Emily Henry, St. Francis Xavier University

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stable conclusion. He finishes his paper saying, “there will be no perfect solution that addresses all the points made by both sides,” but this is worrisome for me because that should not be the point. It is rare that we find a perfect solution to anything, especially in philosophy, and I wish that Zanutto chose to argue for the strength of weakness of one or both arguments, but his position in the paper is very Switzerland-esque. I believe that the lack of sufficient argument weakens Zanutto’s work.

AB S T R A C T

In the "Theology and Falsification" Symposium, Antony Flew, R.M Hare and Basil Mitchell each argue a different perspective of how one should perceive religious beliefs. The symposiasts have different accounts of meaning achieved within religious belief through their different ideas of what should count as evidence. In this essay, I will show how Flew and Hare’s arguments are too limited of accounts of meaning and that Mitchell’s demonstration is the most satisfactory of the three. Mitchell’s position is essential for religious believers, but its real strength is that it outlines how anyone can have any meaningful beliefs at all.

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Flew, Hare and Mitchell: The Means to Meaning 80

In the "Theology and Falsification" Symposium, Antony Flew, R.M Hare and Basil Mitchell each argue a different perspective of how one should perceive religious beliefs. The symposiasts have different accounts of meaning achieved within religious belief through their different ideas of what should count as evidence. In this essay, I will show how Flew and Hare’s arguments are too limited of accounts of meaning and that Mitchell’s demonstration is the most satisfactory of the three. Mitchell’s position is essential for religious believers, but its real strength is that it outlines how anyone can have any meaningful beliefs at all.

To understand the symposiast’s arguments, one must first know the principles of falsification and verification and the Wittgensteinian concept of language-games—as these concepts provide the evidence, or standard, of meaning within the arguments. The principle of falsification indicates that a statement must have the capacity to be contradicted by evidence to be meaningful.1 The verification principle declares that a statement is meaningful if it is empirically verifiable.2 Within the concept of language-games, the standard of meaning derives from the context in which one finds it,3 indicating that what may render a statement meaningless in one context may not in another.

From this, there are two sorts of meaning that are also relevant to this discussion. Firstly, there is cognitive meaning derived from genuine claims about the world’s state obtained through either verification or falsification. Secondly, emotive, or psychological meanings, contain standards relative to designated language-games but may still involve verification and falsification. Emotive meaning relates to the person’s mental state, which causes emotions in support or against a claim. These terms are essential for the overall discussion; however, each symposiast has their own terms, which I will define concerning their theories.

The initial essay in the symposium includes Flew’s challenge. Flew states that religious utterances are, for the most part, intended to be proper assertions and explanations. For Flew, an assertion must claim that things are one way and not another. For an assertion to be meaningful, p must also mean not, not p. If an assertion then does not deny anything, it also does not assert anything.4 Similarly,

1. Karl Popper, “The Problem of Demaration,” in Popper Selections, ed. David Miller (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 118-130 2. A J Ayer “Critique of Ethics and Theology,” in Language, Truth, and Logic (London, UK: Penguin Books, 1990), pp. 63-77, 66. 3. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Hoboken, New Jersey: Blackwell, 2001. 4. Antony Flew, Basil Mitchell, and R M Hare, “A Symposium on Theology and Falsification,” Wayback Machine, September 15, 2009, http://web.archive.org/web/20101124152313/http://brindedcow.umd.edu, 2.

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to be a meaningful explanation, it must explain why a particular thing occurs, and not something else.5 A meaningful explanation claims that something in the world would be different if it were true, then false. In other words, Flew argues for a falsifiable standard of meaning that should apply to religious beliefs and utterances in order for them to have meaning.

Through Flew’s Parable of the Gardener,6 he argues that religious believers qualify their beliefs to fit every possible scenario or state of affairs. To qualify a belief is to change the original hypotheses or the definition of a thing so that nothing can prove it wrong. Religious believers erode their beliefs and assertions with qualifications and render them unfalsifiable. Within Flew’s parable, the believer changes the gardener’s definition to an invisible, imperceptible, and senseless gardener to maintain the belief of the gardener’s existence despite the tests that render the belief false.

