Student essay: Critically examine A.J.Ayer’s theory of Verification (35)

Here is an A-grade student essay on A J Ayer

Philosophy of Religion A Level

This is another good (A grade) essay by a student, this time on Religious Language and A J Ayer. 

In his most famous work, Language, Truth and Logic, A.J. Ayer presents his theory of verification. Ayer was one of the logical positivists, a Viennese group of philosophers who were inspired by the theories of the early Wittgenstein and sought to answer rather than what makes a statement ‘meaningful’ as opposed to what makes it ‘true’. There have been two main editions to Language, Truth and Logic, both of which will be analysed and explained below.
Ayer begins his thesis by arguing that for a statement to be ‘meaningful’ or ‘factually significant’, it must either be a tautology or provable by sense experience. This approach is inspired by Hume’s fork, who claimed that meaningful language was either a priori analytic or a posteriori synthetic. Ayer’s belief also sides…

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