February 24, 2013 § 2 Comments Our objectives for this post are
brief. We’ll start by laying down A.J. Ayer’s goal to
‘eliminate’ metaphysics and what he meant by the term. Then
we’ll look at one of Carl Hempel’s arguments that takes into
account the “isolated sentences” that proved to be damaging to
the stridency of logical positivism’s requirements. This was a
philosophic attempt to give verifiable room to a wide array of
scientific theories. Then, we’ll turn to W.V.O. Quine who
transitioned from Hempel’s position into his own attack on two
widely held dogmas of empiricism. Quine will offer substantial
criticisms about empirical orthodoxy that thereby allow for more
leniencies in the way we regard positivism and empiricism
itself. Lastly, we’ll examine a notion of truth, suggested by
Quine, that Ayer may have disqualified as metaphysical and so
on. Ayer makes no bones about his positivist project from the
onset. One needs only to consider the title of the first chapter
of Language, Truth and Logic, “The Eli