First Response to Ken Matheson Daniel Lightsey, Texas A&M University

First Response to Ken Matheson Daniel Lightsey, Texas A&M University

Ken Matheson’s “The Elimination of Metaphysics” analyzes the ideas of A.J. Ayer and Karl Popper that are discussed in their respective books Language, Truth and Logic and Logik der Forschung (The Logic of Scientific Discovery). Matheson focuses on Ayer’s work specifically, and scrutinizes Ayer’s demarcation criterion for what makes a statement meaningful/sensible and what makes a statement meaningless/senseless.

Ayer’s demarcation criterion for what makes a statement meaningful is whether or not that statement can be supported by empirical evidence, actual or hypothetical, that is available to us via sense experience. As Matheson notes, Ayer comes from the positivist tradition that was very prevalent in the early 19th century among philosophers, and his demarcation criterion for a meaningful statement is alike to the verification principle developed by the Vienna Circle (Uebel). What is particularly interesting about these criteria, which Matheson makes explicit in his paper, is that they are statements about meaningfulness, not simply truth or falsehood. The positivist says statements such as “God exists”, “murder is wrong”, and “beauty is valuable” are meaningless. It is one thing to claim the statements above are wrong, but it is entirely another thing to assert that one cannot meaningfully discuss such statements.

Now, prima facie, this demarcation criterion is absurd and self-contradictory as Matheson goes on to show in the final pages of his paper, and as he says, Ayer’s criterion really says “nothing at all”. I am fond of what the philosopher Del Ratzsch has to say about positivism’s finest quality, “[Positivism’s] one redeeming quality seems to be that it also destroys itself” (Ratzsch 38).

Positivism seems to arise from a firm commitment to the sciences due to there extraordinary predictions and results. But even here, positivism shoots its self in the foot. No one has had a sense-experience of an electron—they are theoretical entities —but it is accepted throughout the scientific community that electrons, and other point-like particles, exist. No doubt there are other examples in the sciences of postulated entities that have never been experienced (e.g. genes). One would have to be an anti-realist when it comes to much of contemporary science by adopting Ayer’s demarcation criterion for meaning, and thus science loses its luster.

The questions that arise from this paper are many, but specifically two come to mind. First, how did such an idea become so prevalent and wide-spread? Of course, this is perhaps more of a sociological question than a philosophical question, but I see no reason philosophy could not shed light on this question as well. Another, more prevalent question to Matheson’s paper, is whether or not metaphysical statements could be corroborated with the empirical evidence. Matheson’s paper ends with stating that Ayer’s criterion for demarcation “merely shows that metaphysical propositions are not empirically corroborated”. But why think that? It seems to me things such as metaphysical casual principles (causes precede their effects) are corroborated by the sciences. It could even further be true that scientific evidence for the nature of time could corroborate a specific metaphysical theory of time (say, the A-theory of time). Even metaphysical propositions about a mind or soul, could be corroborated with some empirical evidence making one theory more likely than another. It’s hard to imagine any one theory being verified by some empirical evidence, but corroboration is a completely different matter. Perhaps—in contrast with Ayer—one can corroborate metaphysical propositions with empirical evidence.

Ratzsch, Del. Philosophy of Science: The Natural Sciences in Christian Perspective. Illinois: InterVarsityPress,

1986.

Uebel, Thomas. "Vienna Circle." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Summer 2020 Edition, Edward N.

Zalta (ed.). URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vienna-circle/.