Flew ends his essay with a direct challenge to other symposiasts. Flew asks, “what would have to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) entitle us to say, ‘God does not love us’ or even ‘God does not exist’?”7 Alternatively, "what would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the existence of God?”8 Through these questions, Flew claims that if nothing would count against these beliefs, then they tell us nothing and are hence, meaningless by the falsification standard.

In response, Hare offers an alternative way in which one could view religious beliefs. Hare claims that Flew is correct in saying that religious assertions are not falsifiable. However, for Hare, this does not render them meaningless. Hare argues that a meaningful belief must include more criteria than just being falsifiable and that Flew’s standard of meaning is too strict and limited.

5. Flew, 6. 6. ‘Once upon a time, two explorers came upon a clearing in 1 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 fence. 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, insensible 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 our 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?’ Flew, 1. 7. Flew, 2. 8. Flew, 2.

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Through Hare’s Parable of the Paranoid Student,9 he introduces the concept of a blik, which has a standard of meaning like the language-game concept. A blik is a worldview that exists logically before facts. A blik tells one how to interpret the world, and it follows that a blik determines what counts as verification and falsification and what these facts come to mean within the blik. The Paranoid student believes that his dons are out to kill him. Even though it appears to prove the belief wrong to those without the paranoid blik, no amount of evidence can persuade the student to change their mind.10 The apparent denial arises because the sane blik is different from the insane blik regarding what counts as evidence. No evidence could ever falsify a blik, and nothing counts as disproof.

From Flew’s perspective, bliks would appear to be meaningless as they assert nothing. However, a blik, or belief, does make a meaningful difference. The student’s insane blik tells us about their state of mind and how it affects their behaviour. Similarly, the fact that we recognize the different blik, and define the student as paranoid, shows that the unfalsifiable blik also means something to us, as we can distinguish between their worldview and our own. To Flew’s challenge, Hare states that beliefs do not need to be falsifiable. Religious statements are not assertions about facts as they are in science; they express an emotionally significant, non-falsifiable worldview;11 they belong to a different language-game and context. Religious statements then do not meet Flew’s standard of cognitive meaning, but they still contain emotive meaning. To believe in religious statements affects how one sees and interacts with the world. The emotional attachment a beholder has to their beliefs gives them emotive meaning and separates them from the detached standard of meaning Flew proposes.12

Although both Flew and Hare’s arguments appear to be sound accounts of different ways to perceive belief, religious or otherwise, they both have fundamental problems. To begin with Flew, I agree with Hare’s argument that Flew’s account of religious belief is too strict to account for the complexity of meaning within beliefs. Within the falsification challenge, Flew appears to combine the notions of

9. ‘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 still the same’ Hare, 3. 10. Hare, 3. 11. Hare, 4. 12. Hare, 4.

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emotive and cognitive meaning, which makes it unclear what exactly he attempts to criticize about religious belief. As previously addressed, Flew asks, “what would have to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) entitle us to say, ‘God does not love us’ or even ‘God does not exist’?”13 The “not merely” clause suggests Flew is looking for an emotive limit to meaning, or a limit of contrary evidence one will allow before changing their beliefs. However, the "but also" clause suggests he is also looking for a cognitive limit, a limit of contrary evidence that actually falsifies the statement for all.14 From this, Flew’s challenge is either too ambiguous, rendering it unanswerable, or too limited, as he seems to propose both limits could be reached by the same standard of meaning of falsification, which even Hare illuminates as false.

A criticism of Hare’s work is that there is a considerable logical difference between some bliks and others. There are pure unfalsifiable bliks, and artificially unfalsifiable bliks. The first includes phrases such as "Everything happens for a reason," as this blik is not falsifiable, nor verifiable, by any states of affairs. Pure bliks provide a means of deciding whether a statement is or is not an explanation.15 However, Hare’s example of the paranoid student is only artificially unfalsifiable, as it can be proved either true or false, but the beholder, in a sense, qualifies the evidence to maintain their blik. From this, one can also consider impure bliks as preferred assertions, as they allow one to choose between possible explanations, rather than decide what is and what is not an explanation. When one then considers religious utterances, they can only affect our explanations by being consistent with some of them and not others.16 Therefore, by Hare’s examples and inclusion of impurity, religious utterances would be impure bliks, which is essentially what Flew criticizes.

