Due to the strike that happened on the thursday of our lecture, but from the reading this is what I understood by the book and what may have been discussed in the lecture.
'LANGUAGE, TRUTH AND LOGIC' sounds like the start of an inspiring speach of influence, infact is the title of the book published by Alfred Jules Ayer in 1936.
The book brought together the ideas of the 'Vienna circle' and ideas about the English-speaking world. The 'Vienna Circle' was an association of philosphers who gathered at the University of Vienna in 1922. Those who were in the assoication had similar view points of philosophy, looking into logical positivism and the Circle had much influence on the 20th century.
The book also looks at the 'criterion of significance' or 'criterion of meaning'and looking into the the problems with philosophy. The 'Criterion of signficance' according to Paul Marhenke '..is a statement to the effect that a sentence is significant if it satisfies such and such conditions and it is meaningless if it does not satisfy the specified conditions'. In reference to the 'criterion of meaning' according to Ayer when looking at anlytic statements they are tautologies. A Tautology is a statement that is true, true by definitiona dn then true under any conditions. It is a repetition of the meaning of a statement and this is done by using different words or symbols.
By looking at statements, Ayer also talks about the synthetic statements which meaning deny something about the real world. The validity of a synthetic statement can not be established by the definition of the words or symbols. Ayer states that if a statement is expressed an empirical proposition then the validity of the proposition is established by verifiabilty.
With synthetic also need to look at propostions are statements that have conditions under which they be vertified. Statements have conditions under which their validity can be affirmed or denied.
Statements which are not meaningful are not expressed as propositions. Every verifiable proposition is meanigful even if it is either true or false. Every proposition asserts or denies something and therefore is either true or false.
According to Ayer truth is important and how it is identified. Truth as the criterion. By saying that a proposition is true is simply to assert it and to say what a proposition is...false is simple to assert contradictory proposition.
Ayer work is critical in the understanding of truth within statements. This identification helps in the discusion within understanding the english language.
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