No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Positivists have always objected to people talking about God.
Their objection rests on quite general logical grounds. They have discovered a simple, formal test by which to tell significant remarks from nonsensical collections of words. There must, they say, be some minimal conditions of intelligibility. From these we can construct a Principle of Meaning. Now religiousremarks, on any positivist Principle, are demonstrable nonsense.
What are these conditions of intelligibility ? Speaker and hearer, we suppose, must use the same language; must possess a rather similar background of information; must both have some interest or other in communication.… Such matters of ‘more and less’ will vary with the topic, the parties, and the occasion.
page 121 note 1 A. G. N. Flew (ed.), New Essays in Philosophical Theology, p. 96 sq.Google Scholar
page 121 note 2 Op. cit. p. 98.Google Scholar
page 123 note 1 Austin, J. L., P.A.S. Supp. 1946, pp. 170-175.Google Scholar
page 123 note 2 Hart, H. L. A., P.A.S. 1948-49, pp. 171sq.Google Scholar
page 123 note 3 Cp. I. and Opie, P., Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, ch. 8.Google Scholar
page 127 note 1 So Wittgenstein in the Tractatus. It is said that he later got this out of his system. But it reappears in those ofhis successors.Google Scholar
page 128 note 1 Contra Gentiles, I, 30-34;Google Scholarcp. White, V., God the Unknown, Ch. II.Google Scholar
page 128 note 2 cp. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 432sq. (the Antinomies);Google ScholarCrombie, I. M. in Faith and Logic, ed. Mitchell, , 1957, pp. 46–48.Google Scholar
page 128 note 3 v. Wittgenstein, , Tractatus, 5.542, and my article in Mind 1958.Google Scholar
page 129 note 1 P.A.S. Supp. XX, 1946, p. 1.
page 131 note 1 Cp. John 9.25, ‘This one thing I know …’.
page 131 note 2 Prolegomena, ed. Lucas, (Manchester University Press), 1953, p. 56.Google Scholar
page 132 note 1 Well put by James, W., Pragmatism, Lecture V.Google Scholar
page 132 note 2 Cp. Collingwood, R. G., Metaphysics, ch. V-VII and Part III.Google Scholar
page 133 note 1 v. Forster, E. M., Howards End; and Jonah (anon.).Google Scholar
page 134 note 1 Op. cit. p. 97.Google Scholar
page 134 note 2 In ‘Hongkong Fir Shipping v. Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha’, Times haw Report, 21.12.61.Google Scholar
page 136 note 1 Buber, M., Eclipse of God, p. 50.Google Scholar