Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Phil HL - Religious Language - The
Verification Principle
- A sentence is meaningful if...
- it is a tautology (true by definition)
- Can be proved true/false, even if only in principle
- There is life on other planets
- Verifiable by sense experience
- Religious Statements
- Can't be verified
- The soul is reborn
- There is life after death
- Don't talk about observable things/properties in the world
- Don't make sense without context
- Depend on the reader's beliefs
- Are useful in picturing the character of Christ (his qualities)
- Helpful in understanding Christian theology: principles valued, importance of Christ
- Cosmological argument
- can be verified to a certain extent (beginning of the universe) but not before that
- Criticisms
- The statement itself is not meaningful
- Can't be verified by sense experience
- Sentences that are meaningful to us can be dismissed
- I love you
- I had a weird dream
- all ravens are black - can be falsified in principle therefore meaningless
- beauty is subjective - can't be empirically falsified/verified
- historical events sometimes can't be empirically verified by our senses/observations
- A statement...
- can be verified depending on whether you can check it with empirical evidence
- It is currently snowing
- Cognitive (realist) Language
- Factual statements, can be verified with empirical evidence
- Non cognitive Language
- Context dependent, can't be verified/falsified
- Symbols, myths, metaphors
- Analytical statements
- true by definition, can't be false because of wording
- Mathematical statements
- incorrect only because of human error, can be recalculated
- Synthetic statements
- are verifiable/falsifiable by empirical evidence
- Verification (A. J. Ayer
- Practical Verifiability
- a statement can be tested in reality, in practise
- Verifiability in Principle
- we can, but lack the ability
- strong
- can be verified conclusively
- weak
- can be shown to be probable through observation