Even if one argues that religious utterances are, in fact, pure bliks, the notion that religious beliefs are worldviews and not assertions by Flew’s definition is also problematic. Religions, such as Christianity, and other beliefs make numerous historical assertions that one can falsify. To declare that historical events, such as Christ’s resurrection or if theoretically a don did attempt to kill the paranoid student, are bliks is to, in a way, say that these events did not, nor could they ever

13. Flew, 2. 14. Stephen T. Davis, “Theology, Verification, and Falsification,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 6, no. 1 (1975): pp. 23-39, https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00136997, 26. 15. H. J. Horsburgh, “Mr. Hare on Theology and Falsification,” The Philosophical Quarterly 6, no. 24 (1956): p. 256-259, https://doi.org/10.2307/2216757, 258. 16. Horsburgh, 258.

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be proven, to have objectively happened.

Mitchell’s argument, the last of the symposium, avoids the criticisms of the other two arguments, as he combines both cognitive and emotive meaning, answering both of Flew’s questions about limits in a way that maintains that religious beliefs are proper assertions and explanations, as they are falsifiable and verifiable. Mitchell does this as he breaks down three ways to interpret religious statements. Firstly, there are provisional hypotheses,17 which is how Flew sees religious language. These are like scientific ideas because if they are proven wrong, they should be discarded. If they are not discarded, then the holder of the idea must be irrational. Mitchell thinks this is an incorrect way of looking at religious language as it speaks only to the detached observer, rather than the emotionally invested believer. Religious beliefs do not belong in the language-game of provisional hypotheses. Something that may make scientific language meaningless, like refusing to allow it to be falsified, might not make religious language meaningless.

Secondly, there are vacuous formulae.18 These are beliefs that never change and can not be proven true or false. This category includes Hare’s notion of bliks, in the impure sense, as people who possess a blik blandly dismiss contradictory evidence. They do not allow their beliefs to be falsified, and their beliefs are not verifiable—as they have no proof behind their assertions.

This category also contains the “qualified” religious talk Flew attacks. One may redefine their terms and allow exceptions into their assertions to keep them true in every possible scenario. Mitchell agrees with Flew that religious believers sometimes do interpret religious statements in these meaningless ways. However, Mitchell also thinks that these unreasonable religious believers are themselves mistaken in how religious statements have meaning, as they are faults in both faith and logic.19

The third way to interpret religious language is as significant articles of faith.20 Mitchell argues that reasonable religious beliefs fall under this category. These are attitudes of trust that one commits to believing. The Partisan in the parable is committed to trusting the Stranger, the same way religious believers commit to believing in God.21 Believers remain committed to their beliefs despite all the

17. Mitchell, 6. 18. Mitchell, 6. 19. Mitchell, 6. 20. Mitchell, 6. 21. In a time of war in an occupied country, a member of the resistance meets one night a stranger who deeply impresses him. They spend that night together in conversation. The Stranger tells the partisan that he himself is on the side of the resistance–indeed that he is in command of it and urges

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evidence that they may be wrong to see if the contradictory evidence turns out to be mistaken. They deny the falsifying evidence because the proof, the Stranger’s impression, or a powerful religious experience, is too strong of verification for them to give up.

From this, Mitchell’s standard of meaning is what he calls trials of faith, 22 which applies both to cognitive and emotive meaning. Mitchell’s argument for cognitive meaning is that reasonable religious beliefs obey the falsification principle. Religious language is falsified every day through the problem of evil, which Flew ignores, and people often lose their faith. Therefore, by Flew’s definition, religious utterances are meaningful assertions and explanations as they can be falsified. Reasonable religious beliefs also obey the verification principle. The empirical evidence of a religious experience is a verification of the belief, and thus, they are not blind faith like in Flew and Hare’s examples. The emotive meaning is the attachment and commitment to maintaining beliefs, which is relative to the language-game concept of an attached believer. Beliefs make a difference in how one lives their life and are deeply personal ways of seeing the world.

