A. J. Ayer

Philosopher

• Born: October 29, 1910
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: June 27, 1989
• Place of death: London, England

Early Life

Alfred Jules Ayer’s father came from the French area of Switzerland and his mother from Belgium, although she was raised in England. The couple was residing in London when their only child was born in 1910. Ayer spent much of his early life in solitude, enjoying stamp collecting and reading. By age seven, he was in a boarding school, and when he was almost thirteen, he received a scholarship to Eton. There he first read philosophy, including works by contemporary thinkers Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore, and though confirmed in the Church of England, he became a lifelong “militant” atheist. At the suggestion of his maternal grandfather, whom Ayer identified as the greatest influence on his life, in 1929 he entered Oxford University with the intention of becoming a barrister.

In Christ Church College at Oxford, he studied ancient history and philosophy. His principal tutor was Gilbert Ryle, who would later gain recognition and wide influence as the author of The Concept of Mind (1949). Isaiah Berlin, philosopher of political theory and intellectual history, became a lasting friend of Ayer when the two met through the Jowett Society, the undergraduate philosophical group of which Ayer was secretary. After completing three years of study, Ayer, at Ryle’s recommendation and despite a desire to work with Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge, spent an academic year (1932-1933) in Vienna, where he participated in the weekly meetings of a group of Austrian philosophers, physicists, and mathematicians who developed the perspective of logical positivism and called themselves the Vienna Circle. They sought to rid philosophy of its metaphysical speculation and to unite the natural sciences. Their leader was Moritz Schlick, professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna, whose lectures Ayer attended. The observations made in the circle provided the basis for Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic, which would introduce Ayer to the world of professional philosophy.

Life’s Work

Language, Truth, and Logic was the first systematic introduction of logical positivism for the English reader and became Ayer’s best-known and most widely read work. Ayer held that logical positivism was a natural extension of the British empirical tradition of John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume and logically followed from the work of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, particularly the latter’s “Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung” (1921; best known by the bilingual German and English edition title of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922, 1961).

Logical positivism rested on the premise that all propositions could be sorted into two classes: The first contained propositions that were either true by form (tautologies from mathematics and logic or definitional claims such as “All unmarried men are bachelors”) or verifiable (testable) by some empirical means. The second category contained all remaining propositions. These were deemed to be neither true nor false but rather nonsensical. That is, the latter class of propositions were not merely untrue claims about the world—they really were not claims at all, for they could not meet the most fundamental test of any proposition, which is that a proposition must make a meaningful claim. The meaningfulness of a claim was to be assessed by the principle of verification. It was this principle that allowed for the sorting of propositions into their appropriate and respective category or class.

The principle of verification asserted that a claim was “factually significant” if one knew what observation or evidence could lead to demonstrating its truth or falsity. One was not required to be able to actually carry out the observations (for example, at the time of Ayer’s writing, a statement such as “The surface of Mars is made of volcanic rock” could not be directly verified); however, one needed to be able “in principle” to specify that the observations could be made. No observations even in principle, however, could be given for or against metaphysical claims such as “God is good” and “The beautiful is sublime.” Hence, they were dismissed as nonsensical.

Logical positivism promised to move philosophy beyond the realm of endless distinctions and arguments by assigning it the task of analyzing whether a proposition was meaningful. Thus, the proper method of philosophy was logical analysis; clarification and critical analysis was its goal. The task of determining whether the propositions were true or false could be left to science. Philosophy would be rid of the endless speculative metaphysical discussions that formed and defined much of its history. Moreover, philosophy could serve to unify the sciences and become their foundation. Philosophy would become the logic of science.

One set of propositions remained problematic, however. These were moral or ethical claims. Some logical positivists had addressed them with the doctrine of utilitarianism, but Ayer’s solution was an emotive theory of value. He regarded ethical claims not as propositions (assertions of fact) but rather as expressions of emotion. They reflected the feelings or attitude of the speaker. Ayer applied similar reasoning to aesthetic values, as well as claims about the existence of God. Theological propositions contained no factual content; they were not false, merely nonsensical. They failed the principle of verification, which Ayer once described as an “axe.”

Other traditional problems in philosophy were resolved or disappeared. Logical positivism showed the way to resolution of the problem of induction, the grounds of rationality, the proper form of reductionism, the nature of truth and necessary truths, the relation of mind to matter, and the nature of self and sense-experience. Logical positivism appeared to overthrow and discard much of what had passed as the great philosophy of Western civilization (though much of it, Ayer said, dealt with analysis rather than substantive claims). It was a doctrine especially suited to an age of scientific aspiration and advancement.

In 1946, Ayer modified some aspects of his original claims. He tried to give a more precise meaning to “empirically verifiable,” the notion that was at the heart of the principle of verification. He also tried to address the criticism that the principle was neither a tautology nor a proposition testable by observation, and therefore, the dichotomous classification of propositions by logical positivism failed. Though Ayer would move beyond the specific claims made in Language, Truth, and Logic, the commitment to empiricism and logical analysis found in this work would permeate all his subsequent philosophical views.

Ayer held a research lectureship (1932-1935) at Oxford when he wrote Language, Truth, and Logic and later a research studentship (1935-1940). The approach of World War II led to a commission as a military intelligence officer in the Welsh Guard. He served for a while in New York City, where in his spare time, writing under a pseudonym, he was the film critic of The Nation, reflecting a passion for the cinema he had developed at Oxford. He later served in West Africa and France. After the war, Ayer returned briefly to Oxford as Dean of Wadham College before being appointed Grote Professor of Philosophy and Logic at London University (1946-1959). He returned to Oxford as Wykeham Professor of Logic (1959-1978) and was knighted in 1970.

