Ayerism.
Born of Swiss parentage in London, “Freddie” got an Oxford educated, and though
he wanted to be a judge, he read Lit. Hum (Phil.). He spent three months in
Vienna, and when he returned, Grice called him ‘enfant terrible.’ Ayer would
later cite Grice in the Aristotelian symposium on the Causal Theory of
Perception. But the type of subtlety in conversational implicature that Grice
is interested goes over Freddie’s head. (“That,” or he was not interested.”
Grice was glad that Oxford was ready to attack Ayer on philosophical grounds,
and he later lists Positivism as a ‘monster’ on his way to the City of Eternal
Truth. “Verificationism” was anti-Oxonian, in being mainly anti-Bradleyian, who
is recognised by every Oxonian philosopher as “one of the clearest and subtlest
prosists in English, and particularly Oxonian, philosophy.” Ayer later became
the logic professor at Oxford – which is now taught no longer at the
Sub-Faculty of Philosophy, but the Department of Mathematics!
Saturday, May 16, 2020
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