1. How did we prove that the world was not flat?
How did we go about this? Think, pair, share

2. The Falsification Principle; the views of Antony Flew

3. Learning outcome To be able to explain Flew‘s falsification principle.
To evaluate the effectiveness of the falsification principle.

4. Karl Popper
Karl Popper made the point that in science it’s not so much verifiability that is important, but falsifiability. You don’t prove the world is flat, you falsify it. So science progresses through ‘paradigm shifts’ where the prevailing paradigm (world view) is falsified (Aristotle to Galileo to Newton to Einstein, Einstein to Quantum Physics).

5. Falsification: Antony Flew
This is the inverse of verification; Flew claimed that any positive claim we make also assumes that we deny its opposite. If I say that school work is fun, I am also saying that school work is not, not fun.
Flew argued that language is only meaningful if we can conceive of some evidence which might count against it. It’s only meaningful to say that school work is fun because students might be able to show contradictory information: boring research projects, or a limited syllabus.
The problem with ‘God talk’ is that it often implies that it could never by falsified: “I know that God loves me in a special and mysterious way which no-one may question or disprove”. If God is just a mystery, then we are not using language in a constructive, meaningful way.
“If there is nothing that a putative assertion denies then there is nothing which it asserts either.”
Antony Flew

6. Flew continued...
Flew argues that when we say something is the case (e.g. badgers are black and white), not only are we stating that badgers are black and white, but we are also denying the opposite i.e. badgers are not not black and white.
Flew believed that when you assert something, you are also asserting (whether you like it or not) that there are facts/evidence that may count against your assertion, therefore, there has to be some sense experience that would count against your claim.
i.e. ‘I have seen a badger that is only black.’ As Flew puts it ‘...if there is nothing which a putative assertion denies then there is nothing which it asserts either.’

7. Falsification?
In your notes write an explanation of how Flew would check these statements are meaningful: ‘Venice has canals’ ‘God exists’

8. Brian Davies puts it like this in the context of God-talk:
‘Religious believers make claims. They say for instance, that there is a God who loves human beings. But apparently they are unwilling to allow anything to count against these claims. The claims seem unfalsifiable. Are they then, genuine claims?
Flew does not dogmatically declare that they cannot be, but he evidently has his doubts. ‘Sophisticated religious people’, he says, ‘tend to refuse to allow, not merely that anything actually does occur, but that anything conceivably could occur, which would count against their theological assertions and explanations’.

9. What Flew is protesting about...
What Flew is protesting about, is a tendency he observed amongst religious believers to shift the goalposts of statements about God.
For example, one might start by saying ‘God loves all humans’. If one were to witness a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat, one would be right to use that as evidence to falsify the claim that God loves humans. Religious believers, Flew observed, would then retort ‘...but God loves humans in an inscrutable way, a different way to the way we love.’
For Flew, this second statement has no meaning, because it doesn’t allow for anything to falsify it. The famous example used to illustrate this point, is that of John Wisdom’s gardener.

10. Falsification Symposium Debates
Antony Flew’s article ‘Theology and Falsification’ has become one of the best-know pieces of writing on the subject of religious language. After the Second World War, Philosophical discussion about language was one of the key interests at the University of Oxford. However, the debate between the logical positivists and those who wanted to defend religious language had reached a stale mate. Antony Flew wanted to turn the debate in a different direction. In a symposium of Oxford Philosophers in 1950, Flew presented ‘Theology and Falsification’ and invited responses from his colleagues R.M Hare and Basil Mitchell.

11. John Wisdom’s parable of the invisible gardener
Read the article and write down in your notes the 5 most important facts. 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)
Next steps: Come up with your own story or parable to explain Flews' point.

12. What does Flew mean?
Flew’s point is that, in practice, religious people do not accept the falsification tests; instead they tend to qualify the statement. SO the statement “there is a gardener” becomes “there is a gardener, BUT he is invisible, BUT he is odourless, BUT he makes no sound, BUT he is intangible, BUT he has no effect on the garden, BUT….” In this way the meaningfulness of the statement “there is a gardener” has ‘died the death of 1,000 qualifications’.

13. What did Flew mean?
God talk involves ‘the death of 1,000 qualifications’. Research and explain in your notes what the statement means.
Stretch yourself: Research and find out more how Karl Popper influenced the falsification principle.

14. Evaluation of falsification
Stretch yourself: How does the VP compare to the FP? Answer in your notes.

15. Sum up the falsification principle in.....
words
words