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Title: Language, Truth, and Logic by Alfred Jules Ayer ISBN: 0-486-20010-8 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 June, 1946 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.56 (16 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Logic Positivism -- Period!
Comment: There is no better single source of doing philosophy via the logical positivism method than by reading this book. It's really two books in one. The Introduction is a rather thorough reply to his critics of the book's original lengthier substance, and if nothing else is read, the Introduction provides an excellent example of what logical positivism is, why it is regarded highly or poorly depending on the reader, and why some people think this kind of analysis defeats the whole purpose of philosophy. The book does try to end metaphysics as we know it, but in the course of establishing new principles (i.e., verifiability), it itself becomes indefensible against the accusation of itself relying on its own premises to prove its own conclusions (a charge Ayer coyly ignores), otherwise known as circularity.
The fact that many Anglo-American philosophers still do philosophy in this manner -- after Ayer's style -- is reason alone to study this book thoroughly. It is concisely written, clear and unambiguious (if not a tad bit too analytical), and exemplary of Anglo-American style of doing philosophy. I don't think too many philosophers subscribe to its own circular metaphysics, but many, if not most, current philosophers adopt its principles as a "method" -- something which Ayer later (in "The Meaning of Life") claims was his aim all along.
What is disappointing to me, at least in the body of Ayer's works read thus far, is his failure to address "verifiability" in light of Popper's "falsification" doctrine. What exactly constitutes "verifiability" or empirical truth? And, how does the verification of empirical truth differ from the "empirical falsification" of Popper? Perhaps Ayer addresses this problem somewhere, but I've not found it. It would be an interesting problem to see solved.
Rating: 4
Summary: Classic exposition of logical positivism
Comment: A.J. Ayer's "Language, Truth and Logic" (1936) merits the label "classic" on the basis of its lucidity and unaffected directness of expression. Ayer, one of the first philosophers of mind to convey the views of the logical positivists (Wittgenstein, Neurath, etc.) into English, is nonetheless a considerable thinker on his own right, adapting the criteria of the positivists to suit his own enquiries and concerns. His work is a continuation of the thought of the critical empiricist Kant, as well as the phenomenological idealist methodology inaugurated by his own countrymen, Bacon and Hume. In clear and engaging prose, he lays down the basis of his logical empiricist method as the distinction between statements of logical necessity (i.e., "analytic" statements), in which the predicate is embedded in the subject "a priori", and "synthetic" statements, whose verifiability is derived from sense-experience. Ayer adopts these principles and develops them throughout his treatise in attempt to solve the most pressing questions of philosophy. However, Ayer's method is quite stringent and reductive and leads him to repudiate an important realm of philosophical enquiry, namely, metaphysics. He dismisses all statements pertaining to metaphysics or theology as being outside his area of enquiry, since they do not correspond to verifiable sense-contents, nor to statements of logical necessity. This has led Ayer to become the object of much criticism, one critic dubbing him as "the man who hated knowledge". It's a fact that philosophy consists of more than just the analysis of statements. Various Continental philosophical trends and disciplines, such as existentialism and poststructuralism, tend to be more fulfilling in their address of the personal as well as spiritual dimensions of the human being, as opposed to the "traditional" Anglo-American schools of positivism and pragmatism. By the same token, logical empiricists such as Ayer may have been too reckless in consigning metaphysics to the dust-heap of philosophy, as speculation on metaphysical topics remains an ongoing imperative for many thinkers. Heidegger was correct in his answer to the logical positivists who sought to banish metaphysics: rejecting metaphysics because it does not meet the criteria of logical verifiability was "as absurd as rejecting a carpenter's bench for not being able to fly..."
Rating: 5
Summary: Why Metaphysics Is Dead, or: Positivism for the Masses
Comment: Despite its sundry philosophical flaws and its status as a work parasitic on the intellectual labor of others, this book, I think, is a philosophical masterpiece of the first rank. And by that I mean that it's a book that should be read by any serious student of philosophy and that should be interesting to anyone with some interest in the subject. If you've ever heard murmurings about the pernicious doctrine of logical positivism and wondered just what it could be, this is the book for you. But don't be misled: this book isn't of only historical interest--though it is, of course, an important historical document. While its central doctrines aren't currently in fashion and aren't in fashion for good reason, this book, like all historically important work in philosophy that's worth reading today, isn't of interest only to historians of the subject. If you want to understand the contemporary scene in English-language philosophy, you're going to need to understand the positivism Ayer and likeminded philosophers espoused since many major currents in contemporary philosophy can be fully understood only as reactions to their views.
