A. J. Ayer

This paper reflects on an article that appeared after the death of A.J. Ayer, which complains about what British philosophers focus on. I propose that the content of the philosophy curriculum can be predicted from a rational actor model.

The aim of this paper is double. In the fi rst part I argue against the traditional interpretation of Ayer’s emotivism. According to this interpretation, in Language, Truth and Logic Ayer based emotivism on his “radical empiricist” view. I argue that this is not so. Then, in the second part I develop a new interpretation of emotivism according to which Ayer’s analysis of moral vocabulary does not depend on positivism. The purpose of the article is to contribute to the history (...) of metaethics by presenting a correct account of Ayer’s analysis. (shrink)

This is an updated version of an essay originally written for a special issue of Philosophical Topics on the links between Kant and analytic philosophy. It explores these links by focusing on: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus; the logical positivism endorsed by Ayer; and the (very different) variation on that theme endorsed by Quine. The claim defended is that in all three cases we see analytic philosophers trying to attain and express a general philosophical understanding of why the bounds of sense should be (...) drawn where they should—but thereby confronting the aporia, which Kant too confronted, that it is impossible to do this without transgressing those very bounds. The paper closes by suggesting that the problem is in trying to attain and express such an understanding; in other words, that such an understanding is attainable, but not expressible. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss the evolution of A. J. Ayer’s account of the mind-body relation through his career, with an emphasis on his early ideas. The reconstruction of Ayer’s ideas on this particular topic, beyond being interesting in itself, may also be illuminating inasmuch as it provides further details on the path Ayer carved out for himself within the large-scale development of analytic philosophy, progressing from the radical anti-metaphysicalism of the logical positivists in the 1930s towards the (re)birth of (...) analytic metaphysics in the 1960s. Ayer’s philosophical development may be divided into two major periods characterized by a comprehensive phenomenalist and a “sophisticated realist” approach. In the phenomenalist period, Ayer regarded the question of whether sense-data are mental or physical nonsensical, and he did not address the nature of the psychophysical relation either. After the realist turn, however, he did find these questions meaningful, and discussed them in detail. In LTL and other prominent works from the phenomenalist period, issues concerning the nature of mind, body and their relation were expounded primarily through linguistic analysis, i.e. by investigating the meaning of sentences reporting mental states of one’s own and of others as well as of perceptual reports. These investigations were framed by Ayer’s views on the privacy or publicity of sense-data and phenomenalistic language, which changed significantly several times. In laying out Ayer’s phenomenalism I also discuss his views on privacy in some detail. Furthermore, I briefly touch upon Ayer’s account of the psychophysical relation in the late realist period, which may be characterized by his trenchant “anti-physicalism”, and his wavering between a mere correlation view and a version of Russellian monism. These later views were laid out in the “sophisticated realist” framework and may be considered metaphysical, in contrast with Ayer’s earlier purely linguistic approach. -/- . (shrink)

The title is meant to indicate that consciousness is being examined largely within the history of philosophy, and within the period of time from Descartes to Ayer. Investigators aiming to understand consciousness and minds usually try to take account of all individual human minds, so as to have the most data for the most encompassing induction. The problem with that approach is that because of the vastness of the data, its results tend to be vague, lacking the specificity of studies (...) of individuals. On the other hand, the problem with studies of individuals is that they cannot guarantee generality, as the opposing method can. This book's distinctive approach aims at a middle way, getting the best of the two opposing methods by drawing its data from the history of philosophy, especially the history of the great philosophers. (shrink)

A. J. Ayer’s empiricist criterion of meaning was supposed to have sorted all statements into nonsense on the one hand, and tautologies or genuinely factual statements on the other. Unfortunately for Ayer, it follows from classical logic that his criterion is trivial—it classifies all statements as either tautologies or genuinely factual, but none as nonsense. However, in this paper, I argue that Ayer’s criterion of meaning can be defended from classical proofs of its triviality by the adoption of a relevant (...) logic—an idea which is motivated because, according to Ayer, the genuinely factual statements are those which observation is relevant to. (shrink)

The age-old question “What is truth?” is not an unambiguous one. There are at least two different meanings. In one sense, it is a semantic question about the meaning of the word “truth” and/or a metaphysical question about the nature of the property of truth, that is, how truth can be defined in terms of other notions, if it is definable at all. In another sense, it is an epistemological question about the criterion or test of truth, that is, how (...) we can recognize or accept (empirical) propositions as true. Ayer, in Language, Truth and Logic (LTL) and some other articles, tried to convince us that when we attempt to elucidate a theory of truth, we are only engaging in the epistemological project of finding the criterion of truth. This anti-semantical and anti-metaphysical view is based on Ayer’s (radical) deflationism about truth. In this chapter, I will argue that since Ayer did not accept that the criterion of truth is intimately related to the concept of truth, he can be seen as a deflationist about the nature of truth and as an advocate of a certain (Schlickian) kind of correspondence conception about the criterion of truth. His position would not be tenable if he had maintained what some of his contemporaries accepted, namely that there is a close connection between the two truth-theoretical tasks: the definitional and the criterial one. (shrink)

