Questions from 4/5/07

Chris Staral said:
Q1: I was a little bit confused during Ayer's definition of "strong" and "weak" verification. He mentions that it is verifiable in the strong sense if "its truth could be conclusively established in experience," which I understand. He then goes on to identify weak verification "if it is (possible for experience to render it probable." So if something is possible for experience to establish it as truth, but this establishment is improbable, is it immediately assumed that it is not "verifiable"?

What implications might this have for his discussion on disproving a claim? Since a claim cannot be entirely disproved, if something is possible for experience to establish it as truth, but this establishment is improbable, could that be considered as "weak refutation"?

A1: A better way to think about weak and strong verification is as follows:

Two distinct categories exist that encompass all claims: verifiable, or not verifiable. Within the category of "verifiable", one is able to more closely evaluate its probability of being true. Anything that has has a 100% chance of being true is "strong" verification. Anything less than 100% is "weak" verification. Non-verifiable claims cannot be further evaluated in this regard, as they are inherently unverifiable.
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Joanna said:
Q2: On page 7, Ayer states that a priori propositions are "attractive to philosophers on account of their certainty." But if a priori knowledge is defined as "knowledge independent of experience," then doesn't that contradict Ayer's previous statement that, "a statement that is not relevant to any experience...has no factual content"? And if so, what makes a priori knowledge certain?

A2: It is probably more clear to explain a priori as "truth we know by nature of definition, rather than experience." An example of a priori knowledge would be "a triangle has 3 sides." Thus, a priori knowledge is attractive to philosophers due to the certainty given to universally accepted definitions.
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Rosemary said:
Q3: In reference to Ayer's discussion of non-verifiable propositions, how does something's ability to be verified affect its literal significance? Is his claim that a non-verifiable proposition has no literal significance restricted to philosophy, or does he mean it in a broader sense?

A3: Ayer does mean it only restricted to philosophy. Thus, a statement can still have literal meaning even if it is not verifiable, but that literal meaning exists only outside of the philosophical discussion. That is how a poet can get away with saying something unverifiable, whereas a philosopher or metaphysician cannot.

Editor's note: I would suggest the following amendment to this answer. It's not that Ayer restricts his analysis to philosophy, per se. What he is suggesting is that any statement, if it is non-verifiable, has no literal significance. Among these he places metaphysical statements. Here is an example:
"Mind externalizes itself in various forms and objects that stand outside of it or opposed to it, and that, through recognizing itself in them, is "with itself" in these external manifestations, so that they are at one and the same time mind and other-than-mind." Okay, so now you know about metaphysics.
The passage concerning the poet is to be understood in the following way. Metaphysicians are often said to be misplaced poets -- while their statements do not have literal meaning, they, nevertheless, arouse emotion, etc. This, Ayer maintains, is to malign poets. Poets DO produce meaningful statements, it is just that they are not judged -- and should not be judged -- according to their truth. When they produce statements that are not verifiable, they do so intentionally, and for the purpose of evoking emotion. Metaphysicians are aiming at making meaningful, truthful claims, and fall short on both counts.

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Q4: A lot of Ayer's argument is based on the Wittgensteinian idea of language being the source of our problems. I understand that the language does matter if you want to convey your ideas to others but I guess I don't know if I'd give it that much weight. The definition of "fictitious" is "not existing". Regardless if parallel sentences deem "fictitious" an "attribute," it still means "not existing". And if your language doesn't adequately convey your logical thoughts, are your thoughts reduced to nonsense because of this handicap? Furthermore, I'm not sure I understand why something that does not exist cannot have an attribute. Can I have an idea of a unicorn or an alien or some person I've never met before and therefore have it exist in my mind with attributes? It might not be universal, but the idea of it still exists.

A4: In order to be considered knowledge, according to Ayer, ideas must be verifiable. The verification process includes communication with others. If you cannot express your ideas in words so that other people can understand and talk about the idea, the idea must then be meaningless. Ideas must be expressible. This in turn means that, yes, what is nonsense in one language could very well be meaningful in another which is set up in a way that it is able to adequately convey this idea.

