The Falsification Principle LOs I can explain the

The Falsification Principle LO’s: I can explain the falsification principle I can explain criticisms of falsification by Hare, Mitchell and Swinburne Starter : Discuss If a gardener was invisible, intangible (and liked weeds), would we be able to tell the difference between the work of this gardener and there being no gardener at all?

Stu and Lou’s Garden Discuss: • How do we persuade Stu Lou: That gardener you hired hasn’t shown up Stu. there is no gardener? Stu: He starter work three days ago, my friend. • How does this dialogue Lou: I haven’t seen him, I don’t believe you. link to religious language? Stu: You won’t see him, he’s invisible. Lou: I knew you would say that. That’s why I had a trip wire installed. If he existed , he would have set it off by now. Stu: You misunderstand the nature of the gardener, he is also intangible. We cannot detect him via our senses. Look how well the flowers are doing. Lou: Maybe, but wouldn’t they have grown anyway? In any case, the weeds are still there are there is no sign of the gardener. Stu: As I said, there is a gardener who is invisible, intangible and not detectable by human senses. He comes to the garden secretly and works here. Lou: well I’m guessing he likes weeds too.

The Falsification Principle and Religious Language The falsification principle has it origins in Karl Popper’s philosophy of science. What is he saying here? • i. e. theories are considered true until some evidence counts against them (at which point they are superseded by other theories). • E. g. Newton – Einstein • E. g. The Copernican Revolution • Scientific theories are meaningful because we know what evidence would disprove it.

The Falsification Principle and Religious Language Anthony Flew applied the Falsification Principle to religious language. • Flew believed that a statement is meaningful if it is known what empirical evidence could count against it. • e. g. ‘All swans are white’ this can be falsified if we were to see a black swan. • Write down three statements that are meaningful according to Flew and explain how each could be falsified. • * Can you give an example of a statement which cannot be falsified? Is the statement meaningless?

“death by a thousand qualifications” Flew argued that religious language cannot be falsified. What can we imply from this? • Religious believers do not allow any evidence to show that religious statements are false. e. g. Christians say ‘God is loving’ no matter what disaster strikes. • ‘It is a test’ or ‘ He moves in mysterious ways’ are constant qualifications making religious statements worthless because they die the “death by a thousand qualifications”. The goalposts are shifted so that religious statements are barely statements at all. • A “qualified” claim is one that’s partly taken back; for example, “Jack said he loved his girlfriend more than he’d ever loved any woman. Then he qualified his statement: ‘Except my mother, of course. ’”

Flew’s Parable of the Gardener “Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, ‘Some gardener must tend this plot. ’ The other disagrees, ‘There is no gardener. ’ So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. ‘But perhaps he is an invisible gardener. ’ So they set up a barbed-wire fenced. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen. ) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the believer is not convinced. ‘But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensitive to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves. ’ At last the Sceptic despairs, ‘but what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all? ’” • http: //instruct. westvalley. edu/lafave/flew. html

Group Task 2: Religious Language Stories Each group is allocated a different philosophers analogy. John Wisdoms Parable of the Gardener (used by Antony Flew) Falsification principle They must: Responses • Summarise it • Explain its Richard R. M. Hare – The meaning. Swinburne – Lunatic • Produce a Toys in the handout to be Mitchell’s - Stranger cupboard photocopied for Use pgs. 375 -383 and your handouts to find the rest of the stories and gather information. class.

Criticisms of falsification • Richard Hare – bliks - the way that a person views the world gives meaning to them even if others do not share the same view • Basil Mitchell – partisan and the stranger - certain things can be meaningful even when they cannot be falsified • Swinburne – toys in the cupboard - concept meaningful even though falsifying the statement is not possible

Consolidation: On a scale one 1 -5 how do you feel about this topic? On a Post-It note: 1. Ask me a question. . . 2. Tell me what you are confident with. . .

Useful reading / web pages • Hare’s reply to Flew: http: //www. qcc. cuny. edu/Social. Sciences/ppecorino/PHIL_of_RELIGION_TEXT/CHAPTER_8_LANGUAGE/R MHare-Reply-to-Flew. htm • https: //philosophydungeon. weebly. com/hare. html Detailed discussion of the parables • http: //www. deyeshigh. co. uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Mitchell-and-Flew-summary-booklet. pptx. Summary of the parables • http: //philosophy. pushmepress. com/? articles=anthony-flew-parable-of-the-gard Scroll down to the ‘extracts’ section for the original parables AND Hick’s Celestial City! • Taylor (big OCR book, turquoise and orange cover) has a detailed discussion of the parables and possible responses – v useful for AO 1 and AO 2.

• • • • • • • Religious Language Parables – summary and commentary Flew’s garden: 2 people come to a clearing. One says that there is a gardener. The other says that there cannot be a gardener as there are weeds in the garden (empirical evidence, represents problems such as evil and suffering in our world) They test the garden through electric fences and other empirical measures to see if the gardener exists. (human research. ) However the tests produce nothing and the garden still remains in the same state, so the one who believes that there is a gardener qualifies him as intangible and transcendent so as to cope with the weeds (the problem of evil for example. ) Which then prompts the cynic to ask how a completely intangible gardener is different from there not being a gardener at all. Supports the falsification principle. Religious statements are potentially falsifiable e. g. The free will defence is an explanation of belief in God and Free Will, it cannot be dismissed as a qualification. Peter Donovan noted that ‘the sense of knowing is never on its own a sufficient sign of knowledge. ’ and so supports this story. Basil Mitchell’s partisan: Religious believers do allow evidence to count against their belief and so this could be seen as a response to Flew’s gardener. Parable of the Partisan to illustrate the concept of non-propositional faith – a trust in God which may be held even when evidence or experience points to the contrary During the time of a war a Partisan meets a stranger claiming to be the leader of the resistance. The stranger urges the Partisan to have faith in him, even if he is seen to be acting against Partisan interests. The Partisan is committed to a belief in the stranger’s integrity, but his friends think he is a fool to do so. The original encounter with the stranger gives the Partisan sufficient confidence to hold onto his faith in him even when there is evidence to the contrary. Non-cognitive, you cannot prove something true or false, however statements about God are still meaningful to believers as ‘they have a prior position of trust. ’ Some believers would reject this as they would say that their beliefs are cognitive and so can be proved. A religious believer could equally well reply that religious beliefs are open to falsification and thus are meaningful rendering this story un-necessary. R. M. Hare’s Dons: A student thinks that all the Dons are trying to poison him. Even when he has tea with a Don and is not poisoned, he refuses to give up his view that the Dons are poisoning him. Shows that theists will not give up their view in God despite the evidence in-front of him. However these things impact the way they view their world and so does have significance for that purpose. Statements about God are ‘bliks’, statements that can never be falsified. We all have different bliks. He says that some bliks are sane and others are insane, but all are un-falsifiable. Compares religious belief to the belief of a lunatic, so it is not a good support. God is not an irrational belief as there is evidence in the world e. g. Design, religious experience. John Hick says that there is evidence to back up religious belief, it is wrong to assume that this is not applicable evidence. In principle we could verify the afterlife for example, and so it could have meaning.