1.10.3

Falsification Symposium: Flew & Hare

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The Falsification Symposium: Flew's Argument

After he encountered difficulties with the verification principle, Anthony Flew developed the idea that a statement could be verifiable if the empirical evidence that would prove it was false was known.

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White swan example

  • He applied this idea to religious language.
  • The statement ‘all swans are white’ is often used to show how a proposition can be false. We may see hundreds of white swans but this does not prove the statement. However, when we see one black swan, we know that the proposition is false.
  • Statements such as 'all swans are white' are meaningful because they can be shown to be false. This statement is synthetic and empirically testable.
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Flew on religious beliefs

  • Flew argued that religious people tend to refuse the possibility of their statement being false and so make their statements meaningless.
  • They will not allow evidence to discredit their beliefs and so their statements are meaningless.
  • Flew is protesting about a tendency he observed amongst religious believers to shift the goalposts of statements about God.
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'God loves all humans' example

  • For example, someone might start by saying that ‘God loves all humans'.
  • If that person were to witness a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat, they would be right to use that as evidence that the claim 'God loves all humans' is false.
  • Flew observed that religious believers would then retort ‘...but God loves humans in an inscrutable way, a different way to the way we love.’
  • In Flew's opinion, this second statement has no meaning because it doesn’t allow for anything to falsify it.

The Falsification Symposium: Hare's Argument

The philosopher RM Hare came up with a response to falsification. This was called the theory of ‘bliks’. Hare used a parable to illustrate his point.

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Quotation from Hare

  • ‘A certain lunatic is convinced that all dons want to murder him. His friends introduce him to all the mildest and most respectable dons that they can find, and after each of them has retired, they say, "You see, he doesn’t really want to murder you; he spoke to you in a most cordial manner; surely you are convinced now?" But the lunatic replies "Yes, but that was only his diabolical cunning; he’s really plotting against me the whole time, like the rest of them; I know it I tell you." However, many kindly dons are produced, the reaction is the same.’
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Explanation of the 'blik'

  • The paranoid student cannot imagine being wrong; his statement ‘all dons want to murder him’ is unfalsifiable.
  • And yet, Hare argues that this belief remains very meaningful.
  • So a ‘blik’ is a particular view about the world that may not be based upon reason or fact and that cannot be verified or falsified; it just is and we don’t need to explain why we hold our ‘blik’.
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'Blik' car example

  • Hare talked about trusting in the metal of a car. This ‘blik’ about the car meant that we would quite happily drive or be driven in a car because we have the ‘blik’ that the metal is strong and that it is safe to drive at high speed in the car.
  • Hare said that people either have the right or sane ‘blik’ or the wrong or insane ‘blik’; the 'lunatic' in Hare's quotation has the wrong ‘blik’ about dons, whereas his friends have the right ‘blik’.
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Hare's conclusions

  • So Hare argues that it is possible to agree to a proposition which is not falsifiable but is nonetheless meaningful.
  • According to Hare, we all have fundamental beliefs or principles on which we base our actions and which we will never give up.

Jump to other topics

1Philosophy of Religion

1.1Ancient Philosophical Influences: Plato

1.2Ancient Philosophical Influences: Aristotle

1.3Ancient Philosophical Influences: Soul, Mind, Body

1.4The Existence of God - Arguments from Observation

1.5The Existence of God - Arguments from Reason

1.6Religious Experience

1.7The Problem of Evil

1.8The Nature & Attributes of God

1.9Religious Language: Negative, Analogical, Symbolic

1.10Religious Language: 20th Century Perspective

2Religion & Ethics

3Developments in Christian Thought

3.1Saint Augustine's Teachings

3.2Death & the Afterlife

3.3Knowledge of God's Existence

3.4The Person of Jesus Christ

3.5Christian Moral Principles

3.6Christian Moral Action

3.7Development - Pluralism & Theology

3.8Development - Pluralism & Society

3.9Gender & Society

3.10Gender & Theology

3.11Challenges

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