Religious language: Hume and Logical Positivists

(Originally written April 10, 2007 in Book 25)

Class Notes

Problem of religious language

Equivocal - a term means separate things
Univocal - a term means the same thing

Problems with equivocal language is that if it means something other than what we are familiar with than we are speaking meaninglessly.

Problem with univocal language is that how can a finite term be applied to an infinite concept of God?

David Hume

How do words get their meaning?
- Sensory impression

How do I know the meaning of the word "house"? I have seen a house.

How do I know the meaning of the word "blue"? I have seen blue things.

The sensory impression gives meaning to the word describing it

Hume's Fork:

Metaphysics: any term that can not be grounded in experience is utterly meaningless and nonsense. Consign it to the flames.

In order for a word to be meaningful it must be based on an antecedent sensory impression. The problem with this thesis of Hume's is there isn't a single word in this thesis that is based on an antecedent sensory impression.

Vienna Circle

Moritz Schlick (leader): in order for philosophy to make progress it must model itself after the natural sciences and become empirically verifiable.

- Rudolf Carnap, Karl Popper, Kurt Gödel

The Vienna Circle created the philosophy of logical positivism by expanding Humean notions.

Instead of focusing on words/terms they focused on propositions.

A proposition is meaningful if it meets the principle of verifiability.

Principle of verifiability - a sentence is meaningful if they are a) not analytic and b) in principle verifiable.

Under logical positivism metaphysics was rendered (by them) as meaningless and nonsense.

Ethical language is also nonsense. It is purely emotive.

Religions or theological concepts are also nonsense.

In a sense the logical positivists are atheistic, but the atheist would deny God's existence and the logical positivist would state that any denial of the existence of God is as meaningless as any affirmation of God.

The problem with logical positivism is that its basis (the verifiability principle) is not verifiable on its own grounds.

A. J. Ayer claimed that the principle and thought structures are meaningful despite not meeting their criteria.

Strong verifiability principle: a statement is meaningful if it is derived from an observation statement.
Observation -> Proposition

Weak Verification principle: an observation statement can be inferred from a statement
Proposition -> inference -> observation