Ayer’s subsequent work spans more than a dozen volumes, and though it includes some works in the history of psychology, the bulk of his interests concentrate on epistemology and skepticism, that is, what is the basis for what people claim to know. No easy summary can be offered except to say that he developed the line of analysis from the British empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, and Hume) and strongly followed in the tradition of Russell. Within this general framework, he continued to modify his views and explore their implications.

The 1940’s marked the publication of Ayer’s phenomenalistic views (contrasted with his later constructivistic position) in which he introduced the concept of a sense-data language to deal with the problem of the relationship between physical objects and people’s perception of them. It was this work that J. L. Austin of the ordinary language approach to philosophy criticized in his posthumous lecture notes published as Sense and Sensibilia (1962).

Ayer regarded The Problem of Knowledge as his best work. He addressed the foundation of inductive leaps from sense-data to physical objects, from another’s behavior to their mind, and from the present to the past. He sided with the view of skepticism and concluded that induction is “primitive” and no rational basis can be given for it, though he rejected the idea that this undermined the very possibility of knowledge. In this regard, Ayer’s position may be viewed as a creative extension of Humean empiricist and skeptical ideas into mid-twentieth century philosophy.

The last period in Ayer’s philosophical development was his constructionism, which also may be traced to Hume and which contrasts with his early phenomenalism. Through constructionism, Ayer sought to explain how people’s perception of the physical world may be built up from the coherence of neutral sense-qualities, or quale, such as greenness and loudness.

In the latter decades of his life, Ayer held the leading position among British philosophers. His frequent contributions to British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) broadcasts made him a public figure, and he was invited to lecture widely in the United States, Europe, and the Far East. He gave the William James Lectures at Harvard in 1970 and later in the same year the John Dewey Lectures at Columbia. Though the policy at Oxford required him to retire upon reaching age sixty-seven, Ayer remained active until the very end of his life. Shortly before his death, he offered for general readership a small volume on the meaning of life. It reflected his long-standing atheism, which was not modified by a near-death experience. When death did overtake him, Ayer had nearly completed his responses to a set of papers prepared for a volume on his work in the Library of Living Philosophers series and was scheduled to return to the United States for a visiting term at Bard College.

Influence

Ayer is best remembered as leaving a fine exposition of other’s ideas, though he did introduce his own qualifications. His book, Language, Truth, and Logic remains the most accessible source for the ideas advanced by logical positivism, which had an enormous influence in philosophy until the late 1940’s and a continuing influence in the social sciences until the 1960’s. Beyond its historical significance, the work is recognized as an excellent model of philosophical writing. It displayed a simple elegance in composition and clarity.

The ultimate value of Ayer’s contributions are easily overshadowed by his those of his contemporaries Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sir Karl Popper, whose work receives continued attention beyond the limits of academic philosophy. Ayer’s influence was greater in Britain; his ideas never became the reason for Americans or others to venture to England as had the ideas of Wittgenstein and other members of the ordinary language movement. The later work of Ayer remains largely the province of professional philosophers and did not reach as large an audience as did Language, Truth, and Logic. Late in life, when asked to reflect on twentieth century philosophy, Ayer placed Russell and Wittgenstein in the “premier” division of influence, and himself, Ryle, and W. V. O. Quine in the “first division,” categories he borrowed from Scottish football.

Additional Reading

Austin, J. L. Sense and Sensibilia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962. A widely read response from an ordinary language perspective to A. J. Ayer’s early epistemological formulations. Austin dismissed Ayer’s views as “weak” and “full of jokes.”

Foster, John. The Philosophical Arguments of Philosophers: Ayer. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. A systematic and detailed presentation of Ayer’s philosophical views as contained in his major works. A high-level work, but probably the most authoritative secondary source on Ayer’s views.

Griffiths, A. Phillips. A. J. Ayer Memorial Essays. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University, 1991. An excellent collection of commentaries on Ayer’s contributions to philosophy by those who knew him personally. Includes a British Broadcasting Corporation interview with Ayer conducted during the last year of his life.

Hahan, Lewis, E., ed. The Philosophy of A. J. Ayer. Library of Living Philosophers series. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1992. Ayer responds to twenty-one of the twenty-four papers addressing his work. Also contains Ayer’s essay “My Mental Development” and a bibliography of his publications. The best survey of his life’s work.

Hanfling, Oswald. A. J. Ayer. New York: Routledge, 1999. An excellent biographical introduction to the thoughts of the philosopher, clearly presented and requiring no special background. Bibliography.

Hanfling, Oswald. A. J. Ayer: Analysing What We Mean. London: Phoenix, 1997. An examination of Ayer’s work and his contribution to philosophy.

MacDonald, G. F., ed. Perception and Identity: Essays Presented to A. J. Ayer with His Replies to Them. London: Macmillan, 1979. A set of essays honoring Ayer upon his retirement from Oxford, made more useful by the inclusion of his responses to each paper.

Magee, Bryan. Modern British Philosophy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1971. Interviews with leading British philosophers including A. J. Ayer and his early mentor Gilbert Ryle. A sound and easily understood presentation of Ayer’s views.

Priest, Stephen. The British Empiricists: Hobbes to Ayer. New York: Penguin Books, 1990. An excellent source for placing Ayer’s work in the tradition from which it emerged.