The Burden of Proof in Philosophy and Science

The Burden of Proof in Philosophy and Science

In Language, Truth, and Logic, Alfred J. Ayer describes the

revolutionary idea that philosophy is only useful and significant if

it can be proven. This can be otherwise said as the elimination of

metaphysics from the practice. While metaphysics focuses on a priori

knowledge questions which are unanswerable to scientific observation

and analysis, Ayer feels that one must at least be able to establish a

"criterion of verifiability" of a statement- by which one can at least

determine if truth or falsity can be discovered. This is also known as

the verifiability principle.

"We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person,

if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it

purports to express-that is, if he knows what observations would lead

him… to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being

false." Pg. 35. In other words, Ayer and those who believed like him-

the Logical Positivists, wanted philosophy to become much more black

and white, because that which cannot be verified at least on some

level has little credibility or meaning. After all, how can we make an

assumption or criticism of a statement if we have no means by which to

do so. Ayer believed sentences had to be either verifiable in their

truth/falsity, or conceptual truths. The sentences that fit neither of

these criteria are nonsensical. Looking back at past philosophers and

their works, the large majority of their metaphysical claims are

nonsensical.

In his dialogues Plato makes the claims that there exists a

transcendent realm of forms which we cannot understand or relat...

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..., we do not have the means to take it as

knowledge; it is merely a musing. Ayer's beliefs undermine many of the

philosophers before him. Until he came along, the vast majority of

philosophy was metaphysical, and therefore unverifiable. It generally

focused on that which exists outside of the realm of mortality, which

by Ayer's principles means nothing. Because we have no experience of

life outside this world, and no means to predict the future, these

previous philosophers did not discover anything. What they

accomplished, while useful perhaps on a moral or inspirational level,

means little more to society than a young child pondering what will

happen after he dies. Philosophy can be beneficial to the world, but

only when applied in a scientific or verifiable manner, because only

then can anything "true" be established.