Things that do not exist cannot have attributes. (Editor's note: Things that do not exist cannot be said, truthfully, to have particular attributes. Do you see how my change to the first sentence makes a big difference?Ascribing a property to a non-existent object cannot produce any means of verifying that claims. Thus, such a statement would be meaningless.) I can think of a unicorn, have an idea of one, but anything I come up with can only be emotionally significant to me only. There is no way to verify the status of a unicorn's existence or lack there of, so it cannot be literally significant. Therefore, any sentence with unicorn subjects is automatically nonsense anyway. The fact that our language gives way to analogies between sentences like "Unicorns are fictitious" and "Dogs are faithful" is a matter or poor reasoning, a language flaw which does not convey the fact that the sentences are logically different.
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Catherine said:

Q5: In general, I guess I just don't quite understand the part about the poet and the metaphsyician. Is he implying that poetry is art (which is unnecessary) and metaphysicians are like poets who don't know what they are doing? Also, does every flaw in grammatical structure mean that the idea is false or just that the way the idea was created is false by its presentation?

A5: As discussed, Ayer does not think badly toward the arts or poets. Instead, he claims that poets use words to create meaningful sentences and ideas. When these ideas and sentences do not make logical sense, they have created them that way to achieve a purpose. Conversely, metaphysicians try to create statements that have content and end up with a meaningless creation of nonsense.

Also, if I understand correctly, Ayer believes that statements by metaphysicians (or any person for that matter) that holds a grammatical flaw which affects the meaning of the statement are meaningless. However, the idea that is being expressed may not be meaningless to its creator, but becomes meaningless upon its improperly phrased utterance to all.

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Q6: In the author's argument regarding reality through functionality (discounting the significance of the idea of a more basic "reality" than observable traits), it seems significant that people seem to perceive specific objects differently, potentially leading to slight differences in objects' functionalities. If this is believed to be true, it would seem to imply that there exists a certain set of traits belonging to each object that is unobservable by any one person at any one time. Further, if this is the case, and the functional reality of the object differs depending on the observer, this seems to open the possibility of an inherent reality from which the different functionalities spring. Is the author justified in apparently not considering the variant properties of observation as he alleges a lack of "literal significance" to intrinsic reality?

A6: Yes, the author is completely fine discounting variances in observation, because the literal significance of the idea is dependent on the expression, or definition (Editor's note: actually, the verifiability criteria) of the idea. If the definitions are different, then the ideas hold different, but still viable literal significances (so long as the expression is physically testable).
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Q7: How can Ayer state that Metaphysicians are full of nonsense if he agrees with Wittgenstein, who states that all language is "bad", therefore scientist are also full of nonsense, since the language they are using is not constructed properly, so they can't prove anything that they have proven since they are using a language that don't work properly?

Editor's note: He may agree with Wittgenstein in saying that language is troubled in this way, however he has a positive proposal for how to deal with troubled language.
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Erika said:
Q8: Ayer says that a statement is not significant if it is not verifiable. Hence, this lead me to wonder... what does he say about his own statement (that "a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, an only if, he knows how to verify the proposition")? Because if a statement is only significant if it is verifiable, and his statement is not verifiable, then wouldn't that just make his thesis not significant?

A8: According to Ayer's theory of verifiability, this statement would not be significant because it is not verifiable. However, I feel that Ayer is assuming we all have a common understanding that this statement is true and significant. So if people do indeed agree that it is right for him to start his argument with this statement, then it is meaningful in the sense that it allows us to set rules to determine when a statement is significant and when it is not.
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Jenny said:
Q9: What is the exact definition of metaphysics as Ayer is talking about it. I don't know anything about metaphysics except what I can gather from this, and some parts are a little unclear.

Does metaphysics really boil down to bad grammatical or linguistic understanding? Surely the philosophers were motivated by something else than misleading parallels. It is common to many people to believe there is something more out there than is directly observable or verifiable. Do other philosophers agree with his diagnosis?

