Alfred Jules Ayer
A sentence no experience could verify is meaningless, and 'God exists' is one of them.
Life
British philosopher, a professor at Oxford and the main English-language voice of logical positivism. He holds that a statement is meaningful only if it can be verified by experience or is true by definition, which puts metaphysics, theology and, in his view, ethics on the side of expressing feelings.
Main works
Presents the verification principle and moral emotivism.
Studies perception and sense-data.
Discusses the conditions and limits of knowledge.
In his own words
« The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability. »
« The principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else. »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceClaims that 'God exists' is not even false but unverifiable, hence meaningless; he rejects theism.
Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936), ch. 6
Only experience and logic give meaningful statements: strict empiricism.
Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936)
Freedom is compatible with determinism: it means acting without constraint, not without cause.
Ayer, "Freedom and Necessity" (1946; repr. in Philosophical Essays, 1954)
Ethical statements express feelings and are neither true nor false (emotivism).
Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936), ch. 6