Language, Truth And Logic, By J. Ayer

The meaning and purpose of language and landscapes “We are all made of words: that our most essential being consists in language.” (Momaday pg. 82) In N. Scott Momaday’s book The Man Made of Words he tells us that language is the most important part of who we are and it’s the most essential element of the way we think, dream and act. In this piece Momaday’s shows that a lot of his background is based on how much he cares about his culture and the Kiowa tribe.

Although verificationists would argues that analogy, symbol and myth are all just as meaningless as they can neither be verified nor

He feels a deep sense of guilt and pain because of the condition of society

I will begin with a convenient distinction described by Hume: the difference between relations of ideas and matters of fact. To alter any relation of ideas is to entail a contradiction, and therefore impossible. Thus, “the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic” as well as analytic propositions are off limits for even an omniscient deity.

Ayer was an emotivist and therefore took the non-cognitive approach to meta-ethics. He believed that ethical language is subjective and not objective. He said that ethical statements are merely expressions of liking or disliking a certain action, so if you say that ‘Murder is wrong’, you are simply saying ‘I don’t like murder’. He called this approach the hurrah-boo theory and claimed that any expression of emotion was the same as saying ‘ouch’; it is meaningless. He said that as ethical statements are neither

The purpose of this paper is to present the argument mapping of “The Logic of Nonstandard English,” by William Labov. To start off this understanding I will first define keywords in order for the reader to fully grasp the argument. Furthermore I will state the author's main claim and link them to the evidence Labov provides. In closing, I will show how these claims are linked together by giving my mapping of the interrelated parts, that as I understand, define the article’s overall structure. In the case here, I will be arguing that there are four strong ethnographic facts, one weak ethnographic fact, one general ethnographic explanation and one strong ethnographic observation. In this article, Labov is against the ‘deficit model’ used to

According to A.J. Ayer, the problem of free will is the result from the conflict of two different assumptions, which are men acting freely while being morally responsible for their actions, and that human behavior comes from causal laws. Ayer begins by attacking the

For the purposes of this essay it is important to establish what is meant by a valid and a sound in relation to arguments. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines valid and sound in respects of philosophical argument. A argument is

In William Lutz’s essay entitled “The World of Doublespeak,” from Christopher Ricks’s and Lenonard Micheal’s anthology State of the Language, Lutz examines the art of doublespeak. This essay is meant to enlighten people on examples and different uses of doublespeak and how organizations and others use it to mislead. Lutz begins by defining doublespeak as “language which pretends to communicate but doesn’t, language which makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant attractive, or at least tolerable” (278). Specifically, people who use doublespeak pretend to be conveying a certain message while in the real sense they are doing the opposite of that. The author gives specific examples of doublespeak that affect the

some more properties emerge. One of these can be identified as the simplicity of truth

BonJour manages to defend the claim that a priori justification is necessary in order to avoid a severe, indefensible skepticism and demonstrates that any argument against a priori justification would undermine itself. This dialectical argument demonstrates that a denial of a priori justification is not only unsatisfactory, but impossible for the sake or argumentation. An empiricist critic could only appeal to pragmatism while accepting skepticism or surmount the impossible task of empirical justification of inference. This dialectical argument is by far BonJour's

According to Susanne K. Langer in the essay “Language and Thought,” an essential difference between animals and humans is the way humans think in symbols and signs, instead of just solely relying on signs. Langer suggests that thinking in signs, which is something both humans and animals share in common, is a process that leads us to react instinctively to the physical presence of that sign. Signs are very much a direct cause to a particular effect. It seems that to learn a sign you simply must be conditioned to respond certain ways to a specific observation. Symbols, though, are exclusively human devices of language that provoke thoughts about a particular thing. The use of symbols has allowed humans to reach much more complex levels of thought,

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.

Hi all, today I will be presenting to you my speech, on the Fictional Novel Jasper Jones, pointing out key evident language devices that Craig Silvey used to highlight strong stereotypical moral values, and how the interrelate with our modern society. The fictional novel, Jasper Jones written by Craig Silvey employs various different literacy techniques to exemplify the stark contrast between the antagonist and protagonist within the text. This is clearly evident at various points throughout the text, with the thesis of the story that Craig Silvey has employed, being that the novel demonstrates the concept of façade verse reality, meaning the correlation between the expected text, in comparison with our sane reality. The two most profound situations, is undoubtedly the racial discrimination between, Jeffery Lu, and Warwick Trent.

In his book ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’, Descartes writes that all beliefs, even the most irresistible convictions, may not correspond to how the world really is; and this is something that defenders of the correspondence theory are arguably unable to dismiss. As a result, the coherence theory takes a different approach and argues that a proposition (truth-bearer) is true if it ‘fits’ or coheres with a specific set of beliefs (truth-maker). These beliefs may belong either to the individual (and include the laws of logic, for example), to human beings at the ultimate stage of historical development, or to a system of beliefs held by a God or the Absolute (Walker, 1989). So in the example where Billy believes that ‘dogs have five legs’, his claim can be assessed by considering if this statement coheres with a specific set of true beliefs. For instance, it may be commonly understood that dogs have four legs not five, that there has never been a dog with more than four legs, and that no one apart from Billy has ever claimed that dogs can have more than four legs. Thus, it follows that the key to determining whether Billy’s statement is true or false is “internal consistency and logical standards” (Dunwoody, 2009, p. 117).