Epistemology revision

Responses: add a ‘no false lemmas’ condition (J+T+B+N)

Responses: replace ‘justified’ with ‘reliably formed’ (R+T+B) (reliabilism)

Responses: replace ‘justified’ with an account of epistemic virtue (V+T+B).

Module content

Philosophy of Religion

The concept of God

Arguments for God’s existence

The Problem of Evil

Religious Language

Discussion

Many philosophers question whether talking about God has any real meaning, after all we cannot really know anything about God.

Does talking about God mean anything?

Booklets, p.52

Today’s lesson

You will learn how to explain the claims of logical positivism concerning verification and falsification

Key terms

You have been given a card containing a question and its answer

Pair up with someone else who has a different question from you

Ask your partner your question and tell them the answer

Swap cards and then find new partners to question / answer

Eventually you should know the answers to all the questions without being told

Key terms

Logical positivism

Verification

Falsification

Cognitivist

Non-cognitivist

Eschatological Verification

LOGICAL POSITIVISM:

THE VERIFICATION AND FALSIFICATION PRINCIPLES

Key term: Logical PositivismRefers to a philosophical movement in the twentieth century that sought to analyse religious and moral

language scientifically

Logical Positivism

Only two kinds of proposition are meaningful: analytic propositions (a priori – e.g. logic and tautologies)

e.g. monotremes are egg-laying mammals synthetic propositions (a posteriori - empirically testable statements)

e.g. a duck-billed platypus is a monotreme

Practice definition question

What is logical positivism? (2 marks)

Verification Principle

‘The criterion we use to test the

genuineness of apparent statements

of fact is the criterion of verifiability.’

A statement that cannot be verified is either meaningless

(i.e. not factually significant) or a tautology

Language about God is meaningless because we

cannot demonstrate its truth or falsity with sense

observation and experiments

Which of these statements could be verified by sense experience?

All humans are mortalThe Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066 All ravens are blackDavid Cameron is Prime MinisterMurder is wrongGod loves youWater boils at 100 degrees CelsiusGod created the worldBilborough College is in NottinghamBilborough college is wonderful

Verification Principle

Practical verifiability – can be tested in reality

Verifiability in principle – cannot be tested in reality

e.g. Man United play in red shirts

e.g. There is life on other planets in the Milky Way Galaxy

Verification Principle

Strong Verification Weak Verification

Can be verified conclusively through experience and observation

Can be shown to be probably true beyond any reasonable doubt by observation and experience

E.g. ‘There are students in the classroom.’

E.g. ‘WW2 ended in 1945.’

Verification Principle

Booklets, p.53What definition of the verification principle is

given on p.53? A proposition has meaning if and only if it is

possible in principle to make observations which would show the proposition to be true or false.

Practice question

Explain Ayer’s verification principle (5 marks)

Verification Principle – p.56

Arguments for Arguments against

Falsification Principle

Booklets, p.54What definition of the falsification principle is

given on p.54? Statements are meaningful if and only if there is

some way of falsifying them.

Imagine you have a friend who’s convinced Jennifer Lopez has romantic feelings for him…

‘Jennifer Lopez loves me’

‘Jennifer Lopez loves me (but she is playing hard to

get)’‘Jennifer Lopez loves me (but she is playing hard to

get and it is a deeply secret

love)’‘Jennifer Lopez loves me (but she is

playing hard to get, it is a deeply secret love and her entourage is conspiring to

prevent us from getting together)’

Falsification Principle

Antony Flew:A statement is meaningless if

there is no way it can be falsified

(Popper argues that falsifiability distinguishes science from non-science)

John Wisdom:The Parable of the Gardener

Death by a thousand qualifications

Discussion

Is the person who continues to believe in the existence of the gardener being reasonable?