Language, Truth and Logic

A.J. Ayer
Sir Alfed Jules Ayer (1910-1989) was a famous British Philosopher and the first major proponent of Logical Positivism.
1) Metaphysics is nonsense.
2) Religion is nonsense.
3) Ethics is nonsense.
4) Philosophy is nonsense.
Ayer sought to prove this through the verification principle: a statement is meaningful only if it can be empirically verified. By using the verification principle which cannot itself be verified, Ayer showed that sentences like 'God loves me', 'Edam cheese is superior to all other forms of cheese' and 'The verification principle is good' are complete and utter nonsense.
The principle of verifiability states that:

"We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express."
Accordingly-All statements of metaphysics and religion, such as "God does not exist" are, in fact, meaningless, since nobody can know how to verify that which the proposition states. As for statements that are meaningful, Ayer divided them into two classes: those that are true or false a priori (such as: 'A triangle has three sides'), and those that are empirically verifiable (such as: 'I have two hands'.)

Ayer was also a big fan of Facts. According to Ayer, ethical statements are not facts. Instead they express emotions. This led to his theory of emotivism or the Boo-Hurrah theory.

"There is no God" was for Ayer as meaningless and metaphysical an utterance as "God exists." Though Ayer could not give assent to the declaration "There is no God," he was an atheist in the sense that he withheld assent from affirmations of God's existence. However, in "Language, Truth and Logic" he distinguishes himself from both agnostics and atheists by saying that both these stances take the statement "God exists" as a meaningful hypothesis, which Ayer himself does not. That stance of a person who believes "God" denotes no verifiable hypothesis is sometimes referred to as igtheism (defined in Paul Kurtz, The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge,)
…………
"Understanding a statement means knowing what would be the case if it were true, and this means knowing what observations would verify it."

Drawn from-
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/A.J._Ayer
http://www.iep.utm.edu/rel-lang/
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ayer01.htm
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1808716

And will doubtless lead directly to-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM&feature=PlayList&p=8C9F5901C0BC3437&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1

If we cannot verify empirically teh existence of a god, and a god worthy of the name would be beyond our understanding, how can we say anything useful or true about any gods, even that they exist.

A bit tough on inductive argument about immanent phenomena, but useful for discussion of metaphysics.

to most attempts at discussion in the R/T Forum.

Is Ayer completely wrong here? If so how?

If he is not completely wrong, how can we say anything useful about gods?

We all work under the auspices of some form of metaphysics. If all metaphysics is nonsense, then, all our discussion about reality are nonsense.

Since I don't belive in god, I am not the right person to defend belief in god. I am willing to maintain that no one is knowledgable enough to proclaim that all talk of god is nonsense. I am also willing to defend the usefulness of metaphysics or morality (I prefer the term morality over ethics).

How do we say anything useful about gods at all, even that they do or do not exist? Remember that's what Ayer says on teh topic - that either claim is nonsense because there can be no way to evaluate the truth value of either statement.

Incidnetally I suspect we agree that Ayer goes too far. Simply because we can make no deductive arguments about the metaphysical does not mean inductive arguments are completely invalid. However there still remains the pesky question of how we establish the truth or otherwise of such inductive arguments. I personally believe probability is valuable, and that probability would say that it is more likely that no bronze age syncretic myths are completely accurate descriptions of the most complex thing imaginable thanthat one particular set is and all others are completely false. That said. I cheerfully confess all I end up with is a probability - a very high probability but still not 1 - that the claims about "the" God of teh Bible are not true.

Suppose I am on the street with a friend and he is very angry. He sees a man across the street and says he is going to kill him. I say, "You ought not kill that man." My friend calms down and doesn't kill him. Can my statement, "you ought not kill that man," be verified. I'd say that in the general case, it cannot be verified (I accept that there are circumstances that would make my statement clearly true). But in the general case, where he doesn't kill the man, my statement can't be verified.

Was my statement nonsense?

Which I agree is too broadly defined as meaningless in Ayer's quote here.

Bear in mind though how much more inductive validity there is to the "badness" of killing random people than the existence of metaphysical claims. We know that being able to kill people at random would overall produce negative results, as society would suffer a great deal of loss and disruption, so we make it criminal and here the negative results of the action would also have included your friend's punishment. Now yes of course you can imagine that the man is either the next Hitler - in which case killing him may be good, or that he could be the next Salk or Pasteur or Borlaug, in which case killing him would be much more harmful than killing, well me for example. But in general terms we can say that your friend probably ought not to kill that man BECAUSE we have excellent inductive arguments about what will happen to them specifically if he did kill him, or to society in general if we universalized that behavior.

