A. J. Ayer
1910-1989 · Philosophy of Language · Prominent
Ayer was an English logical positivist who brought the Vienna Circle's programme home for English readers in Language, Truth and Logic. That book puts one test to every sentence: can experience check it, or is it true by definition? Whatever fails the test states nothing at all, God and metaphysics and morality included. Calling theft wrong amounts to voicing a distaste for theft.
Signature
The position Ayer is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage
- Theology
- Atheism
Positions on the 11 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- strongly leans Mechanistic (5 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Brain Only (25 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Beauty
- strongly leans Subjective (9 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Universals
- leans Nominalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Changing (82 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Constructed (6 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Immanence (4 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage (25 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (21 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- leans Global (75 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
9 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Ayer refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Good and Evil
- Other
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Phenomenalism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Other
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Death
- Annihilation
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Aesthetic Necessity
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Evolved Animal
What is human nature?