Lecture notes
Metaphysics of mind-religious language part 2
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Religious language part 2Key philosophers: Flew (invisible gardener), Hare (The paranoid student), Mitchel (Partisan
parable).
Flew and his gardener parable
Flews factual meaningfulness is on falsifiability. If you can think of a way to falsify the idea, then it is
factually meaningful. Just sticking to a belief means it ends up being meaningless.
Parable: two explorers see a garden, one says there must be a gardener as there are flowers, and
the other says there isn’t one, because there are lots of weeds. They decide to set up cameras to
catch the gardener but fail. The first explorer says he is invisible then, so they try different methods
of catching him. Every time they fail, the first explorer comes up with an excuse. This angers the
second explorer who’s asks the question of, “ what is the difference if there is an invisible intangible
gardener who leaves weeds, and no gardener at all.
Flews parables is meant to symbolise atheists and religious people who constantly change their
argument to make it seem like it works. This is known as death by a thousand qualifications.
Criticisms
Flew does not give us any good reason to subscribe to his theory of falsification. Why must a theory
be falsifiable in order to be meaningful?
It is impossible to know whether people’s beliefs are factually meaningful without questioning them
about possible evidence which would falsify it.
Hare and the paranoid student
This is a criticism of the parable by Flew.
Hare states that statements can be meaningful even if they do not have a truth value.
Parable: A paranoid lunatic is a student at university, and is convinced
all his professors are plotting to murder him. Despite his friends
introducing him to many mild-mannered and kindly professors, the
paranoid student maintains that the professors are cunning tricksters,
pretending to be mild-mannered and kindly in order to cover their
tracks, when they are really plotting to murder him.
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