But in the example of gods we have no evidence of what would happen if they did or did not exist, and no clearly valid inductive claims about what people do differently if they have a different position on the issue even. We can't look at times when gods existed or did not exist like we can look at times when people could be killed with impunity (feudal times, Japanese "sword testing") compared to today when such actions are proscribed. We don't even know how to explain what a god is like we can explain what killing a man is. So induictively we are on much shakier ground if we tried to make the same kind of generalized statement as "you should not kill that man". You can't get to "there should be a god" let alone "there is a god" by the same means.

I may have known the man and not mentioned this to my friend. Or, we may have been on some type of errand and I thought that killing the man would cause too much of a delay.

But, no matter what the case, my statement contained information that my friend understood.

From the Op: "We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express."

But, the sentence you ought not kill that man had meaning to my friend, even though he could not verify it.

Even had you known the man you cannot possibly know his future and are therfore unable to deduct whther he should be killed or not.

But again let's get to the question you seem to be avoiding (strangely enough after complaining about the level of discussion in R/T).

Very clearly I ask again: How can we say anything meaningful about gods.

Your lack of consideration of certain aspects does not make them "twaddle." If the man was my friend, I could simply have wanted him to continue living.

I am not avoiding any question. I stated above that I don't believe in god and therefore wouldn't presume to answer questions that are better answered by believers.

Friend or not, there is no way to make a deductive conclusion that somebody should or should not be killed.

Now belief is not the question. You seem to be perfectly fine discussing metaphysics and epistemology so why avoid just one topic in taht realm? I'm not asking you to convince me gods exist, ior even to defnd the claim that they do or do not. I'm asking you how it is possible to say anything at all about gods with any validity or truth.

Gods exist. How can we validate that claim?

Gods don't exist. Same question.

God X is a loving god. Same question.

God Y is a false god. Same question.

Your position on gods is irrelevant to how, if at all, we can make any statements at all about gods. So do you agree that we cannot make any valid statements, or do you see a way I am missing to make a valid statement on them?

It's hard to believe you can't grasp that. As to how to deduce that:

I want all my healthy friends to continue living.
John is my healthy friend.
Therefore, I want John to continue living <==> I don't want John to be killed.

I don't believe that, at this time, anyone can prove the existence or non-existence of god. I also don't believe that renders all talk of god nonsense.

Nonsense is a loaded term and I am not looking for semantic wrangling. So can we say anything valid or true about gods?

BTW if your healthy friend goes mad next week and slaughters your entire family and hundreds more besides, would it not have been better to kill him today?

Two separate topics of course, but worth considering. I can easily grasp that you don't want your friends killed based on your current subjective opinion. Can you easily grasp that that may not be a valid conclusion since we cannot know their future actions?

The concept exists and people are aware of it. We can learn through discussion; even if the points of the discussion cannot be empirically verified. Language is capable of setting its own constraints.

As to your questions about killing my friend, they are completely off-point. The point is that Ayers claims that any statements that can't be verified are meaningless. In the case cited:



That claim is clearly wrong.

You might say "We all work under the auspices of some form of metaphysics", but the "metaphysics" of positivism consists of simply setting aside unprovable (unprovably true or false) ideas like solipsism and getting down to business figuring things out, starting with the physical world that we all seem to share, a world in which we can find a lot of common agreement with our fellow humans.

Regardless of whether you could theoretically be just a figment of my imagination (or vice versa), we talk to each other as if the other person is a real being and not an hallucination. We can both refer to things like water or thunder or the moon and know what the other person is talking about, and we speak of these things as if they have an independent existence apart from ourselves.

Without going on at length like some dry philosophical tome than drones on for ten long chapters in order to fully establish what the author means by a word like "self", let me cut to the chase and say I think a good case can be made that the tenants of positivism can be found to be inherent in the act of bothering to communicate as if communication can actually achieve something meaningful apart from an imaginary game in your own mind. There is an implicit assumption in the act of communication of tangible external referents which have a consistency and permanence which is objective, which can be ascertained in more or less the same way by all.

While such a concept of objective reality is an assumption, it's not just any old assumption. It's practically inescapable. Even people who might argue against objective reality, who would like to individualize reality and make personal perception the highest reality, act and interact in many ways just as if there is a shared objective reality, regardless of any words of protest against that concept. If I borrow a thousand dollars from a man who claims there is no objective reality, and when the time comes for that man to get his money back, if I say that in my reality I never borrowed anything, his first thought is going to be that I'm mistaken or lying, not that reality can really be so different for two different people.

