AQA A-Level Philosophy (7172)

## Learning Outcomes

- Understand the difference between **cognitivism** and **non-cognitivism** in religious language
- Explain A.J. Ayer’s **verification principle** and why it challenges religious claims
- Analyse Hick’s idea of **eschatological verification** as a response to Ayer
- Explain Flew’s falsification challenge using the **parable of the gardener**
- Distinguish Hare’s **blik** from Mitchell’s defence of religious belief in **the Partisan**
- Evaluate whether religious language is cognitively meaningful

## AQA A-Level Philosophy (7172) Syllabus

For the AQA A-Level Philosophy (7172), you are expected to understand debates about the meaningfulness of religious language, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know the distinction between **cognitivism** and **non-cognitivism** about religious language
- Explain the **verification principle** and Ayer’s challenge to metaphysical and religious claims
- Understand the difference between **analytic** statements and statements that are **empirically verifiable**
- Explain Hick’s response to Ayer through **eschatological verification**
- Understand the **University Debate** on falsification and religious belief
- Explain Flew’s use of Wisdom’s **Gardener** and why he says religious claims may die the death of a thousand qualifications
- Distinguish Hare’s **blik** response from Mitchell’s **Partisan** response
- Evaluate whether religious language is meaningless, non-cognitive, or cognitively meaningful

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. What is the difference between cognitivism and non-cognitivism?
2. How does Ayer’s verification principle challenge the statement “God exists”?
3. What does Hick mean by eschatological verification?
4. Why does Flew think some religious claims are meaningless?
5. How do Hare and Mitchell respond differently to Flew?

## Introduction

Religious language is about whether statements such as “God exists”, “God loves us” or “there is life after death” actually mean anything in a factual sense. This is not the same as asking whether these statements are true. The issue comes earlier: are they the kind of statements that can even count as true or false?

This matters in Paper 2 because the topic is built around a series of linked debates. Ayer attacks religious language through verification. Hick tries to save it. Flew shifts the test from verification to falsification. Hare and Mitchell then offer two very different replies. Strong answers do not just retell the parables. They explain what each philosopher thinks makes a statement meaningful.

> **Key Term: religious language**
> Language used to make claims, express beliefs, or communicate attitudes about God, the afterlife, and other religious matters.

### Cognitivism and non-cognitivism

The first distinction you need is between **cognitivism** and **non-cognitivism**. This sets up the whole topic.

A **cognitivist** thinks religious statements express beliefs about reality. If someone says “God exists”, they are making a claim about the world. That claim is **truth-apt**: it could be true or false. This does not mean it is easy to prove, only that it aims to describe how things are.

A **non-cognitivist** thinks religious statements do not mainly function as factual descriptions. Instead, they may express attitudes, commitments, values, or a way of seeing the world. On this view, “God exists” may work more like an expression of faith or a stance towards life than like “water boils at 100°C at standard pressure”.

This distinction matters because different philosophers are arguing at different levels. Ayer and Flew mainly challenge whether religious statements have **cognitive meaning**. Hare largely replies by moving religion towards a non-cognitive account. Mitchell resists that move and tries to keep religious belief cognitive.

> **Key Term: cognitivism**
> The view that a statement is meaningful because it expresses a belief about the world and can be true or false.
>
> **Key Term: non-cognitivism**
> The view that a statement is meaningful because it expresses something other than a factual belief, such as an attitude, commitment, or way of seeing the world.

A common student mistake is to write that non-cognitive means “meaningless”. That is wrong. Non-cognitivists usually say a statement can still be meaningful, but not as a factual assertion.

Another mistake is to say that if a statement is cognitive, it must already be verified. That is also wrong. A claim can be cognitive even if its truth is disputed or hard to test.

> **Test Tip:** In essays, define cognitivism and non-cognitivism early. It gives you a clear framework for judging Ayer, Hick, Flew, Hare and Mitchell.

### Ayer, logical positivism and the verification principle

A.J. Ayer, influenced by **logical positivism**, argues that a statement is meaningful only if it passes the verification test. His basic principle is that a statement is meaningful if it is either **analytic** or **empirically verifiable**.