The history of the relationship between science and metaphysics is riddled with controversy. Aristotle and his followers see metaphysics as providing the foundations on which science and other human intellectual endeavors build. In opposition to the thoughts of Aristotle, Plato and his followers separate metaphysics from science as independent and unrelated sciences. With the Logical positivists, the debate is a reject of metaphysics in favour of science. Metaphysics then is seen as a pseudo-science. Rudolf Carnap's the "Elimination of Metaphysics through (...) the Logical Analysis of Language" and Alfred Jules Ayer's elimination of metaphysics from the domain of knowledge are examined, while Heidegger is brought in to salvage the situation given that he holds on to the superiority of metaphysics over science. (shrink)

The ‘between Wars’ period in England in the early twentieth century was extraordinary, philosophically. It was marked by a profusion of new, controversial, and revolutionary ideas. Developments in formal logic, the rise of the method of ‘analysis’, and logical atomism were already changing the face of philosophy in England. From this mix emerged two distinctive views about language and its connection to philosophical methodology: one championing the concept of an ideal language; and one rejecting this and favoring appeal to ordinary (...) language. The origin of both views is to be found in the (earlier and later) work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this paper, I will examine the emergence of these views in relation to one another: an ideal language conception represented by A.J. Ayer in his Language, Truth and Logic, and the reaction against this conception in the early phases of ordinary language philosophy, in particular in the work of John Wisdom. (shrink)

A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic had been responsible for introducing the Vienna Circle’s ideas, developed within a Germanophone framework, to an Anglophone readership. Inevitably, this migration from one context to another resulted in the alteration of some of the concepts being transmitted. Such alterations have served to facilitate a number of false impressions of Logical Empiricism from which recent scholarship still tries to recover. In this paper, I will attempt to point to the ways in which LTL has (...) helped to foster the various mistaken stereotypes about Logical Empiricism which were combined into the received view. I will begin by examining Ayer’s all too brief presentation of an Anglocentric lineage for his ideas. This lineage, as we shall see, simply omits the major 19th century Germanophone influences on the rise of analytic philosophy. The Germanophone ideas he presents are selectively introduced into an Anglophone context, and directed towards various concerns that arose within that context. I will focus on the differences between Carnap’s version of the overcoming of metaphysics, and Ayer’s reconfiguration into what he calls the elimination of metaphysics. Having discussed the above, I will very briefly outline the consequences that Ayer’s radicalisation of the Vienna Circle’s doctrines had on the subsequent Anglophone reception of Logical Empiricism. (shrink)

Ayer’s critique of Metaphysics is much indebted to Hume and Kant’s pioneering appraisals of metaphysics. Its uniqueness lies mainly in the attempt to ground the rejection of metaphysics on a linguistic basis rather than epistemic premise as Hume and Kant before him. Yet it remains to be seen whether Ayer’s initiative fares better than its predecessors in discrediting metaphysics.

The waning popularity of logical empiricism and the supposed discovery of insurmountable technical difficulties led most philosophers to abandon the project to formulate a formal criterion of empirical significance. Such a criterion would delineate claims that observation can confirm or disconfirm from those it cannot. Although early criteria were clearly inadequate, criticisms made of later, more sophisticated criteria were often indefensible or easily answered. Most importantly, Carnap’s last criterion was seriously misinterpreted and an amended version of it remains tenable.

Most analytic philosophers are atheists, but is there a deep connection between analytic philosophy and atheism? The paper argues a) that the founding fathers of analytic philosophy were mostly teenage atheists before they became philosophers; b) that analytic philosophy was invented partly because it was realized that the God-substitute provided by the previously fashionable philosophy - Absolute Idealism – could not cut the spiritual mustard; c) that analytic philosophy developed an unhealthy obsession with meaninglessness which led to a new kind (...) of atheism that dismissed talk of God as factually meaningless (neither true nor false) rather than meaningful but false; but d) that this new-fangled atheism (unlike the old-fashioned atheism of the founders) is false, since it relies on theories of meaning – verificationism and falsificationism – which are themselves false. The primary focus is on Bertrand Russell, though other analytic philosophers such as Ayer, Neurath and Flew are also extensively discussed. (shrink)

(2013). Is the Royaumont Colloquium the Locus Classicus of the Divide Between Analytic and Continental Philosophy? Reply to Overgaard. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 177-188. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.689751.

