A Little History of Philosophy (Little Histories)

by Nigel Warburton

It was part of a movement known as logical positivism, a movement that celebrated science as the greatest human achievement. ‘Metaphysics’ is a word used to describe the study of any reality that lies beyond our senses, the kind of thing that Kant, Schopenhauer and Hegel believed in. For Ayer, though, ‘metaphysics’ was a dirty word. It was what he was against. Ayer was only interested in what could be known through logic or the senses. But metaphysics often went far beyond either and described realities which couldn't be investigated scientifically or conceptually. As far as Ayer was concerned, that meant it was of no use at all and should be ditched. Not surprisingly, Language, Truth and Logic ruffled feathers. Many of the older philosophers in Oxford hated it, which made it difficult for Ayer to get a job. But ruffling feathers is something philosophers have been doing for thousands of years, in the tradition that began with Socrates. Still, to write a book that so openly attacked the work of some of the great philosophers of the past was a brave thing to do. Ayer's way of telling meaningful from meaningless sentences was this. Take any sentence, and ask these two questions: (1) Is it true by definition? (2) Is it empirically verifiable? If it was neither of these then it was meaningless. That was his two-pronged test for meaningfulness.