Ayer's project here is the project of all young philosophical radicals--solving all the problems of philosopher, or at least showing that there were no real problems that needed to be solved. In less than two hundred pages of lucid prose Ayer gives you a brief statement of the central assumptions of the doctrine and a demonstration of how it can be applied to problems in nearly every area of philosophy. Needless to say, in Ayer's hands it appears to work wonders wherever it's put to work.
Ayer's positivism, as he himself admitted, was really an updated version of Hume's radical empiricism. But Ayer wasn't as a gifted a philosopher as Hume, and consequently, the strengths of this book aren't a matter of the truth of its conclusions (they're probably false), or the cogency of its arguments (they rarely convince), or the originality of its insights (they're really nothing new). Instead, the greatness of this work resides in its ability to inspire. This is a young man's book, and it's one written with the verve and self-assurance of a recent convert who's sure he's got all the answers and just needs to get them out there for the world to see. Ayer doesn't pause to consider objections; he doesn't draw back from his more eye-opening conclusions; and he certainly isn't worried about offending his readers' more delicate sensibilities.
The central tenets of Ayer's positivism can be stated in but a few sentences. (I'll ignore the niceties here and try to get the main ideas across.) The central component of positivism is a test for meaningfulness. A sentence, Ayer claims, is meaningful if it means either of two conditions: (i) its truth (or falsity) is analytic, or (ii) it is possible to acquire some empirical evidence pertaining to its truth (or falsity). If neither of these conditions is met, the sentence is literally nonsense (i.e. it doesn't say anything capable of being true or false).
The task of philosophy, then, is one of testing sentences of various types and seeing whether they're meaningful. First, the philosopher asks whether the sentence is true (or false) in virtue of the meaning of its words. If it is, it counts as meaningful and we're done. Math and logic, Ayer claims, are exhausted by sentences of this sort. If it isn't true (or false) in virtue of meaning, we proceed to the next step. In the next step the philosopher seeks to determine whether there is any empirical evidence that does or could bear provide evidence of the truth (or falsity) of the sentence. If we could imagine some method of acquiring observational evidence pertaining to the proposition, then it's meaningful and the philosopher sits back and waits for the sciences to determine whether or not it's true. If it turns out that there simply isn't any empirical evidence that could be gathered for or against the sentence, it's literally meaningless. Meaningless how? Well, sentences of this sort don't really say anything about the world; they doesn't make a claim that is true or false. People may find them important in some way, they may stimulate people's emotions and lead them to act in certain ways, but they're literally nonsensical. They say nothing about how the world is, and they have no place in a respectable philosophical or scientific view of the nature of the world. According to Ayer, this sort of nonsense is found in ethics, in religion, and in most of the weighty tomes of the great philosophers.
The task of Language, Truth and Logic is to defend these conclusions and the conception of philosophy that has led Ayer to them. So it's clear that the influence of Hume on Ayer's positivism extended beyond matters of philosophical doctrine; the influence was also a methodological and attitudinal one. For Ayer, like Hume, goes where his argument takes him and is happy to demolish whatever stands in his way, including common sense, religion, and a few thousands years worth of philosophy.
And, of course, this sort of willful iconoclasm also makes the book a lot of fun to read.
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Title: Logical Positivism by Alfred S. Ayer ISBN: 0029011302 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1966 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Principia Ethica (Great Books in Philosophy) by G.E. Moore ISBN: 0879754982 Publisher: Prometheus Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1988 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (Routledge Classics) by Ludwig Wittgenstein, David Francis Pears, Brian McGuinness, Bertrand Russell ISBN: 0415254086 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Philosophical Investigations (3rd Edition) by Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. M. Anscombe ISBN: 0024288101 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 1999 List Price(USD): $46.00 |
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Title: The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell ISBN: 019511552X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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