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colinlusk's review against another edition
3.0
Philosophers: "The view of philosophy which we have adopted may, I think, fairly he described as a form of empiricism. For it is characteristic of an empiricist to eschew metaphycis on the grounds that every factual proposition must refer to sense experience. And even if the conception of philosophising as an activity of analysis is not to be discovered in the traditional theories of empiricists, we have seen that it is implicit in their practice"
Readers with dirt under their fingernails:
Readers with dirt under their fingernails:
goodtrouble77's review against another edition
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11137066
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11137066
chriscarpenter's review against another edition
4.0
A fascinating read. I think philosophers of science were to quick to abandon logical positivism when Ayer elucidated such a compelling vision of how to think about science as well as how to reject metaphysics.
jonathonjones's review against another edition
3.0
If you’re the sort of person who would dismiss the theory based solely on the fact that the verification principle itself would fail the verification principle, it’s worth reading at least the first chapter or two (and certainly the introduction). It’s interesting to see exactly how it’s supposed to work, and also to get the theory of what philosophy is supposed to be doing (namely, clarifying issues).
The rest is not super interesting unless you buy into the principle itself, although either way you can see what the results of applying it to traditional problems looks like. Personally, i would have preferred the author spend more time fleshing out ideas and less time arguing for them - his tendency to say things like “I don’t need to give any more examples” was frustrating.
Because at the end of the day I don’t actually think this is something to be argued, exactly - it feels a bit too fundamental for that. Instead what I would want is something like “here’s a way of looking at the world, and here’s why that works out better than other ways of looking at the world”.
The rest is not super interesting unless you buy into the principle itself, although either way you can see what the results of applying it to traditional problems looks like. Personally, i would have preferred the author spend more time fleshing out ideas and less time arguing for them - his tendency to say things like “I don’t need to give any more examples” was frustrating.
Because at the end of the day I don’t actually think this is something to be argued, exactly - it feels a bit too fundamental for that. Instead what I would want is something like “here’s a way of looking at the world, and here’s why that works out better than other ways of looking at the world”.
jonathanlibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
Knowing Popper, I see the scientific flaws in logical positivism. To say that all metaphysics has no meaning is very intriguing to me. If meaning as how Ayer defines it that it's hard to argue against him. Of course this requires agreeing that Kant was wrong about apriori synthetic statement, which I actually do agree that perhaps it is incorrect (having only a small overview of Kant). The problem that comes up then with Ayer and also Wittgenstein (which both realized) that paradox of making such an arguement that is inherently metaphysical. The thing that stick with me is the quote by Nagel that truth, objectivity and reason are non-negotiable, as an arguement against them is self refuting. I have to agree with that too. So either logical positivism is wrong on metaphysics or one must accept a self refuting paradox. Books like these always leave me now shaken on the foundations of meaning and true, justified knowledge. Is everything relative? Art, ethics, physics and metaphysical?
thesinginglights's review against another edition
3.0
A crucial text in analytic philosophy's history. Radical philosophy but not a lot of "sexiness". Now this is academia and so "sexiness" (being pleasant to read) ought not be a prerequisite. But damn is it dry. I just wished for a slightly more artful sentence or articulation.
virtualmima's review against another edition
2.25
Positivism: Logic is useless. Let's just make bold declarations, gather a bunch of misleading empirical data, and assume we're correct. It's so much easier this way, now that we don't have to trouble ourselves by actually understanding anything. All metaphysics is nonsense because I don't understand it, and any attempt to prove me wrong about that is nonsensical. I haven't bothered to properly define what "nonsense" means but let's just assume that anything that I prescribe that label to is useless to spend any length of time thinking about. Why? Because I said so.
Maybe we should reject math and language too since it's all "fictitious metaphysical nonsense" and empiricism can't support it.
Maybe we should reject math and language too since it's all "fictitious metaphysical nonsense" and empiricism can't support it.