Alfred Jules Ayer quotes, quotations, aphorisms, ideas and thoughts about his philosophy explained in a very squashed article.
The principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else.
Alfred Jules Ayer
No moral system can rest solely on authority.
Alfred Jules Ayer
The truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.
Alfred Jules Ayer
But it is not sensible to cry for what is logically impossible.
Alfred Jules Ayer
The propositions of philosophy are not factual, but linguistic in character – that is, they do not describe the behavior of physical, or even mental, objects; they express definitions, or the formal consequences of definitions.
Alfred Jules Ayer
The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability.
Alfred Jules Ayer
The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.
Alfred Jules Ayer
We reject metaphysics and knowledge of a transcendent reality.
Alfred Jules Ayer
Kant accused metaphysicians of ignoring the limits of understanding, we accuse them of disobeying the rules of significant language.
Alfred Jules Ayer
For a statement of fact to be genuine it must be possible to verify it through experience.
Alfred Jules Ayer
Philosophy is wholly critical, an activity of linguistic analysis.
Alfred Jules Ayer
Philosophy is not concerned with meaning, but with definitions in use.
Alfred Jules Ayer
As empiricists, we deny that matters of fact can be known to be certainly valid.
Alfred Jules Ayer
Analytic propositions (tautologies), such as logic and mathematics, are true and can give us new knowledge by bringing to light our linguistic usages.
Alfred Jules Ayer
The words ‘true’ and ‘false’ are simply signs of negation or assertion.
Alfred Jules Ayer
The ‘problem of truth’ is the problem of how propositions are validated.
Alfred Jules Ayer
Observation can discredit not just a hypothesis, but a whole system of hypotheses.
Alfred Jules Ayer
But the ‘facts of experience’ can never compel one to abandon a hypothesis.
Alfred Jules Ayer
Assertions of value are not scientific but ‘emotive’, thus neither true not false. They express feelings or commands.
Alfred Jules Ayer
On this view it is impossible to dispute questions of value, only questions of fact.
Alfred Jules Ayer
Ethics and aesthetics are to be comprehended in the social sciences.
Alfred Jules Ayer
That a transcendent god or an immortal soul exist are metaphysical assertions of no literal significance.
Alfred Jules Ayer
This view is, in fact, supported by theists.
Alfred Jules Ayer
A sense-experience cannot belong to the sense-history of more than one self.
Alfred Jules Ayer
The ego is fictitious.
Alfred Jules Ayer
We know of other minds in the same way we know of our own, by inference from the body.
Alfred Jules Ayer
What exists need not necessarily be thought of.
Alfred Jules Ayer
Philosophy is the logic of science.
Alfred Jules Ayer