It would be a very odd universe, not to mention one the was almost impossible to function within, if things which are actually pretty trivial on a cosmic scale, like who owes whom a few dollars, are the things of absolutely dependable objective consistency, while the existence of spirits and deities and psychic abilities and afterlives are merely personal and subjective "truths".

You seem to be focused mainly on solipsism. I don't believe that was a major concern of the Vienna Circle or of Logical Positivism. They held that statements must be deduced from a priori truths, or deduced from empirical observations in combination with other established truths. Quine, who sometimes sat on on the discussions of the Vienna Circle, pretty much demolished their assumptions in his paper, Two Dogmas of Empiricism.

Those dogmas can pretty much serve as their metaphysics, and Quine convincingly showed that they did not survive careful scrutiny.

...of the various ways that people try to undercut a practical understanding of reality, from solipsism to Bishop Berkeley to the latest New Age bastardization of quantum mechanics.

When you say "did not survive careful scrutiny", what exactly do you mean? If you're talking about whether any approach to understanding the world can be proven 100% undeniably true and free of doubt... of course nothing will survive that kind of "scrutiny".

All things that aren't 100% undeniably true aren't equal, however.

when you set such stringent constraints on knowledge, you severely limiti discussion. When Quine (amopng others) showed that you can't actually do this, this pretty much collapsed as a goal of philosophy.

...from the "Vienna School". What constraints, other than getting in the way of things like talking about imaginary deities as if they're real, does positivism impose?

There are plenty of things that people discuss that they're certainly "allowed" to discuss, that nevertheless are reasonably deemed nonsense.

From wikipedia:

I didn't ask for more information about the Vienna School, I asked what YOU think are the problems with positivism and what things YOU think discussion of is interfered with by positivism.

It is not, however, what you did ask:



It's somewhat difficult for me to answer the question about what Logical Positivism means to me, since I encountered it in philosophy courses in school, and so my take on it is not based on an independent encounter; but rather first encountering it as a failed philosophy. I doubt I would have seen its flaws on my own as the people involved in the Vienna Circle were quite brilliant and their errors somewhat subtle.

That said, aside from getting in the way of things like talking about imaginary deities, Karl Popper pointed out that their methodology invalidated just about all of science. For instance, newton's laws would not withstand the verification test.

...ideas like deities as if they have any connection to reality or are even well defined enough to discuss, not more subtle distinctions like verifiability vs. falsifiability.

At any rate, I can approach the world from a scientific viewpoint while still being fully able to discuss a wide variety of subjects. I could discuss transubstantiation, for instance -- I just won't consider it a very serious discussion. I can even hold out a vanishingly small possibility that there might be something meaningful to say about transubstantiation (other than that's it BS) if a number of conditions were met to validate the many prerequisite assumptions one has to provisionally accept before a discussion of transubstantiation is treated as something other than a discussion of a curiosity of human custom and belief.

discuss a wide variety of subjects."

Did anyone say you couldn't? :shrug:

...you severely limiti (sic) discussion."

Perhaps I made the mistake of thinking this comment was made in regards to the scientific method and/or the idea at the top of this subthread, that the supposed metaphysics behind a rational, scientific approach is a very different animal than a religious leap of faith.

If you meant only to comment on a very narrow definition of a particular school of positivism, then my objections may not apply, but then too your introduction of that criticism of narrowly defined positivism into the discussion is also a bit mysterious.

And the statement also referred to a goal of philosophy. I'm not sure how you could confuse that with the scientific method.

not to ground them into philosophy.I am not sure if they can be referred to as "truths". Logical Positivism really only had/has one goal and that is to use only as evidence those things that are empirical, observable, and measurable. And this 'way of knowing' is a philosophy of science, psychology, business, math, and almost every discipline that is a discipline.

Sorry to drag it down to such a mundane level….but I’m wondering how people actually live/coexist once they have eliminated all the ‘nonsense’.

was not a wise thing to do when dealing with reality. But back at the Vienna Circle when they were classifying metaphysics and intuition as "nonsense", I think that they were not using the term nonsense in a derrogatory way as such. Instead they were using "NON-sense" in contrast to the term "sense" (as in that which could be sensed by some or all of the five senses). Metaphysical experiences occur independently from the 5 physical senses and therefore are "non-senses". That is the way I take their interpretation. Positivism only considers what is apparent to the 5 senses.

I suppose you can back up that assertion?

Logical Positivism considered the proper function of philosophy as clarifying the propositions of science. For instance:



Wittgenstein ended his Tractatus with proposition 7: Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent.

