Criticisms of Ayer’s Logical Positivism

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Recommended: Critic of A.J. Ayer verification principle

Ayer published Language, Truth & Logic in 1936 when he was only 26 years of age. He was a part of the Vienna Circle; who were notoriously known for their philosophy of logical positivism. Logical positivism is a philosophical theory that holds meaningful only those non-tautological propositions that can be analyzed by the tools of logic into elementary propositions or are empirically verifiable. It therefore rejects metaphysics, theology, and sometimes ethics as meaningless . In Language, Truth & Logic, Ayer puts forth his own version of the verification principle. It is by this principle of verification in which these philosophers, including Ayer, assess whether or not propositions are meaningful. Furthermore it is by the principle of verification and the idea of the analytic-synthetic distinction in which the heart Ayer’s philosophy rests. Analytic propositions are propositions that are true or false in virtue of their meaning alone and synthetic propositions are propositions that are true or false in virtue of how the world is. Ayer’s logical positivist position and principle of verification is faulty and unreliable as shown by many criticisms ranging from self-refuting nature of the principle of verification to the collapse of the analytic-synthetic distinction by Quine.

To begin with, Ayer’s principle of verification goes as follows:

“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 that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false. If, on the other hand, the putative proposition is of such a character that the assumption of its tr...

... middle of paper ...

... revise our analytic beliefs and if we are testing these and they are not true by definition and are by experience then the analytic-synthetic distinction collapses which is fatal for logical positivists such as Ayer.

To summarize, as a logical positivist, Ayer held to a principle of verification that stated a proposition is factually significant if and only if it is a tautology or if it is possible to be empirically observed under conditions that would allow it to be rendered true or false. This principle of verification is not only an impractical philosophy to follow due to its renouncement of ethics, aesthetics and science but it is also a self-refuting one due to the principle of verification being unable to be verified and not being a tautology. It is because of these reasons that Ayer’s principle of verification and logical positivism as a whole be rejected.

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