I need notes on the verification and falsification principle, really stuck here.

I missed most of the verification/falsification lessons, and I was just wondering if anyone can lend me there notes, and feel free to ask me for any notes aswell.

Thanks!!

Reply 1

Tegid

Here's Falsification, I'll do some quick Verication in just a sec. This is taken from my text book Philosophy of Religion by Anne Jocker OCR edition, so I hope that meets your exam board. Luck!

The Falsification Principle

The Falsification Principle was first developed by Anthony Flew and is an argument for religious language being useless. He used John Wisdom's "Parable of the Gardener" as an example.

In this parable, two people walk around a long neglected garden. One argues everything he see's is evidence for a gardener coming and organising everything, the other uses the same evidence to prove that it is not a gardener at all, the garden is working of itself or even that there has been some one maliciously destroying the garden. The first person, who beleives in a gardener ignores the others arguments holding to his own, despite obvious contradictions.

His point in this example is; despite proof you may offer a religious believer, they will either twist it or ignore it. Flew argues that "to assert something is to deny something else", therefore, the existence of God must be based upon what we know, not what we beleive.

The Falsification Principle accepts a statement is verifiable if it is know what empiracle evidence could count against it or prove it wrong. For example, "Aliens live on Saturn" is a meaningful statment because we know how to verify it. Religious statements however have no exact way of being verified.

Criticisms of The Falsification Principle
R. M. Hare agreed that the Falsification principle could go some way to verifying cognitive statements (e.g. 2+2=4, "Greg is six foot tall") but it could no prove that religious statments were meaning less. Religious statements can't be called factual on the whole but they are not meaningless because they can effect our perception of the world. He gave the example of a Student at university who thought that the Don's were trying to kill him. He refused any evidence offered against this theory. It did not matter that the plot wasn't true, it effected his view of university and was therefore meaningful.

Basil Mitchell said that Flew had missed the point when he argued that beleivers will accept no evidence against their belief. Religious beleivers have a prior commitment to trust in God based on faith . For this reason they do not to let things undermine their faith. Beleivers instead have to look for evidence which will let them accept injustices in the world. God being all loving and allowing suffering for example.

Reply 2

Tegid

Verification Principle

Verification Principle is nice and easy, it follows on from Work you may have done in Ethics concerning Ayer and Emotivism or Hare on Prescriptivism (not much between them to be honest).

Verification Principle was developed by Logical Positivists working a group called The Vienna Circle. They beleived that there were two types of meaningful statement, and anything else was meaningless.

Analytical statements (a priori) - "2+2=4"
- "The Queen is a female monarch"

These statements are true by definition, by thought alone, like a priori argument (think Ontological).

Synthetic Statements (a posteriori) - "Greg is 6ft tall."
- "Lucy has no friends."
These statements can be verified if we meet and measure Greg or if we interview and follow poor Lucy; they are true evidencially, be it by experience or evidence.

A.J. Ayer furthered the work of the logical positivists by stating that there were two sub categories of verfication namely "weak verification" and "weak verfication".

Strong verification - we can see it or feel it or experience it somehow. Like visiting Greg or Lucy.

Weak Verification - "it is possible for experience to render it probable" (in the words of Ayer). For example, we can not see that Columbus was the first to discover America (there is now much evidence to the contrary now) but we can trust historical records from the time.

Verification Principle renders any discussion of Art, Literature, Meta-ethics, God or Ethics meaningless as they can not be verified. Little harsh to be fair but they make their point well:

- Religious language is not based upon anything univocal so meaning of some concepts will be unclear.

- Religious language is equivocal because it is talking about a realm of infinite existence - - the result is different understandings of the words used. "Heaven" for example or "love", you will find thousands of contrasting descriptions.

Critisisms
- The Principle is not meaningful as it can not verify itself.

- John Hick argues that the existence of God is verified when we die. This is eschathological verification. He is saying that such religious statement can be verified.

- Weak Verification leads some religious statements to be true. Historical records which count towards the propositions for example; Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah, or Jesus rose from the dead on the first Sunday of Easter

Reply 3

FadedJade

You want to read Popper on the falsification principle, not Flew.

I don't know what exactly you need to know for Alevel, but I will make additions to whats above, guessing that that is what you need to focus on.

Verification principle, while from the Vienna Circle, is based on Hume: "our beliefs, if justifed, are justified im experience." This means only empirical statements that can be pointed to in experience are verifiable. The exception is a priori statements as they are 'true by definition.'

You cannot verify the past. The principle needs to be modified in order to verify the future.

Religious stuff - Originally verificationists conceded to religion as it was physically based, naturally most theists would reject this. You cannot infer non-visible things (ie God) from visible things (ie so called religious expierences) unless there is a prior connection between them, as there is between smoke and fire.

If you need any more help just let me know.

Reply 4

meera18may

Wow thanks for posting thse up because i hadn't written notes on these! You guys are great!

Reply 5

mark_t

this is my notes on the topic... hope it helps.

Both religious and metaphysical language have difficulties in speaking about a being that transcends outside of space and time, whereby holding this ‘being’ within our universe, with the finite language as a metaphorical net, creates endless problems.

A group of Logical Positivists understood these problems, however, disregard the truth or falsity of these metaphysical statements, deeming them meaningless. They believe that only statements being able to be proven empirically, through sense experience is capable of showing meaning, everything else is opinion based, and as AJ Ayer advocated, a projection of ones own emotions within a topic, rendering it meaningless.

A group of logical positivists regularly in Vienna to discuss equivocal approaches to religious and metaphysical language; accordingly they became known as the Vienna Circle.

The logical positivist programme centred around, fittingly, the title of one of Carnap’s critical essays, “the elimination of metaphysics through the logical analysis of languages”. They believed that once people were no longer plagued by metaphysical nonsense (the termed used for something opposing logical sense), they could understand empirical verification. Once a person is able to remove metaphysical irrelevance from everyday life, they could apply the verification principle to situations.

The verification principle asserts that a statement is meaningful if it is purely formal, including three imperative sections: quantity or number, modulo modern maths, and logic. These three topics all have meaning, as they can be proven empirically. A statement such as “the cardinal number 3 is the class of all triplets” is a statement capable of being proven through sense experience, and empiricism. In contrast, “the Nothing nihilates” is based on religious dogma, proving to be reasonably meaningless, thus irrelevant. Carnap believes that each person will endeavour in metaphysical thinking, however this should not carry into statements of empirical necessity. Instead it should be expressed through poetry, thus ridding a person of these metaphysical urges.

Once a person puts aside the urges, can one apply the principles of verification in everyday life, yet problems arise, such as which statements are capable of verification. Similarly, the VP is vague, not detailing what the outcome should entail, enforcing its subtleness, whereby this practice gets nowhere.

It can also be said that the VP defeats its own rules, whereby empirical studies such as science and history are based on theory or a continuation of stories that were luckily written down. As a result, there are no advocates within the modern day that agree to the terms in the VP, where David Stove appropriately stated that this formation is “the black comedy of the history of philosophy”.

Through the failure of the VP, came the Falsification Principle, where in order for a statement to be meaningful, there must be room for it to be falsified.

Karl Popper cites that science is more concerned with the falsification of hypothesis than verification. Through this, Flew applies the FP to religious language, understanding it to be nonsensical utterances, showing little significance.

He concluded with this statement after he gave his version of the parable of the gardener. He believes that religious believers leave no room for its falsity, and relies on God’s epistemic distance to deny any accusations of His inabilities or lack of goodness. Statements about God thus, “die a death of a thousand qualifications”.

add in some RM Hare, eschatological verification, mitchell, and a decent essay is made :smile: