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Reading Lecture #6:

Ayer and Ideal Language Analytic Philosophy

Recommended reading: “Logical Positivism” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

(I) More philosophical history:

• We distinguished last time between “ordinary language” and “ideal language” analytic philosophy.

• A.J. Ayer was best known as a popularizer of the philosophical movement known as “logical empiricism” or “logical positivism”.

• Positivism dominated much of analytic philosophy from the 1930s to 1960s.

• Logical positivists were the paradigm cases of ideal language philosophy.

• Ironically, it originated on the continent...

• 1910 in Vienna there began a group called Vienna Circle of philosophers & scientists impressed by recent work in physics, math—especially mathematical logic.

1. They were influenced by Poincare (mathematician/philosopher), Ernst Mach (physicist/philosopher), Hilbert (great mathematician, known for exploring founds of math), Einstein (maybe greatest physicist of the 20th century)...

2. Original members of the Vienna Circle: Philip Frank (physicist), Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath (philosopher & original leader).

3. WWI interrupted things---

4. Then in 1920 the Vienna Circle grew to include tremendous minds:

a. Rudolf Carnap—probably the greatest positivist philosopher;

b. Moritz Schlick—philosopher & the leader of the group;

c. Herbert Feigle—philosopher;

d. Richard Von Mises—economist and brother of the Nobel prize winner Ludwig von Mises, founder of the Austrian school of economics;

e. Kurt Godel—greatest logician of the 20th century—maybe of all time;

f. Ernst Schrodinger—one of the top physicists of the 20th century, co-founder of quantum theory;

g. Thursday night meetings at Moritz Schlick's house...

h. They discussed the work of Russell & Wittgenstein, with Wittgenstein often attending...

i. Wittgenstein, widely considered one of the top two philosophers of the 20th century, was never really a member of the circle, and later a severe critic.

• Similar study groups formed elsewhere.

• Berlin Circle included:

1. Hans Reichenbach—philosopher;

2. Carl Hempel—another philosopher, and considered as a leading light of positivism;

3. Karl Popper—philosopher; like Wittgenstein loosely affiliated, but not really a member, and later a critic...Considered with Wittgenstein to be second greatest philosopher of the 20th century.

• Warsaw School (mainly logicians):

1. Alfred Tarski (again, one of the greatest logicians of the 20th century)—initiated contacts with the Vienna Circle in 1930;

2. Jan Lukasiewicz—logician;

3. Tadeusz Kotarbinski—philosopher and logician;

4. Stanislaw Lesniewski—mathematician, philosopher and logician;

5. Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz—philosopher and logician;

• A. J. Ayer in England.

• Collectively, these logical positivists/logical empiricists were a tremendously powerful group of thinkers;

• From 1930-39 they published a journal Erkenntnis which was shut down by Nazis.

• The Berlin and Vienna Circles were scattered by the rise of Nazis.

1. Moritz Schlick assassinated by an anti-Semitic and deranged student.

2. War against Poland 1939. Nazi takeover earlier.

3. Groups scattered, mainly to America and England, where they influenced a generation of thinkers:

a. Carnap to University of Chicago;

b. Feigl to University of Minnesota;

c. Frank to Harvard;

d. Reichenbach to UCLA;

e. Tarski to Berkeley;

f. Godel to Princeton;

g. Wittgenstein to Cambridge;

h. Popper first to New Zealand, then to LSE;

i. Von Mises brothers to England, then Ludwig to Chicago.

• The Positivists had two main intellectual thrusts:

1. They were impressed by the positive knowledge created by the revolutions in foundations of math, symbolic logic, economics and especially physics (quantum and relativity).

2. They were annoyed by what they saw as the sterile post-Kantian philosophy of continental Europe: Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, etc.

(II) Alfred J. Ayer’s

• Was the British exponent of positivism.

• Born London 1910 went to Oxford, eventually taught there.

• He is best known as the British popularizer of Log Positivism, though he has written some good articles.

• Never in same creative league w/Carnap, Nagel, Hempel, though.

