...reality principle in denying the existence of a verification independent 'target for our thoughts to aim at'? On the Realists view, there is a mind-independed world about which we form beliefs, and truth is the correspondence between a statement or belief and the mind-independed world the statement or belief is about. Central in the Realists conception is that its obtaining is independed of our ways of finding out about it. That is, that truth transcends our ability to know the truth. For the Realist, if reality did not contain answers to our questions, then there would be no ‘target for our thoughts to aim at’ and ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’ would cease to matter. Opposed to Realism is the Anti-Realists view that ‘reality’ is constituted in part by our conceptual activities or the conceptual tools we employ in our inquiry. The anti-realist seeks a notion of truth that can be constructed out of verification. For anti-realism truth is to be analyzed in terms of concepts like evidence or scientific inquiry. For a statement to be true is to be capable of being verified or asserted. Reality for the Anti-Realist is defined as the totality of these ‘actual truths’. The Anti-realist identifies truth with verification. He argues that when we are making any assertions, the actual standard these assertions have to pass, is the best interpretation of the best available evidence. So the Anti-realist asks ‘what use does a truth that transcends verification have, if...
Words: 1056 - Pages: 5
...collection of philosophers, the logical positivists, formulated the verification principle, which was developed by A. J. Ayer in order to combat the idea that religious language is meaningful. He thought that “God talk” was nonsense because it could not be verified analytically or synthetically. They believed that there were only 2 types of statements which are meaningful; tautologies (true by definition) and statements that can be verified by some kind of test. Following this theory, religious language is deemed meaningless because they believed it was metaphysical and there is no way to even test whether God exists. A. J. Ayer stated that there are 2 types of the verification princip0le. The first is strong verification, which is something we can verify for ourselves and the second is weak verification which relies on other people to verify it. John Hick was one of the main critics of the verification principle. He believed that we can’t write off all statements as meaningless. He put forward the idea of eschatological verification, saying that some things we will be able to verify after death, therefore we cannot refer to religious language as meaningless. One can also say that the verification principle is meaningless by its own definition. We cannot empirically prove that religious language is meaningful but we also cannot prove that the verification principle is, therefore it fails its own principle. Anthony Flew also agreed that religious language was meaningless...
Words: 629 - Pages: 3
...“The verification principle offers no real challenge to religious belief.” Discuss [35] The verification principle is a significant concept used by many philosophers in order to determine whether a religious statement is meaningful or not. This was highly influenced by logical positivism: group of 20th century philosophers called the Vienna circle and was then further developed by British philosopher A.J Ayer. Religious language refer to statements such as ‘God exists’ and ‘God loves me’. Whilst these metaphysical claims are often rendered as meaningless by verificationism, one must take into account the strengths and weaknesses. Ayer, in his first edition of ‘Language, Truth and Logic’ (1936), asserts that a statement is meaningful if and only if it can be verified by the sense observation or a tautology. By this he means that they are either a priori (before sense experience) analytic, where the predicate is entailed by the subject, or a posteriori (after sense experience) synthetic, where the predicate is not entailed by the subject. An example of a priori analytic statement would be that ‘all unmarried men are bachelors’ and this is also a tautology as it is true by definition. An example of a posteriori synthetic statement would be that ‘John is a bachelor’. For Ayer, if a statement cannot be verified in this way, then it is factually insignificant and thus, meaningless. He affirms that religious statements fall into neither category of priori analytic nor posteriori synthetic...