In contrast to many of his contemporaries, A. J. Ayer was an analytic philosopher who had sustained throughout his career some interest in developments in the work of his ‘continental’ peers. Ayer, who spoke French, held friendships with some important Parisian intellectuals, such as Camus, Bataille, Wahl and Merleau-Ponty. This paper examines the circumstances of a meeting between Ayer, Merleau-Ponty, Wahl, Ambrosino and Bataille, which took place in 1951 at some Parisian bar. The question under discussion during this meeting was (...) whether the sun existed before humans did, over which the various philosophers disagreed. This disagreement is tangled with a variety of issues, such as Ayer’s critique of Heidegger and Sartre, Ayer’s response to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of empiricism, and Bataille’s response to Sartre’s critique of his notion of ‘unknowing’, which uncannily resembles Ayer’s critique of Sartre. Amidst this tangle one finds Bataille’s statement that an ‘abyss’ separates English from French and German philosophy, the first recorded announcement of the analytic-continental divide in the twentieth century. (shrink)

_Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy_ provides new foundations and methods for the revolutionary project of philosophical therapy pioneered by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The book vindicates this currently much-discussed project by reconstructing the genesis of important philosophical problems: With the help of concepts adapted from cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, the book analyses how philosophical reflection is shaped by pictures and metaphors we are not aware of employing and are prone to misapply. Through innovative case-studies on the genesis of classical problems about (...) the mind and perception, and on thinkers including Locke, Berkeley and Ayer, the book demonstrates how such autonomous habits of thought systematically generate unsound intuitions and philosophical delusions, whose clash with reality, or among each other, gives rise to ill-motivated but maddening problems. The book re-examines models of therapeutic philosophy, due to Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, and develops an approach that may let us overcome philosophical delusions and the problems they engender. In this way, the book explains where and why therapy in called for in philosophy, and develops techniques to carry it out. (shrink)

Alfred Jules Ayer was born in London and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He attended sessions of the logical positivist ‘Vienna Circle’ in 1932, and taught at Oxford from 1933 until joining the Army in 1940. His Language, Truth and Logic was published in 1936, and The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge in 1940. After war service he returned to Oxford in 1945, and became Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College, London, the following (...) year. The Problem of Knowledge was published in 1956. In 1959 he returned to Oxord as Wykeham Professor of Logic, a post he held until his retirement in 1977. He had been made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1952, and was knighted in 1970. Among his publications after he returned to Oxford are The Concept of a Person , Philosophical Essays , The Origins of Pragmatism , Metaphysics and Common Sense , Russell and Moore: the Analytical Heritage , Probability and Evidence , The Central Questions of Philosophy , and Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar y examinar la teoría emotivista de los enunciados morales, según la versión de Alfred Ayer. En primer lugar, se estudian los antecedentes de esta teoría y se describe el ambiente positivista en el que surge. La teoría se expone prestando particular atención a los aspectos metaéticos y sus principales consecuencias. Finalmente, se propone que la teoría emotivista puede mantenerse con independencia y al margen del positivismo.

The desire for parsimony – to posit as few explanatory features as possible – has a rich philosophical history and is often given lots of weight in philosophical theory construction. But, as the psychologist Tania Lombrozo has demonstrated, our bias in favour of parsimony can lead us to adopt simple explanations even when it’s far more likely that a complicated explanation is correct.

Ayer and Stevenson advocated ethical emotivisms, non-cognitivist understandings of the meanings of moral terms and functions of moral judgments. I argue that their reasons for ethical emotivisms suggestanalogous epistemological emotivisms. Epistemological emotivism importantly undercuts any epistemic support Ayer and Stevenson offered for ethical emotivism. This is because if epistemic emotivism is true, all epistemic judgments are neither true nor false so it is neither true nor false that anyone should accept ethical emotivism or is justified in believing it. Thus, their (...) perspectives are epistemologically self-undermining and, truthfully, should be rejected. Unlike Ayer and Stevenson, Gibbard explicitly endorses ethical and epistemological emotivism, or expressivism; I criticize his views in detail elsewhere. (shrink)

It was news verging on sensational when A. J. Ayer came back from four minutes of heart death with a report of what he saw. Especially since the philosopher, who publicized his near-death experience [NDE] in 1988, in the Telegraph and the Spectator, was known for his lifelong rejection of religion and the supernatural. But, as will be seen, Ayer's beliefs on that head were substantially unchanged, if more ambivalently expressed, and the interest of his NDE lies elsewhere— in what (...) it reveals about his philosophy. (shrink)

vol. 28, nos. 1-4, 2001 empirical data-a large concession-belief in reincarnation is still unjustified.

This brief text assists students in understanding Ayer's philosophy and thinking so they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the Wadsworth Notes Series, (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON AYER is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise book offers (...) sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher, better enabling students to engage in reading and to discuss the material in class and on paper. (shrink)