• Principal writings:

1. 1936 Lang Truth & Logic—most successful book;

2. 1946 2nd Edition with key revisions;

3. 1940 Foundations of Empirical Knowledge;

4. 1954 Philosophical Essays;

5. 1960 Philosophy & Language;

6. 1963 Concept of Person;

7. 1968 Origins of Pragmatism;

8. 1971 Russell & Moore.

III. Now, your reading is from Language, Truth & Logic:

➢ Epistemological Backdrop: Consider statements, why they are true or false and how they can be known.

| |Analytic = true by definition |Synthetic = true/false b/c of more than the |

| |Sign: denying it results in self-contradiction |meanings of the words involved, but b/c of the |

| | |way the world is... |

|A prior = rationally knowable, knowable prior |Examples: |Are there synthetic a priori truths? |

|to and independently of experience |1. All pigs are pigs; |Candidates: |

| |2. All bachelors are unmarried. |1. 1+1=2. |

| | |2. Parallel lines if extended to infinity never|

| | |meet. |

| | |3. Every event has a cause. |

| | |4. Knowledge is good. |

|A posteriori = empirical; knowable only by | |1. Pigs eat corn. (Trivial) |

|investigating the world. |( |2. All life forms evolved from a common |

| | |ancestor. (Deep) |

• History of conflict: empiricists try to show no SAP claims by showing the truth is either analytic a priori or synthetic a posteriori.

• So for example: the logical empiricists showed that the foundations of math that arithmetic truths are empty tautologies.

Language, Truth, Logic--Chap 1

• I want to cover Chap I first, because it sets up the rest of the book, including Chap 6.

• Ayer starts with a Wittgensteinian theme: philosophical disputes have been barren & pointless.

• Again - like Wittgenstein - he attacks the whole idea of transcendent knowledge.

• How could there be such knowledge? What premises could lead you to transcendent conclusion, i.e. a conclusion about a reality which transcends experience?

1. Not premises that are observational, since you by definition cannot go from statements about experience to statements beyond experience.

2. Yet the metaphysician can reply that he knows transcendent truths by intuition, or light of reason.

3. Moreover, even if you refute the premises of an argument, you have not thereby disproved the conclusion.

• So instead, Ayer proposes to show that transcendent propositions - and eventually all metaphysical statements - are meaningless.

• He thus sidesteps Kant's problem of showing that there is some limit beyond which we cannot pass - which (Ayer quotes Wittgenstein) leads to paradox - to draw a limit, must think on both sides of the limit.

• Ayer :

Our charge against the metaphysician is not that he attempts to employ the understanding in a field where it cannot profitably venture, but that he produces sentences which fail to conform to the conditions under which alone a sentence can be literally significant.

• Ayer and positivists had a main goal: “demarcation problem”: draw a line between meaningfulness & meaninglessness.

• The way Ayer shows metaphysical sentences are meaningless is to show that they don't meet the criterion of meaningfulness:

• Verifiability Principle:

S is meaningful to A iff A knows how to verify (find evidence for) S.

• “Verify” means confirm by observation.

• Put another way, if S is compatible with any possible experience, and S is not a tautology, then S is meaningless.

• Eg: the Absolute is One, and is Eternal.

• The truth or falsity of that claim is consistent with all observation, so it has no content & thus is meaningless (unless it is a covert tautology - explain).

• Unverifiable statements that are not tautologies are thus pseudo-propositions.

1. Pseudo-propositions may be very emotionally appealing to people, but are bogus, i.e., completely meaningless.

2. Eg. "The Fuhrer embodies the true will of the Aryan race, the ubermen, the master-race" may stir men to fight, die, commit unspeakable atrocities - but it is surely meaningless

3. See why Hitler booted the positivists out?]

4. Carnap's earlier book Pseudo-Problems of Philosophy was as feisty as Ayers book.

• Ayer refines the V.P.

S is meaningful iff it is possible to empirically confirm or verify it.

• After all, "There are mountains on Pluto" is not now confirmable, but will be someday. Also, distinguish between "strong" & "weak" verifiability.

