone must be able to say what would count, in principle, in its falsification.

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Flew said – religious people tend to refuse the possibility that their statements can be falsified. As they’d believe, e.g., that God is good despite all the evidence against it, hence religious language would still be meaningless.

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So in order to for some claim to be classed as a scientific statement one must consider whether there is any evidence that may disprove their claim.

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“In order to say something which may be true, we must say something which may possibly be false” (John Hick 1966).

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Flew influenced by Karl Popper. Popper argued that science was based on falsification not verification. Scientists pose hypothesises which they test. If the scientists know how to show that the hypothesis might be false (i.e. what evidence they would need to count against it) then their statement is synthetic = meaningful.

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This is how science works, they leave the gap to falsify their evidence. A result of this = theories are superseded by better ones as more observations take place. E.g. Einstein seen as improvement to Newton. This is what makes science different from other theories.

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Any theory that can’t be disproved is not valid at all.

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Popper’s views applied to R.L by Flew = R.L. can’t be falsified (as the religious believer is staunch in his position) hence not genuine. Flew uses the scenario of a Gardener from John Wisdom’s parable of the Gardener:

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2 people exploring jungle. They find a clearing that appears to have been cultivated. One believes that there is a gardener responsible for the clearing, the other disagrees.

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They test the believer’s hypothesis that there is an invisible, intangible gardener.

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Every test fails to turn up any evidence to support the believer’s claims.

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Despite lacking evidence, the believer persists, adjusting his hypothesis to suit the new lack of evidence.

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Each modification adds a ‘qualification’ to the original hypothesis, and the believer is able to persist in his claim.

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But Flew’s analogy claims that religious believers shift the goalposts so much that the claims they make are so watered down that they are barely statements at all. Flew calls this the ‘death of a thousand qualifications’.

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When confronted with something awkward regarding the existence of God, the religious person replies that God is mysterious.

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A statement can only be regarded as meaningful if something can be cited that will falsify the statement should it actually occur.

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This doesn’t mean that the statement is factually incorrect (as the logical positivists would argue) – a statement is meaningful if the mechanism exists to show that it is factually incorrect.

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Flew argues that R.L. lacks this mechanism. It is not possible to falsify R.L. in the same way as it is with other language.

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E.g. of FP in action =

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‘It is raining outside’. To deem this meaningful, we need to know what observation to make to falsify it.

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We simply need to look out of the window in order to see whether the statement is factually correct.

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Because this ‘falsifying mechanism’ exists, the statement is meaningful.

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Problems with FP =

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Richard Swinburne –

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Religious statements are not cognitive, so shouldn’t be treated as being falsifiable.

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Statements can often be meaningful without there being the means to falsify them. E.g. the statement that ‘a cupboard is full of toys that come to life when everyone is asleep and no-one is looking’ is meaningful, because we understand what it means to suggest that toys can move, even though we can never gather the evidence required to falsify the statement.

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R.B. Braithwaite –

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R.L. = non-cognitive. The VP and Flew treat R.L. as being cognitive.

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A religious claim is essentially a moral statement expressed in the terms of symbolic language.

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There is no need for the religious person to believe that the story is true – they would simply need to adopt a particular behaviour pattern.

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Basil Mitchell –

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Often a person would accept a statement as meaningful simply on trust.

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Although evidence might be against the beliefs, they continue to trust in God because the evidence in not sufficient to prove them false.

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Rather than religious believers refusing to allow anything to count against their belief, Mitchell was arguing that the believer’s prior faith maintains their trust in God even when the evidence appears to undermine that trust.

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R.M. Hare –

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Agreed that religious statements are non-cognitive.

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R.L. cannot make factual claims – but it can still influence the way that people view the world.

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Hare called this way of looking at the world a ‘Bilk’.

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He used the e.g. of a student convinced that his teachers were trying to kill him. Nothing that they did to try reassure him would shake his conviction that they were after him. The belief remained meaningful, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

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Religious beliefs are bilks – they affect the way people look at the world.

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Possible Conclusion to the VP and FP:

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VP and FP present strong challenges to religious belief. However they are not the only ways to assess R.L.

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For many religious believers the language used to talk about God is symbolic, mythological or different from everyday language.

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Thus, religious people may say that VP and FP are not relevant challenges to R.L. as the nature of R.L. is different from those spoken about in the VP and FP.

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V.N suggests that people can only talk about God in negative terms, or ways he is not rather than what he is. God is transcendent so you cannot say what God is.

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However you can clearly say what God is not: God is not a human being because God is transcendent, so God cannot have a body.

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Also, Christians believe Good is Good, but they’re not exactly sure how good he is, but they defiantly know he is not evil.

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Supporters of V.N say language when applied to God = equivocal. It’s easy to say that God is merciful and Good but it harder to know what is actually meant by that when applied to God.

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When applied to humans it would mean something different.

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By making negative statements about God (God isn’t evil etc) we gain limited knowledge of God.

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The idea came from Plotinus, who used this way to describe the Form of Good.

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Pseudo-Dionysius, a 5^th century Christian, used same method: God = ‘beyond assertion’ (beyond description). Making positive statements about God = anthropomorphism of God. e.g. to say that God is Good limits his goodness because it puts a human idea of goodness into our minds.

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Moses Maimonides, Jewish philosopher: making positive statements about God brings him down to human level. Only positive statement to be made is that he exists! Describe God through the negative.