Veri/falsi-fication & Wittgenstein: AQA A grade notes

AQA RS
Philosophy

AO1: Cognitive vs non-cognitive

The issue of whether religious language is cognitive or non-cognitive.
When words come out of someone’s mouth, they express a part of their mind.
If you say “The table is made of wood”, that expresses the part of the mind that contains beliefs.
Such language is cognitive.
If you are in pain and say “ouch”, that is not expressing the part of the mind which contains beliefs.
Such language is non-cognitive, expressing a feeling rather than a belief.
Some philosophers (Mitchell, Hick) argue that when a religious person says “God exists”, they are expressing a cognitive belief.
Others (Hare, Wittgenstein) argue it expresses a non-cognitive feeling or attitude.
This becomes a psychological question about the mindset behind religious utterances.
Whether religious people intend to refer to reality, or just express some spiritual attitude.
When a religious person says “God exists”, do they believe it or simply feel it?
The issue of whether religious language is meaningful or meaningless.
This is separate from the cognitive/non-cognitive debate.
Different philosophers have different theories of meaning.
Some think non-cognitive language can still be meaningful, while others think only cognitive language can.
For example, Hare thinks religious language is non-cognitive but meaningful because it affects behaviour.
However, Ayer argues that only cognitive statements are meaningful, claiming they must be verifiable.

AO1: Verificationism

Verificationism is the method of the logical positivists.
Positivism comes from Comte’s view that only empirical knowledge is valid, while ‘logical’ reflects the analytic focus on clarifying language.
The verification principle claims that for a statement to be factually significant (synthetic), it must be empirically verifiable.
We must know how to verify it as true or false through experience.
Ayer also allows analytic statements, such as maths and logic, as meaningful.
If a proposition is neither analytic nor empirically verifiable, it lacks ‘literal’ or cognitive significance.
Early verificationists held a ‘hard’ verification principle, where a statement is only meaningful if it can be conclusively verified.
However, Ayer argues this is too strict, since universal scientific laws cannot be verified with certainty.
He therefore introduces ‘weak’ verification, where a statement is meaningful if experience can show it is probably true or false.
However, weak verification risks allowing too much meaning, as many claims might appear indirectly supported by experience.
Ayer therefore refines his principle into direct and indirect verification.
Direct verification involves immediate observation, such as “I see a key”.
Indirect verification involves statements connected to experience that can be tested in principle, such as “this key is made of iron”.
Ayer distinguishes between what is verifiable in practice and in principle.
A statement is meaningful if we know there is some possible way to verify it, even if we cannot currently do so.
For example, claims about the dark side of the moon were once unverifiable in practice but verifiable in principle.
Religious language, referring to a metaphysical God, fails these tests and is therefore not meaningful.

AO1: Strength & weakness of Verificationism AO2 summary

Strength: Verificationism provides an intuitive standard for meaning that its connection to reality be at least in principle demonstrable.
Weakness: Religious language may still be meaningful if it is verifiable in principle, though such verification cannot be established for the afterlife.
Weakness: The verification principle appears self-defeating, as it is neither analytically true nor empirically verifiable.
Strength: The principle can be defended as a methodological tool rather than a paradoxically self-referential claim about its own meaning.
Strength: Verificationism reflects the straightforward interpretation of religious language as making claims about reality which at least aim at cognitive meaning.
Weakness: Non-cognitive theories suggest religious language does not aim to describe reality, so cannot be criticised as a failed attempt at verification.

AO1: Hick’s eschatological verification

Hick argued that there is a way to verify God and religious language, because when we die, we will see God and then know.
One strength of Hick’s approach is that he does not need to undermine verificationism itself, only Ayer’s claim that religious language is unverifiable.
Hick illustrates this with the parable of the celestial city.
Imagine two travellers, one a theist and the other an atheist.
They are walking along a road, representing life.
One believes a celestial city lies at the end, representing an afterlife and God, while the other does not.
Neither has reached the end before.
Hick concludes:
“Yet, when they turn the last corner, it will be apparent that one of them has been right all the time and the other wrong.”
The strength of Hick’s approach is that it uses Ayer’s claim that something can be verifiable in practice or in principle.
Ayer gave the example of mountains on the dark side of the moon as verifiable in principle.
Although not observed at the time, it was possible in principle to go and check.
Hick argues that religious language is also verifiable in principle, since it is possible to die and then ‘see’ God.