An analytic statement is true by definition. For example, “all bachelors are unmarried” is true once you understand the terms. You do not need to inspect the world to check it.

An empirically verifiable statement can be checked by sense experience, at least in principle. “There is a cat in the next room” is verifiable because you could look. Even if a check is difficult, what matters is that you know what sort of observation would confirm it.

> **Key Term: verification principle**
> The view that a statement is cognitively meaningful only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable.
>
> **Key Term: analytic**
> True by definition or by the meanings of the words, rather than by observation.
>
> **Key Term: empirically verifiable**
> Capable of being checked or supported by observation and sense experience.

Ayer’s challenge to religion works as a chain of reasoning.

1. Meaningful factual statements must be analytic or empirically verifiable.
2. Religious claims such as “God exists” are not analytic.
3. They are also not empirically verifiable, because God is not observable in the way ordinary objects are.
4. Therefore religious claims are not factually meaningful.

Notice the target here. Ayer is not saying “God does not exist”. He is saying the statement “God exists” fails the test for cognitive meaning. For him, it becomes a **pseudo-statement**: it may sound meaningful, but it lacks factual significance.

Ayer also distinguishes strong and weak verification. Strong verification would require conclusive proof by observation, but this is too strict because it would exclude many scientific and historical claims. Weak verification allows that some observations may make a claim probable. This saves more ordinary language, but Ayer still thinks religious claims fail, because believers cannot specify what observations would count as verifying God’s existence.

Why is this view attractive? It gives a clear test and fits an empiricist picture of knowledge. It also explains why so many metaphysical disputes seem endless: perhaps they are not genuine factual disputes at all.

But the criticisms are serious. The verification principle seems to exclude too much: ethics, aesthetics, poetry, and much philosophy. Also, the principle appears **self-defeating**. It is not analytic, and it is not empirically verifiable, so by its own standard it looks meaningless.

This criticism matters because if the test fails, Ayer’s attack on religious language weakens sharply. A bad test cannot decisively show religion meaningless.

### Hick and eschatological verification

John Hick accepts that Ayer has raised a serious challenge, but he argues that Ayer’s test is too narrow. Some claims may be verifiable **in principle** even if they cannot be checked now.

Hick’s idea is **eschatological verification**. “Eschatological” means relating to death, the end, or the afterlife. Hick argues that some religious claims could be verified after death. If so, they are not meaningless now.

> **Key Term: eschatological verification**
> The idea that some religious claims may be verified at the end of life or after death, even if they cannot be verified during this life.

Hick illustrates this with the parable of the Celestial City. Two travellers follow the same road. One believes it leads to the Celestial City; the other believes it leads nowhere. Along the way, both face the same pleasures and hardships, but they interpret them differently. If at the end there is a Celestial City, the believer is shown to be right.

The force of the parable is not the story itself. The point is logical: a claim can be meaningful if some future experience could verify it. So religious language need not be meaningless simply because present verification is impossible.

This is a direct response to Ayer. Hick is saying that “God exists” or “there is life after death” might still be cognitive claims because they could, at least in principle, be confirmed later.

However, the response is only partly successful. First, Hick’s theory seems **asymmetrical**. If religious belief is true, it can be verified after death. But if it is false and death is simply annihilation, there may be no subject left to discover the falsity. This makes verification one-sided.

Second, critics argue that post-mortem verification is weak because it is inaccessible to the living. If no living person can inspect the evidence, does this really help ordinary standards of meaning?

Third, Hick may save some claims more easily than others. “There is life after death” fits well. “God is loving” or “God answers prayer” is harder, because these claims need more than a final encounter.

Even so, Hick is strong because he shows that Ayer moves too quickly from “not verifiable now” to “meaningless”. That gap is exactly what Hick attacks.

> **Test Tip:** When explaining Hick, always connect him back to Ayer. Examiners want to see that eschatological verification is a response to verificationism, not just an isolated theory about the afterlife.

