The Meaningfulness of Religious Language MS Bolden

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One of the interesting aspects of Flew’s theory of falsification is that it was originally proposed at a symposium examining new theological issues, and was therefore immediately responded to by R.M. Hare and Basil Mitchell. Both responses reveal crucial weaknesses of the falsification argument. R.M. Hare agrees with Flew that religious assertions are ultimately unfalsifiable, but disagrees regarding the connection between an assertion’s falsifiability and its cognitive meaningfulness; he illustrates his point through his parable of the madman-student who is constantly fearful of the dons.Through his illustration, Hare introduces the idea of a blik, an assertion about reality by an individual that is unfalsifiable, but inherently meaningful:

“Let us call that in which we differ from this lunatic, our respective bliks. He has an insane blik about dons; we have a sane one. It is important to realize that we have a sane one, not no blik at all; for there must be two sides to anyargument if he has a wrong blik, then those who are right about dons must have a right one. Flew has shown thata blik does not consist in an assertion or system of them; but nevertheless, it is very important to have the right blik.”(Flew).

Although it is clear that Hare’s theory has weaknesses of its own, it is important to note that he demonstrates a feasible example of an assertion that is simultaneously unfalsifiable and cognitively meaningful, if only for the person harbouring the blik. Whereas Flew understands assertions as necessarily equal to the denials of the negations of assertions, Hare contends that “The mistake of theposition which Flew selects for attack is to regard this kind of talk as some sort of
explanation,”(Flew).

Mitchell’s Response to Flew

The response to Flew by Basil Mitchell offers another perspective on the connection between falsification and meaning. Mitchell begins his piece with a dual assertion:

“Flew’s article is searching and perceptive, but there is, I think, something odd about his conduct of the theologian’s case. The theologian surely would not deny the fact of pain counts against the assertion that God loves men. This very incompatibility generates the most intractable of theological problems – the problem of evil.

“So the theologian does recognise the fact of pain as counting against Christian doctrine. But it is true that he willnot allow it–or anything – to count decisively against it; for he is committed by faith to trust in God. His attitude is not that of the detached believer, but of the believer.” (Flew).

Mitchell here essentially agrees with both Hare and Flew: religious claims, or “theological utterances,” are essentially assertions that are unfalsifiable; he claims that although religious belief is faced with a challenge that is essentially a falsification (i.e. the problem of evil) religious believers will not allow for anything to count against belief. Mitchell presents three ways unfalsifiable theological utterances, such as ‘God loves men,’ may be treated:

“(i) As provisional hypotheses to be discarded if experience tells against them; (s) As significant articles of faith; (3)As vacuous formulae (expressing, perhaps, a desire for reassurance) to which experience makes no difference and which make no difference to life.” (Flew).

Mitchell here is arguing that religious statements a person might make can be divided between three different types of statements: 1) statements that are contingent upon empirical evidence, 2)statements that are based in a metaphysical understanding of meaning as well as a staunch personal commitment to a particular belief system, and 3) statements of reassurance that are more closely related to superstitions that religious claims, a point D.Z. Phillips discusses extensively in his article Dislocating the Soul.

This division between different types of religious statements will be an important part of my personal critique of falsification later in the paper.

Wittgenstein, High, and Falsification

Utilising Wittgensteinian philosophical concepts, Dallas M. High discounts the theoreticalfoundations of falsification theory as well as its applicability to separate forms of life. High is verycritical of the recent philosophical undertakings in the field of religious language:

“Discussions of “religious language” have in general during the past decade or two contributed to the pollution problem by throwing up smoke screens concerning verifiability and falsifiability of religious claims, prescriptive schemes of language, truth, symbolic uses versus literal uses, cognitive/non-cognitive demarcations, and the nature of self-verifying language-games or self-contained universes of discourse.”(High).

Like Wittgenstein, High is worried about the practicality of philosophical investigations of religious language, even going so far as disagreeing with the use of the concept of “religious language”; “At best the concept “religious language”…is dangerously misleading. We cannot be talking about a hermetically sealed universe of talk or a complete type of discourse,”

It is with this frank criticism which he turns to falsification; he argues that the logic of falsification is too general and does not take into consideration “in practice”” understanding of language. High makes a strong accusationof falsification: “…
the falsifiability focal point is making a peculiar categorical demand on religious assertion-expressions that does not even, in fact, obtain in the function of scientific activity,” (High)

Making a side-track into philosophy of science,  sources two philosophers, Thomas Kuhn and Leonard Nash, who conceive falsification to be incongruent with scientific understanding. QuotingThomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:

“No process yet disclosed by the historical study of scientific development at all resembles the methodological stereotype of falsification by direct comparison with nature.”

So, it is clear that the theory of falsification, at the very least, is inconsistent with traditional historical scientific processes. Quoting Leonard Nash, High empathises functional criteria as a standard forlogical verification as opposed to falsification:

“Having observed the inexhaustible resources that can be brought to the defense of the given theory, we see that no crucial experiment can force on us a final absolute falsification of the theory….All possibility of strictly logical verification or falsification being denied us, we must in the end look to the functional criteria”

Nash is making a case for deriving “disinformation” from “psychological and sociological impact” rather than the falsifiability of a statement.The value of an idea isn’t derived from its falsifiability, but from its practical value. The nature of language, as proposed by Wittgenstein and defended by High, necessitates that we understand language both “in principle” and “in practice. Falsification is a theory that is inconsistent with scientific verification practices, ignores the complexity of language and language-in-use, and severely limits not only religious assertions but scientific assertions as well.