The Historical and Philosophical Significance of Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic

Adam Tamas Tuboly, Adam Tamas Tuboly

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030508845
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This edited collection provides the first comprehensive volume on A. J. Ayer's 1936 masterpiece, Language, Truth and Logic. With eleven original chapters the volume reconsiders the historical and philosophical significance of Ayer's work, examining its place in the history of analytic philosophy and its subsequent legacy. Making use of pioneering research in logical empiricism, the contributors explore a wide variety of topics, from ethics, values and religion, to truth, epistemology and philosophy of language. Among the questions discussed are: How did Ayer preserve or distort the views and conceptions of logical empiricists? How are Ayer's arguments different from the ones he aimed at reconstructing? And which aspects of the book were responsible for its immense impact?

The volume expertly places Language, Truth and Logic in the intellectual and socio-cultural history of twentieth-century philosophical thought, providing both introductory and contextual chapters, as well as specific explorations of a variety of topics covering the main themes of the book. Providing important insights of both historical and contemporary significance, this collection is an essential resource for scholars interested in the legacy of the Vienna Circle and its effect on ethics and philosophy of mind.

© The Author(s) 2021

A. T. Tuboly (ed.)The Historical and Philosophical Significance of Ayer’s Language, Truth and LogicHistory of Analytic Philosophyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50884-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: From Spying to Canonizing—Ayer and His Language, Truth and Logic

Adam Tamas Tuboly^{1, 2}

(1)

Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

(2)

Institute of Transdisciplinary Discoveries, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary

Keywords

A.J. AyerLogical empiricismVienna CircleAnalytic philosophyBritish philosophy

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction

The American pragmatist-naturalist-logical empiricist philosopher Ernest Nagel spent a year in Europe, after which he wrote, in a remarkable two-part essay, that “it was reported to me that in England some of the older men were dumbfounded and scandalized when, at a public meeting, a brilliant young adherent of the Wiener Kreis threatened them with early extinction since ‘the armies of Cambridge and Vienna were already upon them’” (Nagel 1936a, 9).¹ Putting together other pieces of the puzzle, Ben Rogers (1999, 104) identified Nagel’s reported warlord as Alfred Jules Ayer (1910–1989), known to many in the Oxford and London social circles as “Freddie Ayer.”

Though it had its antecedents in periodicals and conferences, when it came out in January 1936, Ayer’s short, dense, and vigorous book, Language, Truth and Logic (“LTL”) nevertheless shocked the British philosophical community. Published by Victor Gollancz Ltd. (at that time known by many for its leftist books), LTL was written by a young, 25-year-old philosopher, a fact that was reflected in many different ways in the book’s pages. It was filled with fresh ideas and precise argumentations; all of them put forward aggressively and sometimes without sufficiently taking the wider context and the boring details of the views of others into account. His enthusiasm helped Ayer in overcoming some of the dusty academic conventions about being modest, moderate, and respectful even toward those who hold contrary opinions—or as Ayer liked to call them, “enemies.” Nonetheless, it is hard to underestimate LTL’s pivotal role in early and mid-century British philosophical debates and in the history of twentieth-century analytic philosophy more generally.²

Ayer’s work was praised and damned equally, and readers often described the book and its author in extreme terms: “a combination of immaturity, loose thinking and wholly unwarranted cocksureness; […] mental anarchy” (Tomlin 1936, 217); “hypnotic clarity” (Warnock, G.J. 1958, 43); “a bombshell” (Warnock, M. 1960, 79); the “enfant terrible of Oxford philosophy” (Grice 1986, 48); “a bestseller […], a dazzling and revolutionary work” (Medawar 1988, 53); “the last Bible of British Nonconformity” (Wollheim 1991, 23); and “the most wicked man in Oxford” (quoted in Rogers 1999, 125). Nonetheless, perhaps the most appealing compliment from within the British scene came from Bertrand Russell (1947, 71) who wrote, in his review of the second edition, that “I can give the sincerest praise possible, namely that I should like to have written it myself when young.”

As a long-time professor, first in London and then at Oxford, Ayer almost singlehandedly sowed the seeds of logical positivism in England—at least that’s how the story goes. LTL was popularly regarded as a succinct and elegant summary of the Vienna Circle’s philosophy. Recent historians of logical empiricism, however, have worried that its elegance and brevity were achieved at the cost of oversimplifying and distorting the actual positions endorsed by members of the Vienna Circle, resulting in a misleading portrait of logical empiricism.

