A.J. Ayer is truly a positivist man! There is no doubt about it, either in practice or in his philosophy. He was considered as the second David Hume, in his approach to empirical reality. As a logical positivist, he attacked metaphysics as nothing and useless, since it cannot be verified by the sense experience.

For him, man begins to know from experience (not the existentialist way of defining 'experience'), and it is in experience he would also end. For why does he proceed to go further and beyond if what he perceive is only the sense data. It would be an absurdity, according to him, for man go beyond the limits of experience, whereas, beyond the senses there is nothing to be pondered upon or to be known about.

Going further, he stated that "a proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of term, if and only if, its truth could be established in experience. "And thereby he went to say that metaphysics is a disease that needs to be cured.

I think, against Ayer’s philosophy, I see that there is something which is not right for him to think that way. In my own personal evaluation, I would say that he is biased in the point of view about reality. For if man ought to end his inquiry in the state of verifiability, then why do many philosophers were able to reach that point of contemplating the absolute or the reality beyond perception?

Why do philosophers tend to transcend experience, if beyond its limits, there is nothing to be of use? Could it be possible that he was just trying to deny the reality outside perception because he himself cannot verify it? In that case he was really a consistent positivist through by denying metaphysics which he cannot verify.

I said a while ago, that he was biased in his perception because he only focused his philosophy on the verifiability of the proposition. Verification has to do with the things established in experience. In this part, I may say he is begging the question, for he cannot verify things which are metaphysical, through by establishing them in experience. Experience is different from transcendental reality. And what is transcendental is really distinct from what is experiential.

Now on the allegation of Ayer that metaphysics is useless, I would not like to assert that he is completely wrong. Rather, I would say that it has something a grain of truth. There are things which is really a fruit of experience and in order to prove its genuiness, it must undergo the process of verification. But when this fact is taken absolutely such that anything which cannot be verified is nothing, then it has already served its purpose. There are things which cannot be verified in experience but we hold it as true universally.

When a man fulfills his duty faithfully, we call that man responsible. When we appreciate the looks of a person, it is an expression of his/her beauty. When people work and cooperate in their project, we say they are united in one heart and one mind.

Considering these details above, we see a man doing his duty. Or, we accept that this person has a good appearance. Or these people work together. With verification alone, what we would see in these examples are the above mentioned facts. But why do these men act this way? The answer of these cannot be verified, because they are out of experience. Yet, could we not say that the first man is good, the second is beautiful, and the third group of men are united in mind and heart? Good, beauty, and unity cannot be verified by experience, only their expressions do. Is it really an absurdity for us to accept that behind every experiential reality there is a transcendental value behind them?

For if man would really perceive reality just as the positivists do, there is no reason for us to believe that we are humans. We are no better than animals who are only aware of what is outside them. Beyond that , they would not anymore bother on transcendental realities such as God, love, care, sacrifice, beauty, unity, etc. Moreover, I am sure with a strong verification that Ayer himself would not accept if I would say that he is no better than animals. He would deny that! But how could he verified that he is superior than animals? He cannot do that for sure, because it is already the matter of metaphysics, not experience. So if he cannot verify in experience, he is no human being who always use the intellect to divulge into the beyond experiential.

With regards to this problem, positivist people are actually miserable persons. They try to suppress what is very real in their nature. These people try to explain everything as if they could do it by themselves. They have an exaggerated belief in themselves that what they cannot explain is just because in reality it is nothing. These people need the grace of God to accept their limitations and to believe that not everything is explainable by human perception.

Anthony Wilbert S. Dianon, SDB