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Verificationism
'A proposition is only meaningful if it can be verified by sense experience'
^'the statue is beautiful' is meaningless
^religious language is meaningless
Ayer:
-people make propositions that are meaningful to them, but the only propositions meaningful generally are those that can be verified
Practical verifiability: statements can be tested in reality
Principle verifiability: statements verifiable in the long term
Strong verification: things that can be verified by sense experience
Weak verification: things shown to be probable
^ayer then acknowledged that there was little difference
Weaknesses of verification:
-shrodingers cat: it is possible for a statement to be meaningful without being verifiable
-the definition of verification is unverifiable in itself
-Wittgenstein: verification is more suited to the physical world than to belief
Falsification
A proposition is only meaningful if it can be falsified by sense experience
^this is a way to demarcate scientific statements from other types of statements (ie gravity vs astrology)
^religious statements are not meaningful
Flew (the parable of the gardener):
-believers will allow nothing to falsify their beliefs, like the gardener
-God talk is meaningless and unfalsifiable
Hare and Mitchell respond to Hume:
Hare (the lunatic and bliks):
-bliks are not falsifiable and do not make factual claims
-bliks are meaningful to the individual
Mitchell (the story of the gardener):
-belief in God requires significant faith, like the persons belief in the stranger
^tpoe does not stop believers believing
-the strangers arbitrary actions resemble gods
-theists are not blind to the problems of faith, but their faith is larger than this
Via negativa
God is a transcendent being beyond human comprehension, therefore God can only be spoken about in negative terms
Plotinus: links to plates form of the good:
-the form is separate and beyond, this helps to understand how ineffable God is
-we cannot talk about God with our language as God is transcendent and this anthropomorphises him
Maimonides: the only positive statement that can be made about God is that he exists
Weaknesses:
-the vicious circle: surely talking about the negative also implies the positive
-what is God: if we keep stating what God is not, is he anything at all?
Wittgenstein
'Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must remain silent'
^you cannot understand a language game unless you are part of it
-meaning of words are determined by the game, thus meaningful if spoken about correctly within the game
-religious terminology is meaningful within the language game of religion
-fideism: faith is more important than reason, if no one outside of the game can understand, no statement can be falsified, all language is meaningless
-external rationality: no external rationality prevents any type of debate
Myths (bultmann)
"Myth is that manner of representation in which the unworldly and divine appears as the worldly and human"
Religious myth: a story in which God is seen to act in a human manner
^this causes people to loss sight of the meaning of the story
Bultmann:
-bultmann looks for the kergyma (proclamation) which is what theology attempts to communicate
^presents the issue of mythology, myths obscure the kergyma
-the bible needs to be demythologised to find the meaning
Weakness of Bultmann:
-gadamer: attempting to find the kergyman is in vain, we cannot achieve an objective view of text since we can't except we our prejudice
Analogy
Aquinas:
Language means something concrete when applied to God, however it does not mean the same as when applied to humans
Univocal language: means the same no matter how it is applied
Equivocal language: different meaning when applied to different things
Analogy of attribution: some words can be used for God and Humans and mean the same, these are part of Gods nature or judge
Analogy of proportion: 'dog is good'- the dog is a proportion of good, 'God is good' God is the whole of good
^we don't fully understand what is meant by the whole of a term so we use analogy
Weaknesses of analogy:
-analogy assumes similarity between God and humanity, it is difficult to see how our language can describe an ineffable God
Models and qualifiers- Ramsey
-words tell us something about God but not everything (like models)
^models need to be qualified to gain insight
'God is good' -model
^this concept of good is different to the human concept of good - qualifier
-religious language is model that leads to a better understanding of God when qualified
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