Ayer Criticism

Twentieth century British philosopher A.J. Ayer sought to dispute the concepts of metaphysics through his works in the area of logical positivism. He published various works countering the concepts of metaphysics such as Language, Truth, and Knowledge and The Elimination of Metaphysics. It was in these works and others where he countered metaphysical claims such as the concept of a priori knowledge or knowledge through deductive reasoning that was popularized by philosophers such as Descartes, Kant, & Russell. These philosophers argued that we could use a priori knowledge because according to Descartes, “we know God exists and is no deceiver.” That is to say that we as humans understand that God has created the world around us and that we can
This principle was used to attack metaphysics by critiquing the idea that it was significant to examine a reality that transcends our understanding because under the verification principle there had to evidence that certain events could happen in order for statements to be significant and often times in metaphysics they were not. While many could argue that the verification principle excelled at critiquing metaphysical claims there are several criticisms that could come with is handling of religious and ethical
In the words of Ayer, “To say that God exists is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false.” Ayer’s reasoning here is that since we have no observable evidence that a god or gods exists it is nonsensical to believe that they do. This belief puts him firmly at odds with those who practice religion who accept the fact that there are forces beyond our control and that we must simply put our faith in a higher power or “god” to watch over us. Ayer’s views on ethics and morality were not devoid of controversy either. According to Ayer ethical and moral statements such as “murder is wrong” and “stealing is wrong” are nonsensical because there is no analytic evidence that either of these statements is true. As he states in The Emotive Theory of Ethics, “If now I generalise my previous statement and say, “Stealing money is wrong, I produce a statement with which has no factual meaning- that is, expresses no position that is either true or false.” (124) Ayer sees statements such as these as emotional statements that reflect how the speaker feels about the subject rather than proving whether or not it is empirically true or not. When he