Language, Truth and Logic
E16941
Language, Truth and Logic is A.J. Ayer’s influential 1936 philosophical work that popularized logical positivism in the English-speaking world by arguing that meaningful statements are either empirically verifiable or tautological.
Statements (48)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
book
→
non-fiction book → philosophical work → |
| advocates | emotivist theory of ethics → |
| author |
A. J. Ayer
→
A. J. Ayer →
surface form: "Alfred Jules Ayer"
|
| centralThesis | A statement is meaningful only if it is empirically verifiable or tautological. → |
| claims |
ethical judgments are expressions of emotion rather than statements of fact
→
metaphysical statements are cognitively meaningless → |
| countryOfOrigin | United Kingdom → |
| discusses |
a priori knowledge
→
analytic–synthetic distinction → philosophical method → Bayesian inference →
surface form: "probability and induction"
religious language → the self and personal identity → |
| firstPublishedIn |
London, England
→
surface form: "London"
|
| genre |
analytic philosophy
→
philosophy → |
| hasEdition | second edition with revisions → |
| impact |
provoked criticisms that led Ayer later to modify his views
→
sparked extensive debate about the criterion of meaning → |
| influenced |
20th-century philosophy
→
Anglo-American analytic philosophy → |
| influencedBy |
Moritz Schlick
→
Rudolf Carnap → Vienna Circle → logical empiricism → |
| mainSubject |
epistemology
→
ethics → logical positivism → philosophy of language → verificationism → |
| movement | logical positivism → |
| notableFor |
critique of metaphysics
→
popularizing logical positivism in the English-speaking world → systematic defense of verificationism → |
| originalLanguage | English → |
| philosophicalStance |
reduction of philosophy to logical analysis of language
→
rejection of synthetic a priori propositions → |
| positionOnEthics | ethical statements lack truth value → |
| positionOnMetaphysics | metaphysical disputes are pseudo-problems → |
| positionOnReligiousLanguage | religious statements are literally meaningless → |
| proposes | verification principle of meaning → |
| publicationYear | 1936 → |
| publisher |
Orion Publishing Group
→
surface form: "Gollancz"
|
| structure | divided into chapters addressing language, verification, metaphysics, ethics, and theology → |
| timePeriod | 20th century → |
Referenced by (2)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.