Religous Language Flashcards
(21 cards)
What does aquanias say about everyday language?
We can never speak about god using everyday language because that is all we have.
What is equivocal language?
The use of the same word to mean completely different when applied to different objects.
What is univocal language?
A word is applied to 2 different things but means the same when applied to both. Implies that god and creatures are similar and undermines the transcendent nature of god.
What is analogical language?
What is the bull example?
Illustrates there is a link between the creator and the created. You can determine the health of a bull by examining its urine but this is only a reflection of the bulls overall health. In the same way god is the source of qualities in the universe.
What is logical positivism?
David Hume influenced the theory, as he believed that all of our ideas are based on sensations or experiences.
What is the verification principle?
Ayer’s version essentially holds that for a statement to be meaningful, it must be either empirically verifiable or logically necessary.
What is the falsification principle?
Flew’s falsification principle is a critique of religious claims and emphasises the need for claims to be falsifiable (i.e., capable of being proven false) to be considered meaningful. His principle is often seen as a response to A.J. Ayer’s verification principle.
What are the features of logical positivism?
The fundamental principle of logical positivism was that only those propositions which can be verified empirically have meaning. Only analytic and synthetic propositions are forms of verifiable language.
The work of the logical positivists, state that we know the meaning of a statement if we know the conditions under which the statement is true or false.
Scientific statements are meaningful because they are based on observable facts and can be tested through experimentation and observation. Thus, the natural sciences were considered the model for all meaningful discourse.
What are the critsisms of logical positivism?
Limitations on Knowledge: Critics argue that by excluding metaphysical, ethical, and theological statements as meaningless, logical positivism narrows the scope of meaningful discourse and excludes large areas of human experience, such as morality, art, and religion, which many believe are important parts of life.
Problems with Verification: The requirement that statements must be empirically verifiable faces difficulties, especially for abstract concepts or scientific theories that may not be directly observable (e.g., quantum mechanics or future events). This has led to challenges in applying the verification principle in a consistent manner.
What are the key elects of the verification principle?
Empirical Verification: According to Ayer, a statement is meaningful if it can be verified by sensory experience (i.e., through observation or experiment). For example, statements like “The sky is blue” or “Water boils at 100°C” are meaningful because they can be tested through observation. Ayer argued that statements about the empirical world must be capable of being confirmed or disconfirmed through experience. If we cannot imagine how a statement could be verified through sensory data, then it is meaningless in Ayer’s view.
Logical or Analytical Statements: The verification principle also includes logical or tautological statements, such as mathematical truths or logical statements. These are considered meaningful because they are true by definition and are self-evident through their logical structure.
What does Ayer consider meaningless?
Metaphysical Statements: Ayer believed that many traditional philosophical or theological statements were meaningless because they could not be verified empirically or were not logically necessary.
Ethical Statements: Ethical and moral statements like “Murder is wrong” are subjective and based on individual emotions or social conventions rather than empirical verification. According to Ayer, such statements are expressions of personal attitudes or feelings, not factual claims, and thus are not “cognitively meaningful” in the same way that empirically verifiable claims are.
What does Ayer consider meaningful?
Synthetic Statements: These are statements that can be empirically verified. For example, “The Earth orbits the Sun” is a synthetic statement because it can be confirmed through observation and scientific evidence.
Analytic Statements: These are statements that are true by definition or logically necessary.
What are the cristisms of the verification principle?
Self regulation: The principle itself is not verifiable, and as the principle claims that only verifiable statements are meaningful the principle therefore is not meaningful.
Difficulty in Applying: The requirement for empirical verification is difficult to apply in certain cases, such as theoretical scientific claims. statements are not directly observable, but they are supported by empirical evidence in other ways, and many philosophers argue that they are still meaningful.
What are the key elects of the falsification principle?
Falsifiability as a Criterion for Meaning: According to Flew, for a statement to be meaningful, it must be falsifiable—that is, there must be some possible observation or event that could prove the statement to be false.
The Parable of the Gardener: The story involves two people observing a garden. One insists that a gardener tends to the garden, while the other doubts it because there’s no visible evidence of a gardener. The first person responds that the gardener must be invisible, imperceptible, or undetectable in some way. Eventually, the doubter points out that no matter how much they qualify the gardener’s invisibility, there is still no evidence of the gardener’s existence, and the claim becomes meaningless.
What are the critisms of the falsification principle?
The Role of Faith: Some argue that religious claims, especially about the divine, are not intended to be subject to empirical testing in the way scientific claims are.
The Challenge of “Unfalsifiability”: Critics of Flew argue that not all meaningful statements can be tested in the same way. Some argue that Flew’s strict requirement for falsifiability excludes too many important areas of human experience.
What is the theory of language games?
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN.
Just as football players understand their individual rules, and how rugby players understand their individual sport rules, so do religious people understand the language of religion.
He claimed that language is a tool for expressing meaning and meaning was found in the way in which language was used, “the meaning of a word is its use in language”.
What are the key features of the language games?
Language as a Social Activity: Wittgenstein suggests that language is a kind of social activity. Just as games are activities that people engage in with specific rules, language is a system of communication that we use in various ways depending on the context or situation. Each “game” has its own set of rules or conventions for how language is used.
Meaning is Use: One of Wittgenstein’s famous sayings is that “meaning is use.” He argued that the meaning of a word or phrase is determined by how it is used in particular contexts. This shifts away from the idea that words have fixed, inherent meanings and instead suggests that meanings are shaped by the social practices in which they are employed.
No Fixed Essence of Language: Wittgenstein rejects the idea of a universal essence or set of necessary and sufficient conditions that define the meaning of a word. Instead, the meaning of a word can vary depending on the context in which it is used. There is no single, rigid definition that fits all uses of a word; instead, words take on different meanings in different situations based on the rules of the language game at play.
What are the critisms of the language games?
PJ Clarke: claims it fails to address the critical question of the objective truth of religious language. If god only exists in the mind of the believer, then religious language cannot be what it claims to be. He also points of that there is a non-realist understanding of god which reduced believers faith to a mere mind game, this would ,ale it an unfaithful representation of what religious language means. If god has no objective existence then it makes no sense to believe in Him or speak about Him.
What is the tool box analogy for language games?
The functions of all the tools in the tool box “are as diverse as the functions of these objects”, without knowing the different functions of the tools, understanding is only superficial.
