The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge

by Alfred Jules Ayer

Philosophiy, Sociology, Ethical Studies, Applied Sciences

Genres: Philosophy

286 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

In 1910, Sir Alfred Jules Ayer was born in London into a wealthy family. His father was a Swiss Calvinist and his mother was of Dutch-Jewish ancestry. Ayer attended Eton College and studied philosophy and Greek at Oxford University. From 1946 to 1959, he taught philosophy at University College London. He then became Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford. Ayer was knighted in 1970. Included among his many works are The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940), The Problem of Knowledge (1956), The Origins of Pragmatism (1968), Metaphysics and Common Sense (1969), Bertrand Russell (1972) and Hume (1980), about philosopher David Hume. Later in life, Ayer frequently identified himself as an atheist and became active in humanist causes. He was the first vice president of the British Humanist Association and served as its president from 1965 to 1970. He was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association from 1947 until his death. He was also an honorary member of the Bertrand Russell. In 1988, Ayer had a near-death experience in the United States after choking on salmon and subsequently losing consciousness. He wrote of his experience in “That Undiscovered Country” (New Humanist, May 1989): “My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be. They have not weakened my conviction that there is no god. I trust that my remaining an atheist will allay the anxieties of my fellow supporters of the British Humanist Association, the Rationalist Press Association and the South Place Ethical Society.” He died shortly after at age 78 in London. D. 1989.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Ayer

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayer/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/AyerbyT...

http://badassphilosophers.tumblr.com/...

http://www.informationphilosopher.com...

Reviews

[A. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ayer is beautifully clear, albeit quaint. I do not think sense-data theory is taken very seriously these days. But it is heartening to see the care with which he builds up his edifice, step-by-step. This was an enjoyable read.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AYER EXAMINES "OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD”

Alfred Jules Ayer (1910-1989) was a British philosopher who was a founder of Logical Positivism, who was a professor of logic at the University of Oxford. He wrote many books, such as 'Language, Truth and Logic,' 'Probability and Evidence,' 'The Central Questions of Philosophy,' etc.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1940 book, "The title of this book covers a wide range of subjects; and do not wish to claim that I have investigated them all. My main purpose has been to resolve the philosophical problems which are commonly brought under the heading of `our knowledge of the external world.' But I have also found occasion to deal with such further questions as those of our knowledge of other minds, of the character of causal laws, of the analysis of meaning, and of the nature of propositions and their relation to facts."

He says, "I wish to consider what would be the position of one who, though he acknowledges the particular facts about our experiences that constitutes this evidence, still chose to deny the propositions about material things that these facts are supposed to prove... I have no doubt that by postulating a greater number of material things and regarding them as being more variable and evanescent than we normally do, it would be possible to deal with all the other cases in a similar way.

"How then is one who holds this position to be refuted? The answer is that so long as we persist in regarding the issue as one concerning a matter of fact it is impossible for us to refute him. We cannot refute him, because, as far as the facts are concerned, there is really no dispute between us... if there is to be any question of truth or falsehood, there must be some disagreement about the nature of the empirical facts. And in this case no such disagreement exists." (Pg. 17-19)

He argues, "we can never be certain that any of the propositions in which we express our perceptual judgements are true, but rather that the notion of certainty does not apply to propositions of this kind... once this is recognized, the motive for scepticism has gone. The mistake of the sceptic is not that he maintains any falsehood, or doubts some self-evident truth, but that he insists on applying to one class of propositions a criterion that is appropriate only to another... the relationship of propositions describing the contents of our sense-experiences to propositions implying the existence of material things is not that of premises to conclusion in a deductive argument. Our procedure in such cases is always inductive..." (Pg. 45)

He suggests, "If... we decide that the theory that our dreams are the expressions of unconscious wishes and fears is the most probable ... it is because we find that we are able to deduce from it a greater proportion of the known empirical facts, and because by means of it we are able to make more reliable inferences from the known to the unknown." (Pg. 52)

He asserts, "One's ground for believing a given proposition is often... the truth of a second proposition which is evidence for it... but this series cannot be prolonged indefinitely. In the end it must include at least one proposition that is believed, not merely on the ground that it is supported by other propositions, but in virtue of what is actually observed... we are not entitled to regard a set of propositions as true merely because they support one another. It is necessary that at least one of their number should be directly verified by observation of an empirical fact." (Pg. 108-109)