AO1: Strength & weakness of eschatological verificationism AO2 summary

Strength: Hick’s theory aligns with Christian beliefs in resurrection and an afterlife where God could be encountered.
Weakness: The theory is limited in scope, as not all religious views include an afterlife capable of providing such verification.
Strength: Hick successfully challenges Ayer by showing that religious claims could be verifiable in principle through post-mortem experience.
Weakness: The afterlife is not verifiable in principle in Ayer’s sense, since there is no known method or evidence that such verification is possible.
Strength: Hick only needs to show that religious language is possibly verifiable to undermine the claim that it is meaningless.
Weakness: Verification may be the wrong framework for religious language altogether, as non-cognitive approaches like Hare or Wittgenstein suggest.

AO2: Hick’s eschatological verification

Hick argues verificationism does not undermine religious language.
He accepts Ayer’s principle but claims religious statements are verifiable in principle.
After death, we would discover whether God and an afterlife exist.
Although this cannot be tested while alive, it could be verified eschatologically.
So, religious language may still meet Ayer’s requirement of verifiability in principle.

Counter

However, this assumes the afterlife exists as a place where verification could occur.
Ayer’s example of the dark side of the moon worked because we already knew it existed.
We also knew it could be reached and observed.
In contrast, we do not know that an afterlife exists or that it provides conditions for verification.
So Hick has not shown that religious claims are verifiable in principle.

Evaluation

Hick’s argument ultimately fails.
If death results in annihilation, there would be no moment of discovery or verification.
So religious claims would remain unverifiable.
Simply imagining possible verification is not enough.
We must have reason to believe the conditions for verification actually exist.
Without this, Hick’s proposal collapses into speculation.
Ayer’s principle is designed to exclude exactly this kind of unfounded metaphysical claim.
So Hick does not successfully defend religious language against verificationism.

AO2: Whether the verification principle passes its own test

The verification principle states that a statement is meaningful only if it is analytic or empirically verifiable.
However, this creates a problem.
For the principle itself to be meaningful, it must meet its own test.
It is not analytic, since it can be denied without contradiction.
It is also not empirically verifiable.
So, it appears to be meaningless by its own standard.

Counter

Ayer accepts this problem and responds that the principle is not a factual statement.
Instead, it is a methodological tool.
It is a rule adopted to distinguish meaningful empirical statements from others.
So, it does not need to be verified itself.

Evaluation

However, this response weakens Ayer’s position.
If the principle is only a tool, then it cannot be used to declare metaphysical or religious language meaningless in any absolute sense.
It simply reflects a chosen method, not an objective truth about meaning.
This means alternative approaches, such as rationalism, remain possible.
Ayer’s original aim was to dismiss metaphysics entirely, but this defence reduces his claim to a preference for empiricism.
So, the verification principle fails to justify its strong conclusions and loses much of its force.

AO1: Falsificationism

Popper argued that verificationism is not a correct account of empiricism.
Science does not work by looking for evidence that verifies a theory, but by making predictions which are falsifiable.
He illustrates this with Einstein’s prediction about Mercury’s orbit.
If observations had contradicted it, Einstein’s theory would have been falsified.
By contrast, Popper criticises Freudian and Marxist theories for interpreting all evidence as confirmation, making them unfalsifiable.
Antony Flew applies falsificationism to religious language.
Flew agrees religious language is cognitive, as it expresses beliefs attempting to assert something about the world.
However, these beliefs are unfalsifiable and so fail to say anything about reality.
Unlike Ayer, Flew does not claim religious language is meaningless in all senses, but that it fails to make genuine assertions.
Flew argues that asserting “X” is equivalent to denying “not X”.
So all assertions must be capable of being false.
If a statement cannot be imagined false, then it does not deny anything and so does not assert anything either.
Religious believers cannot say what would prove their belief in God false.
So religious language is a failed attempt to speak about reality.
Flew illustrates this through John Wisdom’s ‘parable of the gardener’.
A believer claims a gardener exists, but as tests fail, they qualify the claim (invisible, intangible, etc.).
This leads to a “death of a thousand qualifications”, where the claim becomes indistinguishable from there being no gardener.
Thus, religious language fails to make a testable difference to reality and cannot meaningfully assert anything about it.

