Background
Ramsey, Ian Thomas was born on January 31, 1915 in Bolton, Lancashire.
Ramsey, Ian Thomas was born on January 31, 1915 in Bolton, Lancashire.
Studied Mathematics, Moral Sciences and Theology at Christ’s College, Cambridge (1935-1939) and trained for the Anglican priesthood at Ripon College, Oxford.
In an early article Ramsey applauded ‘the admirable and justifiable movement of Moore and Russell in favour of clarification as a function of philosophy’ but thought that this conception ol philosophy had been taken to ‘ridiculous extremes' by the way these ideas had been developed in the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle. Ramsey’s ‘logical empiricism’ is already anticipated in his programmatic statement that ‘in reaching our idea of God we shall do well to take our cue from the relation of God to the world of sense-experience that idea of God as far as possible in terms of our concept of personality. The purpose of religious language, according to Ramsey, is to bring about a ‘cosmic disclosure’ which prompts a total commitment on the part of the hearer. The disclosure comes about when ‘the penny drops and the hearer is enabled to anchor what is being said in personal experience. Ramsey’s work has attracted a good deal of attention since the late 1950s, in America as well as in Britain. Philosophers have, however, been sharply critical of the vagueness of some of his key terms, such as ‘disclosure’, and of his epistemology generally. He has been criticized for giving religious discourse a suspicious immunity from criticism. R. N. Smart argues that, if the penny did not drop and the disclosure did not occur, Ramsey would not take this as evidence that a religious belief was false (Philosophical Quarterly 10 (1960): 93-4). In the light of Flew's challenge that statements need to be falsifiable to have meaning, Ramsey’s account of religious language seemed less than satisfactory—particularly in view of his commitment to empiricism.