Abstract

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