He observes, "Nor can it be argued that... it is necessary to conceive of the actual phenomena, with which the terms of such a [scientific] language ultimately deal, as connected with each other by universal laws. For it is perfectly easy to imagine that there are kinds of sensible occurrences of which it is not true that any of them are related to any other kind of sensible occurrence..." (Pg. 214-215)

He concludes, "there may very well be chance events... when it is not true that it is conjoined with an instance of any other kind of event, all, or even most, instances of which are conjoined with instances of the same kind as itself. At the same time, it can never be demonstrated that any event is a chance event in this sense, since it is always conceivable that further investigation will reveal that events of its kind can after all be brought under some extrapolable law; and perhaps `the law of universal causation' may be regarded as the expression of a resolve to try continually to narrow the field of what appear to be chance events. It then becomes a `heuristic maxim,' laying down an ideal of the complete explanation of phenomena, which may or may not be capable of being fulfilled." (Pg. 219-220)

This book will be of considerable interest to students of analytical philosophy.

[brock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note: I did NOT read the entirety of this book, but about 30 pages on the "Argument from Illusion," and with that said, my review is not on THIS BOOK but rather, a SECTION from this book.

The Argument from Illusion!

This passage was incredibly insightful and interesting, especially considering this was the first text I have read on the philosophy of perception. Ayer is a philosopher that I have wanted to learn more about for quite some time so when my critical thinking course had us read a section of this book, I was delighted.

The argument begins by proposing the existence of sense-data, naturally contradicting the belief of direct realism (the belief that we perceive material objects as they really are).

Sense-data,

"constitute what we, as perceiving subjects, are directly aware of in perceptual experience, prior to cognitive acts such as inferring, judging, or affirming that such-and-such objects or properties are present," (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Following this distinct, Ayer describes the stick argument:

"I have a stick, which appears to me to be straight, but when I hold it underwater it seems to bend and distort. I know that the stick is straight and that its apparent flexibility is a result of its being seen through the water, yet I cannot change the mental image I have of the stick as being bent. Since the stick is not in fact bent its appearance can be described as an illusion," (Wikipedia)

Ayer comments that not all of our observations must be veridical as such observations would contradict themselves: the stick can not hold the property of being straight and of being bent simultaneously. This belief may be criticized on the ground that people are viewing objects from different perspectives. For example, take two people viewing a coin. One sees the coin from the top (as a circle) while the other sees coin from the side (as an ellipse). To say that their perceptions are both veridical is not contradictory but to add the assumption that both individuals are observing the same material thing is a contradiction.

The coin example brings up another argument: How can one be sure that when changing perspective from viewing the top of the coin to the side of the coin that the coin did not change shape? One might say, well if you view the top, then the side, and then the top, all is normal. But what if the coin changed shapes (when changing perspective from the top to the side), and then changed shapes again (when changing perspective from the side to the top)?

Ayer then moves on to the linguistics of the philosophy of perception. He claim that when a philosopher adopts the sense-datum theory, and exclaims "he is seeing a sense-datum," he is not proclaiming some sort of empirical discovery but rather introducing a new way to clarify perceptual descriptions for further philosophical analysis. Ayer uses the phrase "I never see material things but only sense-data" as a way to describe this necessary nuance as a phrase such as this is not reliant on a truth condition; instead, this phrase is describes the mere experience of one particular individual.

There is a bit more discussion on the Argument from Illusion but since my course only requires a reading of the text up to this point, I will leave the rest for another day.

[ooderai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading Ayer feels like attending a philosophy lecture where everything is delivered with absolute confidence: even when it’s wildly contestable.

Still, Ayer’s work has enduring value. His style is crisp, his arguments are instructive, and he represents a bold moment in the history of epistemology when philosophers really believed that by sharpening their logic, they could reconstruct the whole of human knowledge from the ground up. Elegant, confident, and foundational in more ways than one. Ayer gives us the clearest possible version of a position that’s now mostly been dismantled, but it’s a pleasure to watch him build it anyway.

Unconvincing, but fun to wrestle with.

[Leonardo]

...se encontrará una exposición de diferentes versiones del argumento de la ilusión.

La mente Pág.324