A9: Metaphysics is the study of questions about “Being” and existence and related issues. Ayer sees it as a collection of nonsensical arguments and statements that can’t be proven or have verifiability criteria applied to it successfully.

For Ayer, metaphysics by definition boils down to bad grammatical or linguistic understanding. The metaphysical questions are those that can have no other reason for existence, since they are nonsensical and should not otherwise be considered. This may not be the belief for other philosophers, especially not for metaphysicians. However, Ayer does say that some nonsensical statements may be meaningful to the author, at least. (Editor's note: while references, in the above answer, to `nonsensical arguments and statements', `bad grammar' and `bad linguistic understanding' as sources of metaphysics are technically correct, keep in mind that for Ayer, the ultimate reason for things being metaphysics is the failure to find empirical verifiability criteria. Since no such criteria exist, the statement is deemed meaningless. So, the ultimate source of our epistemic warrant is the testability/verifiability, and this is because this is how Ayer understands what it means to be empirical.)

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Q10: What time period is Ayer from? He talks about no rocket having been made that can see the opposite side of the moon. For that matter, when is anyone we’ll study from?

We’ve been dealing solely with metaphysics so far, right?

What’s the target audience for the works we read?
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Lucas said:
Q11: If existence is not an attribute, what is it? Also, what do we say about the "other" mode of being (Unicorns are "fictitious") once we dispose of a "non-empirical" sense of existence?

A11: As we discussed in class today, existence is not a property but an implicit aspect of the assertion of a property. (Editor's note: Another way of putting that last claim is that, from a logical point of view, existence is a quantifier, and not a predicate/property.) Thus it is redundant to say "x exists," and any claim of the form "x is y" can be rephrased "there exists x which is y." (Editor's note: The same goes for "does not exist".)

The second part of the question is about the place of fiction in an empirical philosophy. The answer is that the same rule of verifiability applies to unicorns as to horses (or whatever). Propositions about unicorns (such as "Unicorns have white fur") are nonsense. (Editor's note: And this is because we can give no criteria for verifying such propositions, and this Ayer concludes is because there is nothing empirical to which such propositions refer.)

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Q12: Does language influence the way we physically experience the world? Is knowledge by acquaintance completely free of constraints set by language? What about linguistic relativity--is it possible that people who speak German or Chinese see the world differently than people who speak English? If so, then how can this ever be overcome?

A12: The availability of certain words may allow us to experience the world a little differently than people who speak a language without the same vocabulary. The initial sense-data may be the same for everyone, but the data that comes immediately after that is probably influenced by language. For example, an experiment was done on American and East-Asian students in which they were told to describe a scene held in front of them; the descriptions the American students gave were consistently different than the ones of the Asian students. They focused on different aspects of the picture (the American students described the foreground and the main objects in the picture, whereas the Asian students noticed the details and background). In a sense, they'd "seen" different pictures. This example is perhaps better applicable in talking about how culture affects one's sensory experiences, but language could potentially have the same effect. This probably cannot be overcome; in the case of discussing philosophy, communicating in English already becomes a problem because it's necessary to base one's arguments on the same words and definitions.

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Q13: Is Ayer saying that because the questions metaphysical philosophers ask are to be dismissed altogether? It seems to me like that's a bit much to throw all the questions out because our language isn't refined enough for us to be able to describe the questions or their answers. It seems like the problem is the language's limitation rather than the ideas'.

Editor's answer: Yes, he is saying that such statements should be dismissed as being meaningless, and therefore, as being incapable as saying anything true about the world. It may be the case that this is a problem with the language, but how else do ideas get expressed -- and expressed in such a way that we can assess their truth-value?
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Q14: I see that Ayer distinguishes between practical verifiability and verifiability in principle as the first step in the criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact. My question is what is Ayer's view on religious scripture, for example Matthew 24:9 Then shall they deliver you up to tribulation, and shall kill you; and ye will be hated of all the nations for my name's sake, or does he view the bible and other religious text as mere non-sense?