POLS 1090 Lecture Notes - Antony Flew, Vienna Circle, Moritz Schlick
Document Summary
Explain what is meant by verification and falsification in the context of debates about religious language. Antony flew believed that religious claims are cognitive in that they are intended to be factual assertions. Flew insisted that claims by the believer such as god loves us" are not to be taken as anything but assertions". Verification means to prove the truth of a statement whilst falsification means to prove a statement is false. Logical positivism was developed by the vienna circle. The logical positivists argued that propositions about god, ethics, art and metaphysics were meaningless as such propositions could not be proved true or false. Ayer argued that god exists" is neither true nor false because there is no empirical evidence to support the claim. Antony flew formulated the falsification principle which accepts that a statement is verifiable and therefore meaningful if it is known what empirical evidence could count against it.
