VERIFICATIONISM / FALSIFICATION PRINCIPLE

VERIFICATIONISM / FALSIFICATION PRINCIPLE

1. VERIFICATIONISM

   • Ayer's rejection of metaphysics - "no statement which refers to a 'reality transcending the limits of all possible sense-experience can possibly have any literal significance" (Language, Truth and Logic 1936)
   • STRONG - 'practical verifiability' - according to strong verificationism, statements must be able to be verified conclusively by observation and experience (practically)
     • DIRECTLY VERIFIABLE - to solve the problem with distinguishing 'weak' from 'strong verification, Ayer proposed the differences between directly verifiable statements (strong verification) and indirectly verifiable ones (weak verification)
   • Synoptic Link - RE - Ayer would say that St. Paul's RE is nothing more than recounting a set of religious emotions
     • NOTE: Ayer actually had a NDE!!!! Revise for Religious Experience!!!
   • WEAK - 'verifiability in principle' - Ayer later realised that Strong Verification 'had no possible application'
     • INDIRECTLY VERIFIABLE - not verifiable by sense observation or tautology, bur rather as being a statement which can be supported by a secondary, directly verifiable one
   • Logical Positivist/Vienna Circle Movement (1924-1936)

2. FALSIFICATION

   • Falsification is the philosophical theory that an assertion is meaningless if there is no way in which it can be falsified.
     • Criticism: isn't this contradictory in itself? If something cannot be falsified then does this not necessitate the absolute truth or meaning of such a thing?
   • KARL POPPER
     • 2 KINDS OF STATEMENT - scientific (falsifiable) and unscientific (irrefutable, i.e. of religious, metaphysical or pseudo-scientific character)
     • QUOTE - "statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable, observations"
   • FLEW - PARABLE OF THE GARDENER
     • QUOTE ' "if there is nothing which a putative assertion denies then there is nothing which it asserts either: and so it is not really an assertion." (Flew, Theology and Falsification)
     • Two gardeners come across a garden after a clearing in a jungle. The 'believer' asserts that there must be a gardener who tends to the garden, the other disagrees. They set up apparatus and go to great lengths to try and catch the gardener but are wholly unable to. The believer nonetheless is still convinced there is a gardener.
     • R.M. HARE'S RESPONSE (CRITICISM)
       • BLIKS - the way in which we see the world
       • Using Flew's parable of the garden, there is no sense in which the religious believer will accept any kind of evidence that could be said to falsify his beliefs. Rather than agreeing that this then makes such statements meaningless, Hare responded in saying that our respective bliks are our worldviews
         • QUOTE - "The mistake of the position which Flew selects for attack is to regard this kind of talk as some sort of explanation"
           • "as Hume saw, without a blik there can be no explanation; for it is by our bliks that we decide what is and what is not an explanation"

3. CRITICISMS OF VERIFICATIONISM

   • SWINBURNE (1934-) - strong verificationism is 'generally agreed to be false'
   • UNVERIFIABLE - the concept of statements only being meaningful by sense observation is, in itself unverifiable (leaving the only things verifiable as analytic statements/tautologies)
   • JOHN HICK (1922-2012) - ESCHATOLOGICAL VERIFICATIONISM
   • WITTGENSTEIN- 'GROUNDLESS BELIEFS' - not a massive criticism but the idea that
   • EXCLUDES UNIVERSAL STATEMENTS - Swinburne points out that just as you cannot use strong verificationism to verify that 'all ravens are black at all times', you cannot directly verify any universals because there is always the possibility that the event could occur differently.
   • REJECTS HISTORICAL EVIDENCE AS MEANINGLESS - no historical evidence can be empirically verified because it is no longer verifiable empirically
     • COUNTER - Ayer's weak verification allows for historical evidence to be verified by turning to secondary evidence
       • QUOTE - weak verification is 'the only sense in which any proposition could conceivably be verified' - A.J. Ayer
   • WEAK VERIFICATIONISM - no way of determining which evidence is verifiable or which evidence counts (Swinburne)

4. QUOTES

   • "the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability or refutability or testability." - KARL POPPER