Language, Truth, and Logic summary

With such a powerful emphasis on language in this new analytic philosophy, it is important to remember that language was almost taken for granted by earlier philosophers. In a BBC interview in the 1970s, Ayer himself spoke of earlier philosophers thinking of language as almost transparent – a neutral form of expression.

For logical positivism, nothing could be further from the truth. Humans can only understand the world through their senses, through observation and verification of phenomena. But what we can think, and how we think it, is determined entirely by language – and language is far from neutral.

The classification of statements from the previous chapter hinged quite a bit on whether or not a statement was either self-referential or self-defining, like a tautology or an analytic statement, or unverifiable, like emotional or meaningless statements. But does that mean everything stated as fact needs external corroboration?

This is where Ayer offers something else: performative statements. For instance, “I now pronounce you man and wife” is a performative statement. It accomplishes something just by being uttered. It doesn’t verify something about the world; it changes something. Same with a statement like, “I promise to buy you dinner,” because within the statement is an outcome that can be verified or not. If you got dinner, the statement was true. If you never did, then the statement was untrue. But the promise itself links it to a real-world outcome.

At the heart of Ayer’s philosophical project was a desire to establish a foundation for rational discourse. In order to do this, he classified statements according to their verifiability. He created a hierarchy of verification principles, which helped him determine how firmly rooted in empirical observation any statement might be.

For instance, the strong verification principle refers to statements that can be verified through direct observation. This might be something as simple as “it is sunny outside.” Such a statement can be verified by anyone looking out of the window. Even someone without sight could verify such a statement by stepping outside and feeling the sun on their skin.

In other words, the approach of logical positivists, while grounded in the observable world, left little space for the shades of gray found everywhere in science and in life. But through their efforts, they shone a light onto language itself as a vehicle for philosophy, and opened up conversations about language as an active force in shaping what we think, and what we can think. These conversations continue to this day. 

Though the verification principles attempted to provide a neutral, transparent language for philosophical inquiry in logic, the results were met with considered backlash. Quine’s refutation of empiricism, and Wittgenstein’s embrace of language play notwithstanding, other thinkers were quick to point out that things weren’t quite as black and white as Ayer’s logical approach might indicate.