“Religious Language is meaningless” Analyse and evaluate this claim with reference to the verification and falsification debates. (35 marks) Religious Language is language used to talk about God and other religious beliefs. Religious language is known to be cognitive as it can make a positive statement be proved true or false. However on the other hand, Religious language could be seen as non-cognitive as some statements could be misinterpreted, for example, majority rather than a minority in some cases could act out religious and cultural beliefs within society. The verification principle had originated from philosophers in a group called ‘The Vienna Circle” where they believed that dome statements were meaningful and some simply were not, they distinguished these statements by coming up with a theory called, The verification principle.
Rational knowledge is often derived from syllogisms. Unless both the major and minor premises of syllogisms are sound, the logical conclusions drawn from the rational thoughts are unsound. Scientists cannot rely on rational knowledge alone because rational knowledge involved only form and not content (Jackson, 2009). Empirical knowledge is gained through objective observations and a person’s experience in relation to his or her senses (Jackson, 2009). A person who relies on empirical knowledge only believes what can be detected by his/her senses (sight, sound, taste, etc.).
Skepticism makes a person questions ideas toward multiple things such as knowledge or opinions that are stated as if it is true like facts. Rene Descartes argument for skepticism is to not believe every doubt that you give yourself. In his words "withstand all doubt because the evidence of our senses sometimes misleads us, it does not provide a secure basis for knowledge. We cannot be certain that we are awake and not dreaming." His argument can be argued because people have senses that can guide them to doubt themselves by the way people talk to them or other people actions.
From this Moore claimed that it is impossible to derive an ‘is from an ought’. This criticism became known as the naturalistic fallacy. In addition to this G.E Moore claimed that naturalism was not able to stand up to the open question argument. ethical naturalism claims to be based on moral facts, it would therefore seem logical that these facts should stand up to scrutiny. Yet, if we observe that pleasure is good, we should be able to ask is good pleasure.
Innate knowledge is a view (that rationalists share) that claims that humans are born with information about the world which isn’t learned through sense experience, we gain this knowledge a priori. Empiricists (like John Locke) say that innate knowledge and ideas do not exist, when we are born the mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate) and we gain knowledge and Ideas through sense experience and if we have no experience of the world therefore it is impossible for us to possess any knowledge. Kant argues that we need innate knowledge and sense experience. Kant was a transcendental idealist. He was an idealist in the sense that we are aware of the real world and a transcendent because he thought that ultimate reality goes beyond our sense experience.
McCloskey contended against the three mystical verifications, which are the cosmological argument, the argument from design and the teleological argument. He called attention to the presence of evil on the planet that God made. He likewise called attention to that it is irrational to live by trust or faith. As indicated by McCloskey, confirmations do not essentially assume a fundamental part in the conviction of God. Page 62 of the article expresses that "most theists do not come to have faith in God as a premise for religious conviction, however come to religion as a consequence of different reasons and variables."
“Logos” describes a kind of truth that strives for objectivitythrought the use of critical reason, while “mythos” describes a truth whose purpose is to overcome our subjective sense of separateness from the world and other living beings. Though past societies understood the distinction betwwn the two, Armstrong contends that in our time both skeptics and religious people treat mythos as a set of objective claims. After reading “Homo Religiosus,” the concept of keeping mythos separate from logos is impossible to
Philosophy, much like science provides so many questions, but the only proofs that can be shown with philosophy are assumptions. Science concludes that dreams are thoughts or memories we recount when we sleep and although the experiences are not real, the emotions attached to them are. Although there is not a definite conclusion to dreaming, that does not disregard the science behind what scientists have found from experiments. Descartes’ dream argument states that he cannot know dream from reality and that he could be dreaming without knowing. To those who doubt that assumption he tries to use God as an example of a deceiver, stating that God has the power to deceive our view of the world (reality).
As such it useless by itself because it reasoning only can make decisions based on what the mind considers as practical and sound, (Stewart 433). However if there is no past experiences to draw from, or present perceptions to take in, reasoning what is good or bad cannot be determined. It is the purpose of this essay to highlight the positive and negative aspects of using reasoning as a way of knowing. Reasoning is a good way to make a logical decision as it can be conclusive. Deductive reasoning can be a great example of this conclusiveness.
Rationalism is the theory that some of our human knowledge comes from the reason, unaided by the senses. Basically rationalists believed that the truth could be broken down into two types, by using different logics. The first logic is called the law of contradiction, which means how we decide that to be false which involves contradiction and that to be true which contradicts or is opposed to the false. The second logic is called the law of the excluded middle, which means any statement made is either true or its contradiction is true, there is no middle ground. For example, in the book in chapter 2 on page 58, a statement is made that’’ two plus two equals four’’.