Hick’s Eschatological Verification Response Flashcards
(9 cards)
Who was John Hick?
A British Philosopher of Religion
Did Hick take a congnitive or non cognitive approach to religious language and what does this mean?
-Hick took a cognitive approach
-A cognitive approach to religious language means treating religious statements as truth-claims—statements that aim to describe facts about reality and can be considered true or false
-In this view, religious language is not just symbolic, emotional, or expressive, but meaningful in a factual sense, even if it cannot be verified right now
What did John Hick believe about religious language?
-John Hick takes a cognitive approach to religious language, arguing that statements like “there is life after death” are meaningful because they can be eschatologically verified, meaning verified after death
-He believed that religious language makes truth-claims about reality, even if they cannot be verified immediately
What was Hick’s traveler analogy?
-His analogy of two travellers on a road, one believes it leads to the Celestial City and the other does not. Hick says, “in the end, one of them will be proved right”
-This shows that religious claims, particularly about the afterlife, are not meaningless or purely symbolic but refer to real possibilities that could eventually be confirmed
How is Hick’s reponse a direct response to the VP?
-Hick’s view directly challenges the Vienna Circle’s Verification Principle, which claimed that only statements verifiable through logic or sense experience are meaningful
-Hick shows that some religious statements may be verifiable in the future, even if not now, proving that they still have meaningful content
-By affirming that faith statements are grounded in the possibility of future truth, Hick defends their place in rational and philosophical discussion
What is a strength of Hick’s approach?
-Another key aspect of Hick’s cognitive approach is that it allows religious language to be treated as serious and meaningful communication about reality
-Instead of seeing statements like “God exists” or “there is a heaven” as symbolic or emotional, Hick views them as claims that aim to describe real aspects of the world
-This means they can be discussed, explored, and potentially verified
How might Hick’s view be stronger than Hare’s ?
-His view stands in contrast to non-cognitive theories such as R. M. Hare’s concept of “bliks,” which treats religious language as personal and unfalsifiable ways of seeing the world
-While Hare’s approach protects belief from criticism, it also removes it from meaningful debate
-Hick avoids this by keeping religious language within the boundaries of reason and truth
-By arguing that religious claims are truth-claims, Hick supports the idea that religious language has value beyond personal expression, giving it a meaningful role in philosophy and theology
What is a weakness of Hick’s view?
-A key weakness in Hick’s argument for eschatological verification is highlighted by Antony Flew, who famously said that religious claims “die the death of a thousand qualifications”
-Flew criticises Hick’s position by arguing that if a claim like “there is life after death” cannot be falsified, it loses its status as a meaningful factual assertion
-Hick suggests that such a claim could be verified if the believer wakes up after death, but Flew points out that if the claim is false, the person will never wake up to realise this, meaning it can never actually be proven wrong
-This, for Flew, makes Hick’s claim more like a hopeful conviction than a proper cognitive statement, because meaningful assertions must be open to falsification
What is Hick’s “experience as” concept?
-Hick’s concept of ‘experiencing-as’ supports his eschatological verification theory by emphasising that all experience is filtered through interpretation
-For Hick, religious experiences—like seeing Jesus as the Son of God or understanding suffering through a theological lens—require a framework of faith to make sense
-Just as a scientist sees a graph “as” a pattern of data or an artist sees a painting “as” a masterpiece, the believer interprets religious events through faith
-This gives religious language epistemic value, meaning it can count as a form of knowledge for those within the faith context
-So instead of being meaningless, religious claims can be seen as rational interpretations of experience, grounded in a different (but valid) way of knowing
-This strengthens his response to verificationism and falsificationism, which both rely heavily on an empirical, scientific view of truth