AO1: Strength & weakness of Falsificationism AO2 summary

Strength: Falsificationism coherently identifies that falsifiability is a condition for a statement to be about reality, intuitively explaining why those with blind faith cannot admit they could be wrong.
Weakness: Mitchell points out religious belief is based on evidence (personal experience) and could be falsified by evidence (sufficient evil); ultimately Flew has assumed that falsifability requires that the believer can specify in advance what would falsify their belief.
Weakness: Religious language can still be meaningful without falsification conditions, as understanding a concept (e.g., toys in cupboard) may be sufficient for meaning.
Strength: Falsificationism ensures that statements meaningfully relate to reality by requiring identifiable conditions under which they could be false.
Strength: Falsificationism reflects the view that religious believers intend to make cognitive claims about reality, especially in arguments for God’s existence.
Weakness: Non-cognitive theories such as Hare’s bliks suggest religious language expresses attitudes rather than factual claims, so cannot be criticised as unfalsifiable assertions.

AO1: Mitchell

Mitchell argues religious language is cognitively meaningful and falsifiable.
Some theists have unfalsifiable ‘blind’ faith.
However, he argues most theistic belief is based on evidence, such as personal experience, which can be outweighed by counter-evidence like evil.
Encounter with God is personal, so the amount of evil needed to undermine faith will differ between individuals.
Crucially, Flew’s mistake was to think falsification requires knowing in advance what would falsify a belief.
But ‘falsifiable’ only means a belief could be overturned by some possible evidence.
Mitchell also disagrees with Hare, who compares believers to a paranoid student who ignores counter-evidence.
Mitchell argues believers do acknowledge contrary evidence, such as evil, but judge it insufficient to overturn their belief.
So theism can be a rational assessment of the balance of evidence.
Mitchell illustrates this with a parable.
A resistance soldier in a civil war meets a stranger who claims to be their leader.
After a powerful encounter, the soldier becomes convinced this is true.
This belief is maintained despite counter-evidence, such as seeing the stranger fighting for the enemy.
The soldier may interpret this as the leader being a double agent.
Mitchell notes there must be some level of evidence where continuing belief would become ‘ridiculous’, even if it cannot be specified in advance.
The parable shows that religious belief can be based on personal experience, while still allowing that some evidence could eventually falsify it.

AO2: Mitchell vs Flew

Flew argues Mitchell fails to show theistic belief is falsifiable.
He appeals to the logical problem of evil, claiming any evil is incompatible with an all-good, all-powerful God.
If so, any amount of evil would falsify belief in God.
The fact that believers continue to believe suggests their claims are unfalsifiable.

Counter

However, this relies on the logical problem of evil being sound.
Plantinga’s free will defence challenges this, arguing God cannot remove evil without removing free will.
Most philosophers now accept this response and focus on the evidential problem instead.
But this weaker version does not show that any evil disproves God.
So Flew’s criticism loses its force.

Evaluation

Mitchell gives a better account of religious belief, because it is validated by the observable reality of religious psychology.
He argues belief is based on experience and can be undermined by sufficient evidence.
This is supported by real cases where people lose faith after suffering.
Crucially, individuals may not know in advance what would falsify their belief.
This does not make belief unfalsifiable, only unpredictable.
Those who retain belief often use theodicies, but these become less convincing as suffering increases.
So belief remains sensitive to evidence.
Mitchell therefore successfully shows religious belief can be falsifiable and cognitively meaningful.

