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Affirmation And Assertion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
Extract
Positivists have always objected to people talking about God.
Their objection rests on quite general logical grounds. They have discovered a simple, formal test by which to tell significant remarks from nonsensical collections of words. There must, they say, be some minimal conditions of intelligibility. From these we can construct a Principle of Meaning. Now religiousremarks, on any positivist Principle, are demonstrable nonsense.
What are these conditions of intelligibility ? Speaker and hearer, we suppose, must use the same language; must possess a rather similar background of information; must both have some interest or other in communication.… Such matters of ‘more and less’ will vary with the topic, the parties, and the occasion.
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