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 doesnt really want to murder you he spoke to you in a most cordial manner sur ID: 708022
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Slide1
RM Hare - The Parable of the Paranoid Lunatic
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.
What is the meaning of this story?Slide2
R.M Hare’s response to ‘Theology and Falsification’: BliksSlide3
Lesson Outcomes
To be able to explain what Bliks are and how they link to the falsification principleTo be able to evaluate the impact of bliks on religious language. Slide4
R.M Hare’s response to ‘Theology and Falsification’
R.M Hare gave the first and probably the most radical response to Flew’s article. He responded to Flew in the Journal ‘New Philosophical Theology’. He agreed that Flew had succeeded in demonstrating the failure of religious language to make meaningful truth-claims. However, Hare suggested that when people use religious language, they should not be interpreted as truth- claims in cognitive sense, but as expressions of what he called a ‘Blik’. Slide5
Bliks and Falsification
The philosopher R.M. Hare took up the idea of falsification and used it to describe certain beliefs which he called ‘bliks’. A blik is a non-rational belief which could never be falsified (disproved).
He agreed
that religious statements are non-cognitive.
R.L. cannot make factual claims – but it can still influence the way that people view the world.
Hare called this way of looking at the world a
‘
Blik
’.Slide6
R.M Hare – Criticisms of falsification
A ‘blik’ is a particular view about the world that may not be based upon reason or fact and that cannot be verified or falsified; it just is and we don’t need to explain why we hold our ‘
blik
’.
Hare talked about trusting in the metal of a car; this ‘
blik
’ about the car meant that we would quite happily drive or be driven in a car, because we have the ‘
blik
’ that the metal is strong and that it is safe to drive at high speed in the car.
Hare said that people either have the right or sane ‘
blik
’ or the wrong or insane ‘
blik
’; the lunatic above has the wrong ‘
blik
’ about dons, whereas his friends have the right ‘
blik
’.Slide7
Write your own analogy to demonstrate bliks…
e.g. A student is convinced that his philosophy teacher is trying to kill him but, as his friends point out, there’s no evidence at all that this is the case. The student may say that this teacher is so clever that she would never leave any evidence of any kind. Remember: Bliks are not necessarily untrue (some are sane and some insane), but they are groundless.
Stretch yourself:
How do think Bliks apply to views about God? Answer in your notes.
Top Philosopher:
What is Basil Mitchell’s criticism of Bliks? Slide8
Hare to Flew....
Read through Hare’s response to Flew.Make a list of all his objections to the falsification principle.
Stretch yourself:
Which criticism do you agree with the most? Explain why.
Top philosopher:
Write Flew’s response to Hare… Slide9
John Hick on Bliks
Hick argues that religious beliefs or religious ‘bliks’ are based upon reason.e.g. people believe in God because they may have had a religious experience, or they feel the words of the Bible/Qur’an are true for a variety of other reasons.
Secondly, he claims there is an inconsistency: Hare claims that there is a distinction between sane and insane
bliks
.
However, he also claims that
bliks
are unverifiable and
unfalsifiable
. If we cannot either prove or disprove religious ‘
bliks
’, we cannot call them right or wrong, sane or insane either.Slide10
Objections to Bliks
John Hick
Basil Mitchell
Find out what Criticisms there were to Hare’s concept of Bliks…Slide11
R.M Hare – criticism or not?
Write a paragraph on Bliks to either support or criticise the follow statement:‘Religious language is meaningless’How would you use it?
Top Philosopher:
Research Wittgenstein’s concept of language games. Slide12
Mini new bulletin!
Write a headline summarising what you have learnt this lesson…