Project Materials

ABSTRACT

A.J Ayer a logical positivist and indeed at all his fellow logical positivists were moved by the achievements and clarities in science and as it were, they moved to bring these achievements and clarities in science into philosophy.

They believed that there are ambiguities and confusion in philosophical languages and that such ambiguities and confusions would be a thing of the past in philosophy when they are all jettisoned.

It was their view also that those ambiguities in philosophy gave rise to metaphysics. Metaphysics for these positivists was to be expunged because it contained no knowledge as it purports to give.

They (positivists) termed its knowledge pseudo-knowledge. In this work therefore, I wish to show that no matter the amount of attack directed to metaphysics by Ayer and his co-positivists, metaphysics will never be eliminated because man must go beyond the physical to explain realities like: life, God, man, world and man’s place in it, justice etc. for the sake of this work, I shall employ analytical method in order to do justice to this work.

CHAPTER ONE

1.0  GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Philosophy which began vigorously from the Ancient periods with its attendant rigorosity and criticality in reasoning have apparently gone beyond the era of animism and anthropomorphism that marked the works of Homer and Hesiod no thanks to the seeming criticality with which the early lonian philosophers philosophized.

Various philosophies were put up, some rejecting the existing culture status quo ante, others supporting the prevalent culture condition by way of proffering solutions. This brings out the truism in the fact that there is no subject or field of study which began without any basis or what Heidegger would call the prestructure of understanding extending also to the maxim of Gardemer that no one speaks from nowhere.

Bringing out organically therefore the importance of Heideggerian prestructure of understanding to the development of philosophy, F. Copleston avows “one does not need to know very much about the history of philosophy in order to realize that philosophy does not develop in complete isolation from other elements of human

culture.”1 In the light of the above, the emergence of the logical positivists with their principle of verification is precipitated by some antecedents.

The principle of verification became for A.J. Ayer, a member of the Vienna circle, and indeed all the logical positivists a vademecum for their philosophical activities.

It must be noted that the first glimmers of the principle of verification were first observed in the ancient philosophers who tried to situated being or reality with what could be seen. Thales choice of water as the cause of reality is a telling sign of this long marathon.

Furthermore, the echo became louder and clearer in the late medieval times when William of Ockham came up with the idea of nominalism which postulated that “science as objective knowledge of necessary connections can be validated

without postulating mysterious universal entities out there.”2 This brought about a complete over hauling of the dominant views as it opposed other views such as conceptualism, realism, moderate realism etc. Capturing the scenario more aptly, Copleston opined “…the nominalist spirit if one may so speak, was inclined to analysis rather than to synthesis, and to criticism

rather than to speculation.”3 The full import of the nominalists’ spirit was that “…through their critical analysis of the metaphysical ideas… the nominalists left faith hanging in the air without (so far as philosophy is concerned) any rational basis.”4

This view when pursed to its logical conclusion set the ground for the elimination of metaphysics. It must be noted and just in line with what Copleston said that “the development of mathematical

and scientific studies by such 14th century figures as Nicholas of Oresme, Albert of Saxony and Marsilius of Inghen is generally

associated with the Ockhamist movement.”5 Bacon’s idea of induction and the distempers of learning gave a sure background to this in the late Renaissance.

In the modern period, Descartes’ quest for certainly and clarity of knowledge was informed by the Renaissance trail blazing effort, although Descartes toed the rationalist line, he was nevertheless triggered off by the sole desire to make philosophy certain and clear with his “methodic doubt”.

Empiricism, it must be noted rose at this period with John Locke and David Hume as the notable progenitors. As a matter of fact, Empiricism could be taken to be the most pronounced and indeed the foremost background to logical positivism.

In the contemporary era, the rise of idealism became a blessing in disguise; idealism opposed to logical positivism in all ramifications inadvertently gave rise to the idea of logical

positivism. The effect of the attack carried out against idealism (both British and German) by B. Russell and G.E. Moore which swoop the up-coming philosophers had a lasting impression on them as so logical positivism was evolved.

Suffice it, to say that though both Russell and Moore were joint in their attack against idealism, nonetheless they were non-aligned in their mode of the attack. R.R. Ammerman succinctly captured this position when he aptly observed:

Moore and Russell were in complete agreement about what was wrong with idealism or how best to expose the error contained in it. On the contrary, their differing interest soon led them in diverging directions, although they remained united always in their rejection of Neo-Hegelianison.6

In this joint rejection, each carved a niche for himself of course with parallel positions, Moore vacated with common sense realism, Russell parted with logical atomism. They each anchored their philosophies tenaciously on their divergent positions.

The introduction of Ludwig Wittgenstein was by no means a surprise as he was the sharpest of B. Russell’s students. His Tractatus Logico-Phiosophicus was somehow anticipated as he built his philosophy upon that of Russell. These simmering philosophical attitudes become as they were the fountain-head and the prelude to the rise of logical positivism as pursued by the Vienna circle.

Be that as it may, the logical positivists have the principle of verification as their major arrow head on which their project is foundationed. This principle of verification implicitly means that the meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification. In this sense, it looks set to provide a criterion of meaningfulness.

By extrapolation, this verification principle suffocates those propositions that does not fall under its ambient and tagged them meaningless. In this way, metaphysical statements, ethical statement and the likes were branded as nonsensical and pseudo-statements.

By and large, when we beam our critical torchlight on the strength of the philosophies of Ayer and the logical positivists, to say that it contains an inherent contradictions and inconsistencies will be to belabour the obvious, for it will be apodictically true, that the verification principle is masquerading in some incoherencies and inconsistencies.

This suggests that their (logical positivists’) views may not altogether be correct or dogmatically conclusive. This essay takes it upon itself therefore to be a critique of the verification principle in its quest to deny and eliminate metaphysics. In the end, we shall deduce whether the verification principle emerged victorious in its quest to