Final Project Blogpost - AJ Ayer
Stuart McMullen - H01
AJ Ayer on Logical Positivism:
Ayer is perhaps most known for being one of the leading representatives of Logical Positivism. At age 16, Ayer was interested in Bertrand Russell’s Sceptical Essays, particularly Russell’s argument for the claim that it is illogical to believe a proposition when there is no ground for believing its truth. This idea, eventually known as Logical Positivism was formed in the twentieth century by The Vienna Circle, a group of scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians who met up at the University of Vienna and discussed philosophical issues. As a member, Ayer contributed to much of the discussions in the group and held strong many of their ideas.
Logical Positivism is the belief that all knowledge must be scientifically proven for it to be valid. Furthermore, all traditional metaphysical beliefs are meaningless and should be dismissed. To decipher a meaningful statement from a meaningless statement, Ayer used a concept he introduced in first and most famous book, Language, Truth and Logic (1936). It was a doctrine known as the Verification Principle. This principle was outlined by two key questions surrounding a claim:
(1) Is it true by definition?
(2) Is it empirically verifiable?
Ayer believed that these two questions must both be true to verify any statement.
Take believing in God for example. By definition, God is a transcendent being, who exists beyond both time and space. The idea of God may be true by definition, but it isn’t empirically verifiable, because the idea of God goes against the laws of science and nature, therefore making the idea of God in Ayer’s eyes, completely meaningless.
“But if science may be said to be blind without philosophy, it is true also that philosophy is virtually empty without science.”
- AJ Ayer
Ayer was a loyal empiricist, and much of the foundation of his beliefs were based on the works and ideas of philosopher David Hume. Hume had at one point even suggested that we should “burn works of philosophy that failed this test because they contained nothing but ‘soph-istry and illusion’.
Despite many positivist philosophers use of the Verification Principle, It has faced a lot of criticism, and has even been said to fail it’s own criterion.
AJ Ayer on God and Religious Knowledge
Expanding on the topic of God, Ayer believed that it’s not even possible to prove that the existence of God is probable, a point that is overlooked by many, he says. In his book Language, Truth and Logic, he mentions that many claim that it’s valid to assume an existence of a god, because of “regularity in nature”. Ayer shoots down this idea, stating that “if the sentence 'God exists' entails to more than that certain types of phenomena occur in certain sequences, then to assert the existence of a god will be simply equivalent to asserting that there is the requisite regularity in nature; and no religious man would admit that this was all he intended to assert in asserting the existence of a god.” In this case, 'god' would be a metaphysical term. Ayer would say that claiming that God exists, would be a metaphysical utterance, a senseless claim, that can’t be proven true or false.
When it comes to religious standpoints, Ayer is equally critical of atheism, theism, and agnosticism. He states that an atheist’s reason for not believing in a God is just as senseless as a theist’s reason for believing in a God. This, he claims, is because “it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted”. Agnosticism should be ruled out as well he says, because they do not deny that the existence of a god is a legitimate question.
As Ayer once stated:
“I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it.”
AJ Ayer on Ethics:
Ayer’s view on ethics plays into the verification principle. He was an emotivist, which meant he believed that ethical judgement scenarios are not propositions, but more feelings or emotions. When considering an ethical or moral assertion, it’s important to consider 3 things.
Moral Statements:
1) are neither true or false
2) express our emotions
3) try to influence others to agree with us.
Furthermore, Ethical statements do not pass the verification principle. This is because synthetic, not analytic, meaning they are not true by definition, and because they can not be proven by empirical evidence. Based on these assertions, they cannot be true or false statements, in terms of Ayer’s Logic.
For example, take the statement, “It’s wrong that he stole a candy bar.”
According to Emotivism, we can only accept the statement of fact that he stole a candy bar. But, we can’t view that it’s wrong that he stole it to be factual. This is because it is not true by definition that theft is wrong, nor is it something we can prove or disprove as a fact.
Here's a video about emotivism and moral knowledge:
An important part of Ayer’s legacy was that he didn’t care if was judged because of some of his unconventional beliefs, nor did he conform to the majority when it came to his philosophical views. In fact, he was an outcast among many philosophers and their teachings. Much of his philosophy, including his book: Language, Truth, and Logic “ruffled feathers”, as Nigel Warburton states in his book, A Little History of Philosophy.
Warburton explained that,
“ruffling feathers is something philosophers have been doing for thousands of years, in the tradition that began with Socrates. Still, to write a book that so openly attacked the work of some of the great philosophers of the past was a brave thing to do”(191).
Works Cited
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayer/#1
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/AyerbyTH.html
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~elias/Courses/DAP/ayer.pdf
https://www.britannica.com/topic/logical-positivism
"According to Emotivism, we can only accept the statement of fact that he stole a candy bar. But, we can’t view that it’s wrong that he stole it to be factual. This is because it is not true by definition that theft is wrong, nor is it something we can prove or disprove as a fact."
ReplyDeleteWell, it's a fact that most of us object to having our candy bars stolen. Most of us consider stealing wrong. Is that not a relevant fact, from the Emotivist point of view?