At the time, he would have considered "love" to be one of the things that philosophy could not really speak of. Later, at least partially due to conversations with the Vienna Circle, he came to recognize that philosophy had a much bigger task than he thought when he had written the Tractatus, and I'm not sure if he would have considered "love" to be a valid topic after that; but certainly, language was a valid concern of philosophy.

They denied synthetic a priori truths. The accepted a priori truths (which are self-evident):

..."what's the point?" confusion.

My motivation for jumping into this thread was this: When it was said that one can't escape having to deal with metaphysics of some sort, I wanted to clarify that I don't think all metaphysics is equal. A lot of people want to play the game that "it's all faith" no matter what, as if the leap to proclaiming their is a God, a strong positive assertion about a generally poorly defined entity and typically unfalsifiable claim, is "just as valid" as doubt and withholding belief in said deity.

If all metaphysics is nonsense, then, all our discussion about reality are nonsense.
And just how do you come to that conclusion?

We all work under the auspices of some form of metaphysics.
That's quite an assertion. Where's the proof, empirical, logical, geometrical or otherwise?

With a few exceptions, this forum is ALL philosophy where there is no true facts, just opinions and beliefs you can even say there is no right and wrong, just what meanings or evaluations we attach to something. Stating "There is no god. I know it" is as worthless as "There is a god I know it." Obviously there are strongly held opinions on things. I myself try to to attempt to tell others what they believe or don't believe (though its really hard when someone decides to tell ME what I REALLY mean)
I don't know what the point of this is really. Its not going to change anyone's stance on anything.
Here's where I get annoyed with this forum when people use philosophic games to attack someone's beiefs. I'm all for using logic and science but philosophy? Thats waaay too subjective for my taste.

:thumbsup:

“With a few exceptions, this forum is ALL philosophy where there is no true facts , just opinions and beliefs …”

I would expect the Science forum would contain an abundance of “true facts”, some ‘dubious facts”’ and possibly even some ‘untrue facts’;-)
Being R&T “opinions and beliefs ” are hardly surprising and no less valuable than facts…when beliefs are examined opinions may chance…policy may thereby be influenced/altered and the facts themselves transformed.

Stating "There is no god. I know it" is as worthless as "There is a god I know it."

;-)
Precisely.
Agnosticism is the only intellectually valid stance. ;-)

“I myself try to to attempt to tell others what they believe or don't believe …“(though its really hard when someone decides to tell ME what I REALLY mean)”

Asking (not telling) what you really mean….Was there supposed to be a ‘not’ in the above?
ie “I myself try to attempt to >not< tell others what they believe…”……?

“(though its really hard when someone decides to tell ME what I REALLY mean)”

Which is the point of my interest in Ayer’s ‘verification principle’ and the point at which the board discussions might have less to do with philosophy/semantics and a great deal more to do with ‘truth/facts’ and seeking both out.

How the game is usually/locally played-
If I identify strongly with either of the two prevailing warring tribes- theist and atheist I determine whos side I believe you are on and designate you ally or foe…if I perceive you are foe (and I believe Ayers broad philosophy- “Ethics is nonsense”) I take your sentence above- “I myself try to to attempt to tell others what they believe or don't believe “ and mock it ruthlessly- “LOL! Of course you do! We’ve seen you trying to tell others what they believe a thousand times” and I back this up with an animated emoticon.
The ‘verification principle’ can apply…you wrote it, that’s a fact, and those words mean what they say, that’s a fact of language………..are the words reflective of what you “REALLY mean”?
I’m doubting it, suspecting typo and seeking verification.

I share your objection to people telling you what you really mean. The “point” of doing so as far as I can see is to score points/Kudos in the tribal war.
In some cases the disingenuous/false meaning is extracted from typo, error or poor phrasing. But (and here’s a verifiable assertion ) the vast majority of such falsifications are plucked from thin air by those who support Ayers broad philosophy “Religion is nonsense” but reject >any< application of the verification principle to substantiating their allegations in posts.


It is one thing to misread and misrepresent anothers pov.
It is a different matter altogether to fabricate entirely and falsely claim they wrote something that cannot be seen and then refuse to provide substantiation/explanation when questioned or challenged.

“Here's where I get annoyed with this forum when people use philosophic games to attack someone's beiefs”

I am aware of the games of sophistry, semantics, projecting, assumed psychic insight, falsification, fabrication, evasion and refusal to cite, substantiate and verify…..
But I don’t know what you mean by “philosophic games”.

“I'm all for using logic and science but philosophy? Thats waaay too subjective for my taste.”