Words: 991 - Pages: 4
...religious language is meaningful and full of purpose while others see it to being incomprehensible and pointless. If we are to take the logical positivist approach then we would view all religious language as meaningless. For logical positivists the entire discipline of philosophy was centred on one task, which was to clarify the meaning of concepts and ideas. In turn, this led them to look at statements and inquire just what the “meaning” of them was, and what sort of statements really did have any “meaning.” A group of philosophers that known as the Vienna circle took a univocal approach to language, that is to say, that we mean the same thing when we talk about God and man. The logical positivists formulated the verification principle which saw assertions which are only verifiable through observation or experience, can be deemed meaningful. In this case, other assertions are either analytic or meaningless utterances. This approach was built on the work of both John Locke and David Hume, who argued that all philosophical matters must be approached with a strict empirical system. Thus, according to the verification principle, meaningful assertions fall into three categories. The first category is analytic statements. These are logical propositions as they are true by definition and contain there truth within the premise and are necessarily true. The second were mathematical statements, which have to be necessarily true throughout the universe. The final criterion is synthetic...
Words: 2881 - Pages: 12
...Examine the contribution that two of the following may make to the study of religious language * Analogy * Symbol and myth * Language games Religious language has been around for years and two of the contributions that relate to this are analogy and language games. Religious language is used to talk about religious ideas for example the existence of god. The Vienna circle can up with the idea of the verification principle and they believed that unless something can be empirically proven then it doesn’t exist meaning that it has no meaning. However one issue with this theory is that you cannot prove something that isn’t of sight for example historical statements and emotional statements. This also applies to religious statements because god cannot be proven meaning his is not a physical being making him meaningless. However Ayer creates the weak verification principle and argues you can have statements like ‘I love you’ and historical statements but he argues that along as it can be proven as some point then it is not meaningless. Analogy is another way of describing things in religious language for example Paley’s idea of the world being like a watch. Univocal language is good when describing god because you can relate to it for example saying ‘god is good’ and saying ‘that was good’ gives you a measure of how good god really is because you understand what good means, meaning it is easy to relate and understand because it can be related to anything including...
Words: 1149 - Pages: 5
...A miracle, as a broad definition, is an act of God that “transgresses the laws of nature” (David Hume), an act that seems to defy all rational. For many this offers strong evidence for the existence of God, as these inexplicable events must have a cause, that of a transcendent, metaphysical being. However, for others, most notably David Hume, miracles are a logical impossibility, an oxymoron if you will. He tried to prove, through a priori and a posterior reasoning that miracles, because of their metaphysical origin, cannot be what people claim them to be (intervention by God). Problems with the law of nature to language problems with the way miracles are experienced and reported provide ammunition for those that agree with the assumption in the title. By defining what miracles are and then exploring the criticisms and counter criticisms for these definitions we should arrive at a conclusion as to whether miracles, in the sense they are defined, are possible. Brian Davis proposed that there were two different types of miracles, the essential difference being the varying degree of possible divine intervention that can be attributed to the event. Strong Miracles are events that can only be attributed to God – he is intervening in the world to change the course of history. This may be, as Hume suggested, a “transgression of the laws of nature by a particular violation of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent”. However, Humey boy took issue with strong miracles...
Words: 2011 - Pages: 9
...twentieth century. It was influenced and created mainly by the philosophers David Hume and A.J. Ayer. The former’s belief that claims about reality must be verified by evidence founded the core of this movement’s philosophy. This idea influenced the movement’s verification principle, and allows for distinguishing the difference between science and religion in terms of their language and meaning. Another philosopher that focuses on the former is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who argued that although science and religion may seem like they govern the...
Words: 1088 - Pages: 5
...relevant or meaningful. This issue of religious language looks at the way we talk about God, debate ideas and communicate our theist or atheist ideologies. For some, religious language is meaningful and full of purpose while others see it to being incomprehensible and pointless. The verification principle a theory proposed by A.J. Ayer is a key argument, which addresses whether religious language is meaningful or not. Ayer was one of the logical positivists, a Viennese group of philosophers who were inspired by the theories of the early Wittgenstein and he sought to answer what makes a statement ‘meaningful’ as opposed to what makes it ‘true’. Ayer begins his thesis with the claim that language is only meaningful if it can be verified by a sense-observation. If you cannot demonstrate with sense-observations how a statement is true, then the statement is factually meaningless. A ‘putative proposition’ is the name Ayer gives to statements yet to be verified. A putative statement is either verifiable practically or in principle. For instance, a statement such as “that is a red car” is verifiable in practice by looking at the car. However, a statement such as “There is life in another universe” is verifiable in principle but not in practice, as we possess insufficient technology. Therefore Ayer then makes distinctions between strong and weak verification. Strong verification refers to any statement that can be verified as true beyond any doubts through sense experience, and...