• We will probe the VP later...

• Ayer lists a few statements held to be meaningless:

1. The world of sense experience is illusion;

2. Monism vs pluralism (as metaphysical issue);

3. Idealism vs realism (as a metaphysical issue).

• Ayer intends to prove the VP in the book by showing all synthetic props are empirical hypotheses, & that the function of hypotheses is to provide rules for predicting experience & that requires verifiability.

• The VP will be justified by its ability to explain the way language functions

1. Compare early Wittgenstein: the purpose of language is to impart facts.

2. Ayer: the purpose of language is to predict future facts.

• Next, Ayer hits a theme that defined this sort of philosophy: we need an ideal language for precise thinking: FOL with identity...

• Ord language is so misleading that its not surprising that so many philosophers have indulged in meaningless metaphysics - they weren't stupid, just deceived.

• But metaphysics must go. Philosophy is pure epistemology, critical theory of knowledge [“Erkenntnis” means “Knowledge”]

• Side note; positivists would disagree with my lecture #1: there aren’t 3 branches of philosophy: metaphysics, ethics, Epistemology - just Epistemology.

• Ayer considers throwing a bone to the meta-physicians: maybe metaphysics is like poetry - nice to listen to.

• But Ayer snatches the bone back: the poet pretends only to write pretty words; the metaphysician pretends to be writing eternal truths. In reality, all the metaphysician writes is BS.

➢ AGAINST THIS BACKDROP: Chap 6

• Critique of Ethics & Theology

• Starts p. 333.

• Ayer turns to the issue whether ethics & aesthetics form knowledge that is not empirically factual, yet still synthetic. He will argue that so far as statements of value are significant, they are scientific/empirical after all; and that insofar as value statements are not empirical, they are not cognitively meaningful but are only expressions of emotion. p. 383.

• Ayer divides ethical claims into 4 groups:

1. Definitions of ethical terms } clearly analytic - Murder = definition unjustified killing

2. Description of moral experience, e.g., "I hate murders } empiricist psych or sociology;

3. Exhortations to moral virtue: "Be brave!"} not statements at all.

4. Moral judgments, e.g. "Murder is wrong."} these alone are what call for analysis! And by positivist principles, that means: can we reduce moral judgments ultimately to factual terms?

• Ayer considers two views which purport to reduce ethical judgments to non-ethical (factual) assertions: subjectivism & utilitarianism. P. 334.

1. Subjectivism: “Murder is wrong” = most people disapprove of murder.

2. Utilitarianism: “Murder is wrong” = murder does not cause the greatest balance of good.

• Ayer rejects subjectivism (though he is sympathetic with it) because it is not self-contradictory to say of something that is right yet not generally approved of, or that vice versa.

• Ayer likewise rejects utilitarianism: because it is not contradictory to say that it is sometimes wrong to do that which leads to the greatest balance of good over evil, or vice versa - it is not contradictory to say that sometimes what is right does not promote the greatest balance of good over evil.

• It may never happen, but it it’s not contradictory.

• So neither of those theories correctly captures the meaning of ethical terms.

• Of course, Ayer does not adopt a non-naturalist view of ethical claims like Moore:

“Murder is wrong” = acts of murder all have some non-observable non-natural

property of wrongness.

• For one thing, such claims are not verifiable observationally but must have recourse to mysterious "light of reason."

• But (here Ayer trots out the key objection to intuitionism - that intuition varies widely, & there is no way to decide among conflicting intuitions) p. 385-6.

• Ayer then gives his own theory: ethical judgments/concepts are unverifiable because they are pseudo-judgments, i.e., meaningless but seeming meaningful. Ayer's view is emotivism: p. 386 .

1. Singular statements: “You acted wrongly in stealing” = (fact: You took that money) + (emotion: I disapprove of it.)

2. General statements: “Stealing is wrong” = meaningless—just emotion—“Boo, stealing! No factual content.

• Thus moral judgments are just disguised exhortations, pseudo-statements which are not statements at all. If another person, say, a habitual thief, disagrees with me, no facts can decide the case - he likes theft, I dislike it. p. 387.

