Verification

Logical Positivism was a philosophical movement that grew out of the work of the Vienna Circle. Their aim was to reduce all knowledge to scientific formulations. They used this when it came to language.

Anything outside of these tenets (beliefs) were dismissed as meaningless. Note that this does not mean a complete dismissal or saying that they don't exist.

What was left were tautological (self explanatory statements) and statements that could be verified through personal first hand experience.

Verification

Verification means to prove something true.

Logical positivism said that the only two forms of knowledge that were accepted as valid were logical reasoning and empirical (evidence through sensory experience) evidence

These included:

1) Tautological statements (self explanatory)

2) Analytic statements (statements where the meaning is contained within it, such as ice is frozen water)

3) Synthetic statements (statements that are sensory, the sky is blue)

4) Mathematical statements

Schlick and the logical positivists defined the verification principle.

'The meaning of a statements is its method of verification'

Religious statements were rejected as there was no way to determine their truth. Not only this, but language related to ethics and abstract thought such as art, music or literature.

Ayer developed the work of the Vienna Circle. He spread the logical positivist movement to Britain.

He said that the principle of verification had limits. It could not spread to historical statements because it was not considered verifiable in practice.

He changed this to introduce weak and strong verification as well as verification in principle and practice.

Verification in principle, referred to if you knew how to verify statements concerning historical statements, then they too were to be considered meaningful.

Verification in practice was more to do with verification in the here and now.

Logical Positivism in general can be considered convincing to non-believers because it is firmly based on science and empirical observation which would appeal to non-religious believers.

However, philosophers such as Wittgenstein published works in the 20th century about how religious language can be meaning which became more widely accepted.

As well as this, many philosophers had realised that the verification principles in itself was self-defeating.

In addition, that idea that analytic, synthetic, tautological and mathematical statmenets alone were meaningful also render statements to do with emotions, morality and thoughts meaningless.

The philsophers Braithwaite said that the logical positivists had not realised how religious language was used. He said that language can be used both in a cognitive and non-cognitive way, ulike the logical positivsts who had simply disregarded the non-cognitive aspect.

John Hick also said that Ayer's weka form would allow for religious statemtns to be meaningul such as historial claims. He also said that if there was life after death, then faith claims would be verifiable. He called this eschatalogical verification.