Criticism of the Verification Principle in A.J. Ayers Book Language, Truth and Logic :: Philosophy

Criticism of the Verification Principle in A.J. Ayers Book Language, Truth and LogicINTRODUCTION This essay will contain in an exposition and criticism of the Verification Principle, as expounded by A.J. Ayer in his take hold Language, Truth and Logic. Ayer, wrote this book in 1936, but also wrote a new introduction to the second edition ten years later. The last mentioned amounted to a revision of his earlier theses on the principle.It is to both accounts that this essay shall be referring. Firstly, I shall expound the confirmation principle. I shall then show that its match of significant types is inexhaustible, and that this makes the principle inapplicable. In doing so, I shall have exposed flagitious inconsistencies in Ayers theory of meaning, which is a necessary part of his modified bridle principle. I shall also expound Ayers theory of knowledge, as related in his book. I will show this theory to contain logical errors, devising his modified version of the principle f lawed from a second angle. The human relationship of this essay with the two prior essays of this series can be still from Ayers Preface to the First Edition of his book The views which are put antecedent in this treatise derive from the doctrines of Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein. For background interest, Language, Truth and Logic was written afterwards Ayer had attended some of the meetings of the Vienna Circle, in the 1930s. Friedrich Waismann and Moritz Schlick headed these logical positivists of Vienna. Their principle doctrine can be said to have been founded in the meetings they had with Wittgenstein and their interpretation of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Ayers book expounds and, in his view, improves on the principle doctrine of the Vienna Circle the verification principle. Waismann and Schlick adopted this principle after it was first given to them by Wittgenstein himself. Waismann record the conversation, where Wittgenstein stated If I say, for example, Up t here on the cupboard there is a book, how do I set about ascertaining it? Is it sufficient if I glance at it, or if I look at it from varied sides, or if I take it into my hands, touch it, open it, turn its leaves, and so forth? There are two conceptions here. One of them says that however I set about it, I shall never be able to verify the proposition completely. A proposition always keeps a back entrance open, as it were.