Religious believers go through a trial of faith when they suffer the full force of the conflict,23 meaning they personally experience the conflict between their beliefs and the things that happen in the world. Reasonable believers actively struggle to remain committed to their beliefs despite all the contradictory evidence. In more technical terms, reasonable believers actively struggle to maintain that the empirical experiences that make their assertions verifiable outweigh the evidence that falsifies them. If believers ignore the tension and conflict between what is verifiable and falsifiable, or claim it does not exist, religious language would be cognitively and emotionally meaningless and would not explain anything in the form of assertions and explanations.

the partisan to have faith in him no matter what happens. The partisan is utterly convinced at that meeting of the Stranger’s sincerity and constancy and undertakes to trust him. They never meet in conditions of intimacy again. But sometimes the Stranger is seen helping members of the resistance, and the partisan is grateful and says to his friends, ’He is on our side.’ Sometimes he is seen in the uniform of the police handing over patriots to the occupying power. On these occasions, his friends murmur against him: but the partisan still says, ’He is on our side.’ He still believes that, in spite of appearances, the Stranger did not deceive him. Sometimes he asks the Stranger for help and receives it. He is then thankful. Sometimes he asks and does not receive it. Then he says, ’The Stranger knows best.’ Sometimes his friends, in exasperation, say, ’Well, what would he have to do for you to admit that you were wrong and that he is not on our side?’ But the partisan refuses to answer. He will not consent to put the Stranger to the test. And sometimes his friends complain, ’Well, if that’s what you mean by his being on our side, the sooner he goes over to the other side the better’ Mitchell, 5. 22. Mitchell, 5. 23. Mitchell, 5.

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When faced with a trial of faith, there are two options: a) give up on the assertion or b) have faith that there is some explanation, even if one cannot see what it is yet.24 It is important to note here that Mitchell crucially argues that there could come the point where continuing to believe would become meaningless and irrational. A religious believer does not give up on God the first time they experience pain and suffering, but if the pains and sufferings become too great, or the disproof begins to outweigh the proof, continuing to believe in God may appear senseless. If they start qualifying the pain so that their empirical evidence remains heavier than contradictory evidence, then this is a failure both in faith and logic, and they become irrational.25

Thus, Mitchell recognizes that there are emotive and evidential limits to belief. However, Mitchell’s key point here is that no one can say in advance when the limits will be reached.26 There is no specific thing or event that could make the believer lose his commitment, nor can they imagine what would conclusively falsify their belief. Due to the nature of religious belief, as in it is not a science one can test, people will put off admitting they were wrong for as long as they possibly can—not because they are meaningless, as Flew suggests, but because to the people involved, these significant articles of faith give their lives a certain kind of meaning that is not found in science or a mechanical world, but in the hearts of humankind and how we make sense of the world. One day, perhaps, they will admit they were wrong, but there is no way of knowing when. There is no way of knowing when the contradictory evidence will outweigh the initial verifying experience. It is dependent on the weight of the initial impression, the strength of the relationship between the believer and their belief, and the amount of falsifying evidence one endures.27

Mitchell’s proposal of meaning is not without objections. One of the objections comes from Flew’s concluding responses to the symposium. Flew claims that religious belief gives God attributes that rule out a possible saving explanation. In Mitchell’s Parable of the Partisan, it is easy to find plausible excuses for the Stranger’s ambiguous behaviour, for the Stranger is a man of limited nature.28 However, God is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and the creator of all. One can not say God would help if he knew, or if he could, or that he is not responsible for the wickedness occurring. Henceforth, for Flew, there can be no explanation that

24. Mitchell, 5. 25. Mitchell, 6. 26. Mitchell, 5. 27. Mitchell, 5. 28. Flew, 7.

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saves the existence of a loving God.

