A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... "The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
Monday, October 22, 2012
Hakuna Matata sec19group3 Ayer
Today in class we did a few presentations and Dr. Oliver talked a little about our previous readings over the break. Our last reading was on Ayer. Ayer believed in a verification principle to decide weather statements made sense or were just nonsense. To know weather a statement makes sense you ask two questions: is it true by definition? and is it empirically verifiable? if it was neither it was considered meaningless. "God exists" was considered nonsense.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ayers theories seemed a little crazy to me, but I can see where his thoughts were coming from.
ReplyDeleteQuestions:
Discussion-If life is pointless how is it preferable to death?
Factual-Whos life did he compare ours to?
*sisyphus
I thought Ayers logical statements was quite an interesting thought. I found that when statements deemed "meaningless" by his simple questions, the statements in question did seem a bit like nonsense, for the simple fact that the lack of factual backing gives it less meaning, for if its not fact its made up, and what is the importance of a made-up statement?
ReplyDeletefactual - What is this philosophy called?
- Existentialism
discussion - What is meant by the statement "Our existence comes before our essence?"
We didn't have much time to discuss Ayer, but I'm not sure throwing away metaphysics is the best answer to life.
ReplyDeleteFactual: Was Sisyphus happy with his task assigned by the Gods?
Discussion: Would you continue to roll the rock up the mountain if that's all your life consisted of?