With these diverse conceptions in mind, it is still not at all clear how LTL is to be regarded, and how its philosophical and historical significance is to be evaluated, both in its own right, and with regard to the dissemination of logical empiricism in Britain. This volume thus aims to reconsider the significance of Ayer’s LTL, both in historical and philosophical terms. Among the questions that need to be asked and discussed are the following: how did Ayer preserve or distort the views and conceptions of the logical empiricists, especially those of Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap? How are Ayer’s arguments different from those he aimed to reconstruct? How influential was LTL really, and what are the factors that explain its success in Britain and especially at Oxford? Besides the general chapters on the background and context of LTL, most chapters of this volume discuss particular aspects and themes of the book, such as verification, ethics, values, truth, other minds, and sense data.

1.2 The Way to Language, Truth and Logic

1.2.1 A Few Months in Vienna

After his 1932 graduation from Oxford, Ayer decided to leave behind the “metaphysical” atmosphere of his alma mater and hoped to continue his studies at Cambridge, where the new philosophies of Moore, Russell, and especially Wittgenstein were then prevalent.³ Nonetheless, Ayer’s Christ Church tutor, Gilbert Ryle, did not support this idea. Since Wittgenstein was not officially discussed at Oxford, Ryle’s suggestion was a European tour. Ryle had met Moritz Schlick at the International Congress for Philosophy in Oxford two years before, and the Viennese-based philosopher made such an impact on him that he told Ayer to head directly to Vienna, where he was supposed to enroll at the university to attend Schlick’s lectures and participate in the meetings of the so-called Vienna Circle. In Ayer’s (1978, 121) recollection, Ryle argued that “by coming back with a report of their activities I should be not only benefiting myself but performing a public service.” Ayer thus became a British philosophical spy in Red Vienna.

The Vienna Circle was an interdisciplinary discussion group, which existed roughly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna, though outside of its official institutional structure. Every Thursday evening in term time (at least that is the appealing myth—in fact, meetings were often delayed and became quite irregular after 1932), philosophically inclined scientists and scientifically trained philosophers gathered at the library of the Mathematical Institute in order to discuss the relation between science, philosophy, and society. While these topics also occupied most nineteenth and early twentieth-century philosophers (it is enough to mention Ludwig Boltzmann, Ernst Mach, Hermann von Helmholtz, and most of the neo-Kantians, such as Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer), much of the Vienna Circle’s originality came from its ability to integrate different philosophical approaches. In order to follow and interpret the latest developments in theoretical physics, members of the Circle therefore tried to combine the empiricism of Ernst Mach, Richard Avenarius, and Bertrand Russell with the conventionalism of Pierre Duhem and Henri Poincaré, as well as with the new logico-mathematical devices of Russell and Wittgenstein.

Besides theoretical physics, the members of the Circle displayed a great diversity of scientific training and interest. Felix Kaufmann was a legal expert; Otto Neurath, an economist and sociologist; Edgar Zilsel, a historian; Karl Menger and Hans Hahn, mathematicians; Friedrich Waismann also trained as a mathematician, but quickly turned to pure philosophy; and finally, Viktor Kraft had a background in geography. That being said, besides a broad interest in psychology, ethics, culture, biology, and linguistics, physics was the main field of study and inspiration for Herbert Feigl, Béla Juhos, Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, and Moritz Schlick, who, as the only local university professor among the group, acted as its leader (for a while, they were known as “the Schlick Circle”). Given their method of combining the scientifically sober approach of empiricism with the strict method of logic, their approach was often called “logical empiricism.” While this moniker was not wholeheartedly embraced by all members of the group—thus it revealed deep philosophical differences—I will keep referring to “logical empiricism” for reasons of simplicity.⁴

By 1932/1933, the Circle was somewhat past its heyday. It had entered the public scene in 1929 with the publication of its manifesto (Carnap, Hahn, Neurath 1929/1973), which caused division among some of its members because of its philosophical stance and socio-political layers. Carnap had already published Der logische Aufbau der Welt in 1928 and then left for Prague during the fall of 1931. The debate on the structure of sentences describing basic experiential issues (the so-called protocol-sentence debate) went on for years, though most of the Circle’s members were out of town from time to time. This fluctuation in activity is not simply an outsider’s evaluation; it was also noted by members of the Circle themselves. Gustav Bergmann (1993, 195), a peripheral member, later wrote that the Circle “already reached its highpoint in 1927/28, maintained momentum for several years and by 1931/32 already showed clear signs of splintering and, as a consequence, declining” as the original scientific outlook of the group was replaced by Schlick’s Wittgenstein -inspired vision. In a letter, Schlick himself (known for his admiration of Wittgenstein) stated that he would not hold any meetings of the Circle during the winter of 1933 as “[s]ome of our old members have grown too dogmatic and might discredit the whole movement; so I am now trying to form a new circle out of younger men who are still free from principles” (Moritz Schlick to David Rynin, November 4, 1933). The times were changing, and everyone felt that the philosophical (and often personal) struggles and debates had undermined the group’s internal unity (or at least the appearance thereof).

When he arrived in December of 1932, Ayer thus experienced a rather peculiar Vienna Circle: a rapidly changing, facti...