AO1: Hare’s non-cognitive ‘Bliks’

Ayer and Flew regard religious language as a failed attempt to describe reality because it is unverifiable (Ayer) or unfalsifiable (Flew).
Hare argues they are wrong in assuming religious language is trying to describe reality at all.
If it is not attempting that, it cannot be a failed attempt.
Hare claims religious language is a non-cognitive expression of a ‘blik’, involving attitudes, emotions and a worldview.
Our blik shapes how we perceive the world, affecting our thoughts, behaviour and expressions.
He argues this makes the expression of a blik non-cognitively meaningful.
He illustrates this with a paranoid student who believes their professors are trying to kill them.
Even after meeting kind professors, the student thinks they are pretending.
Similarly, religious belief can persist despite lack of, or contrary, evidence.
Ayer and Flew would say this shows an unfalsifiable belief.
But Hare argues the student is expressing an underlying attitude of paranoia.
When the student says “my professors are trying to kill me”, they are expressing their blik.
Likewise, when religious people say “God exists” or “God be with you”, it may appear to be a belief, but is really expressing a non-cognitive attitude or worldview.
Hare is influenced by Hume’s view that reason is a slave of the passions.
What looks like rational belief about God is actually a rationalisation of underlying emotions.

AO1: Strength & weakness of Hare AO2 summary

Strength: Hare’s paranoid student analogy does shows how what seems like cognitive language can really be rooted in a non-cognition like an attitude.
Weakness: Mitchell criticises Hare for overlooking the way personal experience and evil operate as evidence for and against God, which believers rationally weigh and thus express cognitively.
Strength: Hare successfully explains how religious language can still be meaningful through its powerful influence on attitudes, behaviour, and worldview.
Weakness: Hare’s theory fails to reflect that religious believers typically intend to make factual claims about reality, such as the existence of God or historical events.
Strength: By drawing on Humean psychology, Hare grounds non-cognitive theistic expression and explains religious diversity as expressions of differing cultural ‘bliks’.
Weakness: The view that belief is primarily driven by non-cognitive attitudes is controversial, as reason can shape or revise beliefs, suggesting religious language is not purely expressive.

AO2: Whether Hare is too reductionist

Flew argues Hare is too reductionist.
Theists intend to express beliefs about reality, not just attitudes.
Religious arguments like Aquinas’ cosmological argument present reasons for believing God exists.
These involve observation and reasoning, not just expressions of feeling.
Even if the argument is unsound, it still aims to make a factual claim.
So, reducing religious language to attitudes ignores its cognitive aspect.

Counter

However, Hare draws on Humean psychology.
Human reasoning is often shaped by emotions and unconscious biases.
Freud and later psychology support the idea that much of our thinking is influenced by hidden motives.
Reason can act as a tool for justifying beliefs we already hold.
So religious belief may reflect underlying attitudes rather than objective reasoning.

Evaluation

Hume’s insight is partly correct, but overstated.
While emotions influence reasoning, they do not fully determine it.
Aristotle shows we can shape our desires through rational habits and virtue.
Modern psychology also suggests reason can guide and influence emotions over time.
So, it is wrong to reduce belief entirely to non-cognitive attitudes.
Religious arguments clearly aim to establish truth, even if influenced by bias.
There may be a range of religious language, from rational argument to blind faith.
But Hare’s claim that all religious language is non-cognitive is too extreme.
So, his account is overly reductionist.

AO1: Wittgenstein’s language games

Wittgenstein argues religious language can be meaningful even if it is not cognitive.
He thought Ayer and Flew misunderstood religious language as a failed attempt to describe reality due to being unverifiable or unfalsifiable.
Wittgenstein initially held a similar view to Ayer, that language ‘pictured’ reality.
He later changed this with his theory of language games.
Ayer and Flew think statements get their meaning by referring to reality through verification or falsification.
Wittgenstein disagrees, arguing that meaning consists in how statements are used.
Their meaning is acquired through their function in social contexts.
The meaning of a statement is what it ‘does’ in a social context.
Social reality consists of different types of interaction.
Each type is like a ‘game’ because it follows rules.
The way we speak depends on context; for example, we speak differently with friends, family or in a job interview.
So words get their meaning from the context in which they are used.
A language game is a rule-governed form of activity.
We usually learn these rules unconsciously.
Religion is its own language game, so religious language is meaningful within that context to those who understand its rules.
Only those socialised into a language game find it fully meaningful.
Science is a different language game from religion, so religious language may seem meaningless within the scientific context.
Those not socialised into the religious language game may struggle to find it meaningful.
Language games are like environments we are trained into, shaping what counts as meaningful.
But unlike Plato’s cave, they are not illusions to escape from, and there is no higher perspective outside them.

