Elimination of Metaphysics by A.J. Ayer
An overview of the arguments put forward by Ayer in favor of eliminating metaphysics from the scope of philosophical enquiry
Introduction to Ayer
English Logical Positivist, Alfred Jules Ayer (1910–1989) is best known for his books — Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956). He was influenced by the works of Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and G.E. Moore. Like most influential analytic philosophers of his time, he was a part of the Vienna Circle. He was the leading English representative of logical positivism.
Overview of Language, Truth and Logic
In this book, Ayer introduces the verification principle as the sole valid basis for philosophy. If empirical/logical verification is not possible for a statement (like metaphysical statements — ‘God exists’) then they do not have a truth value and are meaningless and thus can be discarded without further consideration.
Logical Positivism
Logical positivism (also known as logical empiricism) was a philosophical movement that begun in the 1920s. The supporters of this movement believed that the only kind of factual knowledge to exist is scientific knowledge and that metaphysics needs to be discarded as it is meaningless.
Critique of Metaphysics
Metaphysics claims to be able to provide knowledge of a transcendent reality. Ayer rejects this thesis by stating that it cannot be verified empirically. He contends that metaphysical statements have no literal meaning and thus are neither true or false.
He is also against the view that philosophy’s purpose is to come up with fundamental principles of meaning and to create a deductive system from which a veritable image of reality can be derived.
Ayer claims that the most effective way to put an end to traditional (metaphysical) disputes in philosophy is to clearly define its scope and purpose.
After considering a few points of attack on the legibility of metaphysics (claim of knowledge of transcendent world; ability to know what lies beyond sense-experience and the like), Ayer lays his most decisive point of critique of metaphysics.
Ayer points out that the statements produced by metaphysicians fail to satisfy the necessary conditions that make a statement meaningful. He then goes on to formulate this criteria of necessary conditions. Such a criteria would be met by propositions relating to matters of fact but not by metaphysical statements.
This criterion is the criterion of verifiability. As per this, a sentence has factual significance only if it is capable of being verified as true, or rejected as false. A statement may be verifiable practically or in-principle. Practical verification is achieved when a statement can be verified empirically. However, sometimes meaningful statements cannot be verified practically, but only theoretically or in-principle. This might be because of a lack of means of doing so (Ayer gives the example of the statement — “There are 12 planets in the Andromeda galaxy”).
Differentiating between strong and weak sense of verification (the former offering conclusive truth/falsity and the latter offering only probability), he contended that we cannot make strong verifiability the sole determiner of significant statements as it would mean that even statements that we take to be laws (for example — ‘Humans are mortal’) would be discarded in the same fashion as metaphysical statements (for example — Hippogriffs are friendly creatures), as even the former cannot be conclusively verified as they deal with infinite cases. Hence, we must make do with weak verifiability.
A little more context…
Ayer points out that only analytic observations (which are tautologies) are capable of having logical certainty and that empirical observations regarding matters of facts cannot as there is always a chance of them being proven false by further empirical testing.
He points out that his radical empiricism is opposed to rationalism because the latter asserts that a-priori reasoning, without the involvement of experience, can ascertain truths about the reality, whereas, the former espouses the principle of verifiability as per which only those ‘matters of fact’ propositions have meaning that are capable of empirical verification.
Agreeing with Kant on his distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements, Ayer adds that a proposition may be called analytic only if its validity is directly dependent on how its constituent symbols are defined, whereas, for synthetic symbols, validity is dependent upon the verification by experience.
Final Note and Thoughts
An acquaintance of mine said — “No one likes the logical positivists, except for the logical positivists.” That’s a strong stance but I am inclined to agree. A problem with logical positivism (particularly how Ayer propagated it), I think, is its staunch claim to certainty (a certainty claim so objective that it disregards everything else). The attempt to synonymize meaning with verification failed (Read Wittgenstein’s work to know more).
That being said, I find it hard to defend the grounds for metaphysical statements, even though I very much believe that metaphysics is a crucial part of philosophy.
References
Full text for Language, Truth and Logic