Words: 1356 - Pages: 6
...as fraud, inefficiency, and waste. In addition, its purpose is evaluation of performance in all units; ensuring policy compliance and preparation of accurate and reliable accounting data. Internal control operates under five components and six principles; the five components namely; control environment, information and communication, control activities, and risk assessment. The six principles of control activities are; establishment of responsibility, segregation of duties, documentation procedures, physical controls, independent internal verification and human resource control (Kimmel, pg. 338, Straus 2008). The adequacy and effectiveness of any organization’s internal control is examined by the internal audit office. Its success is strengthened by reviews and recommendations from the internal auditing. The internal control requirements for the LJB Company to adhere before it goes publics will be addressed and it must be in accordance with Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX.) All publicly traded corporations are required to preserve a satisfactory internal control system. Corporate presidents and administrators must ensure these controls are dependable and efficient. LJB Company needs to establish adequate internal control principles, whether it goes public or not (Kimmel, pg. 337, Straus 2008). The interest of LJB to go public will only become successful when, proper internal checks are administered. The overall image of the company can be build when the company complies...
Words: 1361 - Pages: 6
...A CAPTCHA Implementation Based on 3D Animation Abstract—In order to distinguish between human users and computer programs, CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Human Apart) mechanism is widely applied in websites such as accounts application website. While the major implementation of CAPTCHA method—2D still image verification code based on OCR technology is threatened by developing artificial intelligence and image recognition technologies. In this paper, we propose a new approach to implement CAPTCHA mechanism based on 3D Animation, utilizing the weakness of computer vision, which make it robust to computer attacks and convenient for users to recognize, and implemented this method to generate a 3D animation verification code. Keywords-CAPTCHA;VerificationCode;Moving Three-dimensional Animation I. Figure 1. objects; INTRODUCTION Internet is crucial to each respect of life all over the globe nowadays, through which we could retrieve and exchange information freely and efficiently. Given the fundamental relation between internet and people’ s life, vast malicious computer programs attack websites for profits, such as auto application for some mails’ accounts to send junk e-mails, etc. CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Human Apart) system emerges to solve this problem by identifying end-users of internet whether a real person or an automated computer program[1][2][3]...
Words: 3406 - Pages: 14
...A2 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE What follows should act as reminders. For full revision you need to do more than rely on these notes. Use your course notes, essays and text books. 1. Key Words: Religious language is cognitive if it is thought of as conveying knowledge of what is really there. Religious language is non-cognitive it is thought as conveying feelings or expressing desires or guiding ways of behaving. Religious language is realist if it is thought of as conveying testable facts that actually pertain in reality. Religious language is non-realist it is thought of as conveying guiding ideals but with no basis in factual reality. Religious language offers a correspondence theory of truth if it is thought of as being able to point to the reality that it is trying to convey. Religious language offers a coherence theory of truth if it is thought of as conveying making sense within a network of other beliefs which people hold to be true. 2. What Religious Language is: Religious language is an outlet for emotion in special times of life. Religious language is the language of worship. It is performative, ‘I baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’, and it is prescriptive (law making – i.e. honour your father and mother). However, none these uses of religious language is our focus. Our focus is how religious language might make truth claims about the reality of God and whether it can succeed in doing this. Philosophers...
