Ayer's Language, Truth, And Logic

A review of Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic Ayer's work revisits the traditions of philosophy questioned by Wittgenstein and highlighted by Russell. An earlier philosopher, Kant mentions the limits of traditional metaphysics, suggesting that philosophy may have ventured far beyond the capabilities of experience such that established rules of language are no longer applicable (Ayer 34). Challenging the traditional metaphysician's ideas of transcendent reality, Ayer establishes a categorical system to review the language used by metaphysicians to attain a new perspective on the study of philosophy. Ayer's system for language begins with a separation of statements with literal significance and logical significance. Statements of literal significance are essentially facts that can be either true or false in the world. Furthermore, literal significance presupposes conditions that the statement has verifiability and grammaticality. The statement, " The coffee cup is on the table," is a verifiable fact in the world for I have a coffee cup in front of me on the table. It follows grammatical syntax as instilled by the rules of our language. Typically, verifiability entails that the object is perceived through sense data to have strong sense, but facts do not necessarily have to be directly presented through sense data; they can be

This entails that "right" and "wrong" carry literal significance because they correspond to entities in the world. However, we see that the connection between wrong and pain do not always correlate. When we say to maintain a healthy body, we must exercise. The act of exercising causes pain but it is the right thing to do. The same can be seen with pleasure. A sadist may obtain pleasure from inflicting pain on others, but we would certainly say that a sadistic act is wrong within the same