### The University Debate: Flew, Hare and Mitchell

The next stage of the topic shifts from **verification** to **falsification**. Antony Flew argues that for a claim to be a genuine assertion, something must count against it. If believers allow no possible counter-evidence, their claims say nothing.

> **Key Term: falsification**
> The idea that a meaningful factual claim must allow some possible evidence to show it is false.

Flew uses Wisdom’s parable of the Gardener. Two people find a clearing. One says there is a gardener tending it. They watch, but no gardener appears. They use guards, dogs, and other tests. Still nothing. The believer then keeps adding qualifications: the gardener is invisible, intangible, silent, and so on. Flew’s point is that the claim is gradually emptied of content. It dies the death of a thousand qualifications.

So his challenge is simple but powerful: what would have to happen for “God loves us” to be false? If the answer is “nothing at all”, then the statement is not a genuine factual assertion.

Hare responds very differently. He says Flew assumes that all meaningful language works like scientific hypothesis-testing. Hare introduces the idea of a **blik**.

> **Key Term: blik**
> A fundamental, unfalsifiable way of seeing the world that shapes how a person interprets all experience.

In Hare’s example, a lunatic student becomes convinced that all the university dons want to kill him. Kind behaviour and reassurance do not change his view. The student’s belief is not a normal factual hypothesis; it is a governing outlook. Hare thinks religious belief may work in a similar way.

This saves religious language from meaninglessness, but at a price. If religion is a blik, then it is not really a factual claim about an existing God. Many believers will reject this because they do mean “God exists” as an objective truth, not just as a personal framework.

Flew’s criticism of Hare is strong: if religion is only a blik, then it seems no longer recognisably Christian theism. It keeps meaning by surrendering truth-aptness.

Basil Mitchell offers a more subtle reply. He wants to keep religious belief both meaningful and cognitive. His parable is the **Partisan**. During wartime, a partisan meets a stranger who claims to be the resistance leader. The partisan trusts him. Later, the stranger sometimes seems to help the resistance and sometimes seems to help the enemy. The partisan does not ignore this counter-evidence, but he continues to trust the stranger.

Mitchell’s point is that faith can survive contrary evidence without becoming meaningless. Believers do not have to treat every event as straightforward proof of God’s love, but neither must they abandon faith as soon as difficulties appear. Religious belief is a commitment based on trust.

This is stronger than Hare because Mitchell keeps religion cognitive. Belief still makes claims about reality. It is also stronger than a naive believer’s response because Mitchell admits that the evidence is ambiguous and that evil and suffering count as real pressure against belief.

However, Flew can still press the same question: what would finally falsify the believer’s claim? If no possible situation could ever overturn trust, then Mitchell may only have delayed the problem. His reply is better at describing how believers actually think, but less decisive at answering the falsification challenge.

The key distinction is this:

- Hare says religious language is meaningful as a non-cognitive worldview.
- Mitchell says religious language is meaningful as a cognitive claim sustained by faith and trust despite ambiguity.

Students often blur these two replies, but they are not the same.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- Religious language asks whether statements about God are meaningful, especially in a cognitive sense
- Cognitivism treats religious claims as truth-apt beliefs about reality
- Non-cognitivism treats religious claims as expressions of attitude, commitment, or worldview
- Ayer’s verification principle says a statement is meaningful only if it is analytic or empirically verifiable
- Ayer argues religious claims such as “God exists” are neither analytic nor empirically verifiable
- Ayer therefore treats religious claims as pseudo-statements rather than false statements
- Hick argues that some religious claims are meaningful because they are eschatologically verifiable
- Hick’s Celestial City parable shows how a claim may be verified after death
- Flew argues that meaningful assertions must allow possible falsification
- Flew’s gardener example suggests religious claims may die the death of a thousand qualifications
- Hare replies that religion may function as a blik, which is meaningful but non-cognitive
- Mitchell replies that religious belief can remain cognitive because faith may persist through counter-evidence without ignoring it

## Key Terms and Concepts

- religious language
- cognitivism
- non-cognitivism
- verification principle
- analytic
- empirically verifiable
- eschatological verification
- falsification
- blik


Metaphysics of God - Religious language