• Be clear here: Ayer is not reducing moral claims to psych claims - he is saying that they are not claims at all: compare

“I like apple pie” vs “Ooh! Ooh! Apple pie! Ooh!”

• So emotivism: the function of ethical terms is to express emotion, not state objective facts or even subjective facts.

• Ethical terms have other uses besides expressing emotion: they induce emotions in other, and they issue commands.

• But ethical terms have no objective meaning or validity whatsoever.

• That is why it is no contraction to suppose I could say "Murder is wrong" yet like murder- since in saying "murder is wrong" I am showing emotion, but it can be bogus (like an actor!). So emotivism free of the problems w/subjectivism because we are talking about expressing not asserting emotion. p. 387-388.

• Thus all ethical disputes are a waste of energy - except insofar as the dispute is really about facts, e.g., what really was that guys motive, was he really insane, etc.

• But if two people agree on all the facts, any difference of emotion they then feel cannot be reconciled rationally.

• All you can do is psycho-analyze why each person feels the way he/she does, or sociologize why his/her subculture feels the way it does. pp. 390-391.

➢ Your reading ends there.

• But to finish the chapter: Ayer says that the same line of thought applies to aesthetic terms:

"The building is beautiful" = Ooh! Ah! Wow!

• Man, is this radical, or what? How about religion?

• Well, consider big Q does God exist? Well, how prove?

1. Deductive from a priori premises.

2. Reply: from tautologies only tautologies follow. So "God exists" would be some kind of tautology & not informative.

3. Probabilistic argument, i.e. deduce from hypothesis "God exists" plus other auxiliary hypothesis, observation claims which cannot be deduced form those other hypotheses alone. But no such observation claims follow:

• So "God exists" is completely meaningless.

• Ayer points out that he isn't advocating atheism or agnosticism. Compare:

1. Agnostic: We don't know whether or not God exists.

2. Atheist: God does not exist.

3. Ayer: "God" is meaningless noise.

• Why do we take "God exists" as meaningful? Again – because ordinary language is misleading. (ideal vs. ordinary language philosophers)

• Again, the concept of a soul is meaningless.

• Thus, science & religion thus are not in conflict, for religion is meaningless.

• Of, course many theologians fear science, because the temptation to mouth theological nonsense grows out of our awe at the universe, and science dispels that awe.

• Ayer finishes with a dig at mysticism: if you can say it, it must meet the VP to meaningful. If you can't say it, you can't think it, know it, believe it, or even whistle it.

IV. Criticism

• Isn’t the positivist view of what is meaningful so strong that it rules out much of science? Eg: “quarks have spin ½” Popper parted with Positivists—he wanted to demarcate sci from non-science, not nonsense.

• Main problem: the VP is indefensible.

• Ayer used it as a club to dismiss all "speculative" metaphysics, theology, much of ethics, and most of aesthetics.

• But what is really striking is that recent scholarship has shown that many classical philosophers such as Berkeley and (more oddly) Kant, and many anti-positivists (like the later Wittgenstein) assume it, too!

• The heavy criticism this principle has undergone has made people keep their eyes peeled for it, and it is (it turns out) all over the place.

• Here are a few of the many criticisms of it:

1. The VP assumes an analytic/synthetic distinction. Quine, web of belief, Peirce, logic has empirical aspect.

2. Duhem (and later philosophers including Kuhn, Quine, Hanson): observation presupposes theory. EG: look through telescope….

3. What does "possible (means of test)" come down to? Logically possible? Then the VP will allow as cognitively meaningful things like "the absolute is angry today." Technologically possible? Then the VP is too strong - ruling out "There are mountains on Pluto." But if we have in mind "theoretically (in principle) possible", then again we presuppose theory. And if that theory is mistaken, does that mean we were babbling at the time?

4. Main problem: Is the VP itself meaningful? It isn't analytic (even supposing there are such things as analytic statements), yet how could we confirm it? So if the VP is right, it is meaningless!

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