Depends….I hold it to be logical to reject Ayers- “Ethics is nonsense” and, even having no religion, accept the religious philosophy of The Golden Rule.
I see no harm and every advantage in attempting to “Treat others as you would have them treat you”.

You can claim that agnosticism is the only logically tenable position, but that makes you wrong. Agnosticism is not and has never been a middle ground between theism and atheism. Agnosticism deals with knowledge, while the theism/atheism divide deals with belief, and those two spheres don't overlap.

to discover the sloppy ambiguity of our own ideas and so to avoid careless speech. In this sense, "philosophy" is not "nonsense" -- but neither is it scientific: it unmasks the pitfalls of certain conversations, without necessarily revealing any level footpath to a desireable destination

It is also the basis for The Scientific Method and over several decades it was adapted by almost all disciplines,most notably the hard and soft sciences and the legal profession, after modifications of course. It was the most widely used epistemology by scholars up through the 1970's and has gradually been largely replaced by more integrated epistemologies. Several famous atheists besides Ayer were and are, by admission, logical positivists ie. B. Russell and Stephen Hawking.

Tell me, how can an epistomology first characterized in the 1930's be the BASIS for the Scientific Method when that method has its roots in the 12th century?

“The development of the scientific method is inseparable from the history of science itself. Ancient Egyptian documents describe empirical methods in astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. The ancient Greek philosopher Thales in the 6th century BC refused to accept supernatural, religious or mythological explanations for natural phenomena, proclaiming that every event had a natural cause.”
Wiki


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM&feature=Play...
Is looking very familiar.

An epistemology developed in the 1930's cannot be the basis for a method that is many centuries old. It was formally ensconced in scientific circles beginning in the 12th and 13th centuries, which led to what it is today, but you are correct that the ancient Egyptians and other cultures showed the sparks of the Scientific Method. So, if you'd like to say I'm wrong, show me how this incredibly old method can somehow be based on logical positivism, which wasn't fleshed out until the early 20th century.

And probably many more if you consider going outside the confines of western history. Thales is generally considered the first philosopher of science and his answer to the unity of science and all things was water. Other methods and other forms of positivism have been used thoughout history. Comte is considered the originator of logical positivism, which distinctively eliminated anything metaphysical, spiritual, instinctive, or emotional - BUT those parties of the Vienna Circle adapted Comte's idea in search of a UNIFIED Scientific Method - one single method - not several. The method, by which we know things(epistemology),that they defined, was Logical Positivism and this allowed for one standard scientific method that could be used in many disciplines. BTW, that was a FUNNY vid and very relevant to the discussion.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Positivism

Read this article. It's not great, but it does show in plain language that the Scientific Method as we know it today got its start LONG before the early 20th century.

The "logical positivism" adopted by the Vienna Circle was based on the Scientific Method, which only makes sense since the Method came first by a mile. You have the cart before the horse. If you'd like to disprove this, I suggest you start by providing some links to how the Scientific Method used today started with the Vienna Circle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_WRFJwGsbY

Even if they cant do an Oz accent and are throwing away beer.


Ok…. Many roots of the scientific method tree going back to Thales but a single trunk
from the Vienna Circle onwards.

Going back to 12#
“…it was adapted by almost all disciplines, most notably the hard and soft sciences and the legal profession…”

So… does this explain the application of Reductionism of and in Health, Welfare and Education….a box for everyone and everyone in their box?

Their method was heavily used up into the 60's and 70's, but then the anti-positivists and post-positivists started to look more attractive because of the limitations of Logical Positivism. One example being Quantum Theory where abstract thought is needed. It's a matter of qualitative research vs. quantitative.

:hide:

Passmore, J. (1967)
Logical Positivism
In P. Edwards (Ed.)
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Vol. 5, 52-57)
New York: Macmillan
http://www.comnet.ca/~pballan/logicalpos(Passmore).htm

Vienna Circle
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vienna-circle/

I don't know why the space appears when DU parses the url

that logical empiricism has a rational component. Empiricism is what it is - nothing more can be ascribed to it. The difference between the scientific method(s)of, say, Newton's time and the Scientific Method as defined after the Vienna Circle is in the inductive steps of the method. In Newton's time there was no stated limitation to what constituted sound inductive logic (metaphysics, intuition, emotions). After the Vienna Circle, with the application of Logical Positivism to the inductive side of the SM, induction was limited ONLY to empirical elements. That is the significance of the Vienna Circle's contribution to the SM and of Logical Positivism. For them, they finally defined and recognized a unified Scientific Method.