Flew’s objection is valid; however, he ignores the central premise of Mitchell’s standard of meaning. For Mitchell, reasonable religious believers do not set out to understand why God does what he does, and religion is not a matter of making specific excuses. To illustrate, we can look at a non-religious example. Let us say your best friend promised you they would attend an important event, like to be the Best Man or Maid of Honour at your wedding. As they are your best friend, you trust they are going to be there. Day of, they are running late. You may begin generating excuses to explain their tardiness, such as they must bein traffic, or they must have slept in, or you will simply have faith that they will arrive. Since they are your friend and you have trust in them, some waiting is in order. However, eventually, it would be best if you went through with the wedding without them. If you started the wedding with someone else acting in their place, and your friend suddenly arrived with an understandable explanation, you would feel guilty for not trusting them and waiting that bit longer.

Although I also utilized a human example, I hope I illustrated the argument as straightforward and non-contradictory. Reasonable believers who have committed to their beliefs have faith that there is some explanation, even if we currently can not see what it is. Mitchell’s argument is not to say that believers understand, nor qualify God’s ways, simply that they trust in some future verification that proves they were right to have faith.29

Another critique I can imagine critics having about Mitchell’s argument is that it appears to only work for those who experienced a powerful religious experience in which they receive inspiration in believe in God at all. However, although that is the case within the parable itself, I do not think Mitchell would exclude other forms of evidence. The verification of one’s belief very well could be a strong religious experience, such as God appearing to them in a vision like the night with the Stanger, but it could also be testimonial evidence, like being taught religion by others or reading the bible. One’s belief in God could also result from any of the multitudes of ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments proposed by theologians and philosophers.

Similarly, Mitchell’s argument works for many cases, apart from religious belief. When one considers politics, many believe democracy is a sound system. There are many benefits of democracy, but it also has its cons. Some countries that adopt

29. In Theology, Verification, and Falsification, Stephen Davis also talks about future verification as an adaptation of John Hick’s eschatological verification. Davis, 32.

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democratic systems may prosper, while others may be corrupt. There then would be verifying evidence, whether one learned about democracy or whether they experienced it themselves, as well as falsifying evidence for one’s belief that democracy is a good political system.

Another example is marriage and relationships. One may have an experience with their significant other in which they boldly display a sizeable romantic gesture, which may serve as the verifying proof that they love you. However, one may also just experience loving actions and words. Both would be verifiable experiences for why one has the belief that their partner loves them.

The strength of Mitchell’s argument is that it is an accurate portrayal of how belief works in religion and many other aspects of life. One does not abandon their belief in God at first sight of pain and suffering or give up their belief in democracy after the first sign of corruption—nor does one stop committing to their partner after the first fight. One commits to their belief despite the contradictory evidence because of their initial verifiable experiences, no matter the sort, and their commitment to the idea they believe.

The Theology and Falsification symposium, proposed by Flew and answered by Hare and Mitchell, is an essential discussion about belief. The three symposiasts propose different perspectives on the nature of belief, concerning both the types of meaning they hold and the standard of meaning that must be obtained for beliefs to be reasonable. Flew proposed a standard of falsification for cognitive meaning, arguing that if one attempts to make assertions, they must be falsifiable to be meaningful. Hare, on the contrary, proposed a standard strictly for emotive meaning. For Hare, religious beliefs are not verifiable nor falsifiable assertions; they are bliks that exist before and filter the facts presented. Mitchell, however, recognizes how the prior positions eliminate critical aspects of belief. Beliefs are both cognitively and emotively meaningful. Through the cognitive sense, beliefs must be falsifiable and verifiable to be meaningful assertions and explanations. The emotive meaning arises from the language-game of one’s commitment to their belief as they hope for future verification. Mitchell calls his standard of meaning a trial of faith–the balancing act between one’s proof and commitment, and the contradictory evidence in the world. Despite the objections to Mitchell’s theory, I believe his argument for how religious belief, or any belief in general, has meaning is the strongest and most satisfactory of the three as it combines both the rational and emotional aspects of human existence.

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