Words: 7343 - Pages: 30
...ACCT504 Acct Fin: Managerial Use, Analysis Senior Faculty: Anita Wibbert Keller Graduate Rajesh Mahbubani Week 5: Assignment Sunday, December 1, 2013 1. Inform the President of any new internal control requirements if the company decides to go public. (7 points) Instituting a system of internal checks and balances would be foremost in my recommendations to the company president since most internal control systems provide for independent internal verification; this principle involves the review of data prepared by employees. To obtain maximum benefit from independent internal verification: * Companies should verify records periodically or on a surprise basis. * An employee who is independent of the personnel responsible for the information should make the verification. The company should also look at incorporating a Voucher Control System. Most medium and large companies use vouchers as part of their internal control over cash disbursements. A voucher system is a network of approvals by authorized individuals, acting independently, to ensure that all disbursements by check are proper. When looking to hire new employees, it is vital that the company utilize the extensive resources on the web in providing for complete background investigations. A lot of wasted time and energy could be recouped using effective human resource controls. Effective web access controls could likewise prevent embarrassing behavior and lost company time on the part of current...
Words: 901 - Pages: 4
...Chapter 8 Logical Positivism I want neither that plutocracy grasping and mean, nor that democracy goody and mediocre, occupied solely in turning the other cheek, where would dwell sages without curiosity, who, shunning excess, would not die of disease, but would surely die of ennui. — Poincar´ (quoted in Runes, ToP, p. 966) e Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought. — Mach (Newman, WM, Vol. 3, p. 1792) 8.1 Historical Background In this chapter we will look at logical positivism, the most influential phi- Logical Analysis losophy of science in the twentieth century. In spite of the fact that logical positivism has been abandoned by most philosophers of science, its influence continues in many disciplines, including physics, linguistics and psychology. We will be especially concerned with logical positivism’s view of knowledge, which is, roughly: (1) the only real knowledge is scientific knowledge; (2) by a process of logical analysis scientific knowledge can be reduced to symbolic formulas constructed from “atomic facts.” Certainly assertion (1) is nothing new; Socrates said as much when he distinguished “scientific knowledge” 303 304 Empiricism Anglo-American Roots Continental Roots Auguste Comte: 1798–1857 CHAPTER 8. LOGICAL POSITIVISM (episteme) from a “practice” (empeiria); see Section 2.4.3. Furthermore...
Words: 10216 - Pages: 41
...even giving an account of the forming of the Vienna Circle and the writings which led these philosophers to come together. Some may mention Wittgenstein’s Tractatus but they should be aware that he was not himself a member of the Circle. This may lead to an exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of the Verification Principle, with some demonstration of the self-refuting nature of the principle itself. Some may use examples from religious language of the kinds of statements which the Vienna circle were accusing of meaninglessness such as; ‘God is all-loving, all powerful, your God is a jealous God.’ Some candidates may take their arguments towards an explanation of the later writings of Wittgenstein and introduce the ideas of language games; and his claim that language gets its meaning from the context in which it is used or the rules of the game you are playing at any given time. Others may explore the approach taken by the Vienna Circle to analytic and synthetic statements, explaining the need for synthetic statements to be verifiable by empirical evidence if they were to be considered meaningful. In this context some may address the issue of strong and weak verification. AO2 In their evaluation candidates may assess the underlying assumption of Logical Positivism that it is only scientific propositions which can accurately describe the reality of our world. Arguably not religious language but also poetry and music contribute a great deal to our understanding of reality...
Words: 367 - Pages: 2
...The Internal control management strategies Prepared for: LJB Company Prepared by: Chibuzor E. Edeh Devry University ACCT 540: Financial Accounting TABLE OF CONTENT Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3 Internal control regulations for public companies -----------------------------------------------------------3-4 LJB’S good internal control measures -------------------------------------------------------------------------4 Recommendations for Indelible ink --------------------------------------------------------------------------4 LJB’S poor internal control measures ------------------------------------------------------------------------5-6 Recommendations for improvement --------------------------------------------------------------------------5-6 Summary --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7 References ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 INTRODUCTION Internal control consists of all the related methods and measures adopted within an organization to safeguard its assets, enhance the reliability of its accounting records, increase efficiency of operations, and ensure compliance with laws and regulations. Internal control is very important because it discourages employees from fraudulent activities...
Words: 1752 - Pages: 8