AO1: Strength & weakness of Wittgenstein AO2 summary

Strength: Wittgenstein’s language games explain the independence of religion from science and philosophy by locating religious meaning within a distinct form of life grounded in faith rather than reason.
Weakness: Wittgenstein’s separation between science and religious meaning struggles to explain how natural theology and ordinary religious belief treats religious claims as describing the same reality investigated by science.
Strength: Wittgenstein convincingly explains religious language as meaningful through its role in communal practices such as worship, prayer, and moral formation.
Weakness: Wittgenstein risks reducing religion to social construction, which struggles to account for its apparent reference to a transcendent reality beyond human activity.
Weakness: Wittgenstein’s view struggles to explain how conversion and interfaith dialogue are possible if religious language is only fully meaningful within a specific form of life.
Strength: Wittgenstein’s view could explain interactions between different faiths as involving partial degrees of understanding which develops through engagement and conversion.

AO2: Aquinas’ natural theology vs Wittgensteinian Fideism

A strength of Wittgensteinian fideism is that it explains the apparent independence of religion and science.
Religion can be seen as a distinct “language game” with its own rules and purposes.
This reflects a long fideist tradition in Christianity, such as Tertullian’s rejection of Greek philosophy.
On this view, religious belief is grounded in faith, not reason or evidence.
So conflicts between science and religion may be avoided by treating them as separate forms of life.

Counter

However, this separation is rejected by natural theology.
Aquinas argues that reason and observation can support belief in God.
His cosmological arguments aim to prove God’s existence from features of the natural world.
Modern versions, such as fine-tuning arguments, also use scientific evidence to support theism.
This shows religion and science are not always separate, but can be connected.
Religious claims often overlap with scientific claims about the same world.

Evaluation

Wittgensteinian fideism therefore goes too far in separating religion from reason.
Religious arguments clearly aim to make cognitive claims about reality.
Even if such arguments fail, they still show that believers use evidence and reasoning.
Ordinary religious belief also supports this.
When believers say God created the world, they refer to the same world studied by science.
Aquinas’ theory of analogy explains how this works: terms like “creator” apply to God in a different but related way.
This allows religious language to refer meaningfully to reality without being identical to scientific language.
So religion is not a completely separate language game.
Aquinas’ natural theology provides a more convincing account of how religious language works.

AO2: Wittgenstein’s non-cognitive theological anti-realism

Wittgenstein’s approach to religious language is more convincing than other non-cognitive theories because it avoids reducing religion to purely individual feeling.
He explains religion as a social “form of life,” where meaning comes from shared practices.
Activities such as prayer, worship and scripture-reading are rule-governed, and their meaning depends on how they are used within a community.
This captures the lived, communal nature of religion better than purely emotive theories.

Counter

However, this view is criticised for leading to theological anti-realism.
If meaning is entirely based on use within a community, religious language becomes disconnected from any objective reality.
This removes religion’s “vertical dimension,” where believers see themselves as relating to a transcendent God.
Religious practices are not experienced as mere human constructions, but as responses to something beyond the human world.
Religious experience in particular is often taken as direct awareness of the divine.
So Wittgenstein risks reducing religion too much.

Evaluation

While Wittgenstein could be right that religion is socially constructed, this seems incomplete.
Many features of religion appear across different cultures, such as mystical experiences, moral insights and ideas of transcendence.
This suggests religion is not purely constructed.
Different theories explain this in different ways: traditional theism sees it as evidence for God, Hick’s pluralism as responses to a shared ultimate reality, and naturalism as a product of human social or evolutionary psychology.
Although these views are incompatible, they all agree that religion connects to something beyond mere social practice.
Wittgenstein’s account cannot easily explain this universality.
So, while his theory captures the social dimension of religion, it fails to account for its apparent link to objective reality, making it incomplete.