Ayer's Near-Death experience

Society Religion & Philosophy
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I might be wrong here, but I’m pretty sure we’re talking about the Ayer behind logical positivism. Ayer brought logical positivism to England having experienced the Vienna Circle (where logical poitivism was taking root and would soon deal a nice blow to philosophy in general)…

Just some rough background: Logical positivism is rooted in the principle that in order to be able to establish a truth value for a statement (i.e. is the statement true or is it false), one must be able to establish a set of observations that could allow us to verify the statement. This was to play a major part in science and in the scientific method (I dont know if scientific method was already established when logical positivism came up and which way the influence went)…

So for example, if you want to know if the chair in the next room is made of wood, the statement

“The chair in the adjacent room to this one is made of wood”

is verifiable. That is, I could come up with a set of observations that would allow me to verify the statement. Set of observations in this case would be: walking over to the next room and looking in to see if the table is made of wood or not. Maybe knocking on the table to make sure its real wood. Maybe take a sample of it and run some chemical analysis to make sure its wood.

Well anyway, what I found interesting about Ayer was his Near-Death experience. You see, Ayer used this theory of verification as a way to prove that we can never know if God exists. Because the statement “God exists” is not verifiable (whether its just that maybe He exists, and we can’t verify it … or if because we can’t verify he exists, then he DOES NOT exist…I’m not sure how the argument goes…)

Khair, Ayer was an atheist.

In Near-Death experiences, some report a white light. Some report a red-light. The red-light is unpleasant and folks who have seen it are shaken up by it.

Ayer had a Near-Death experience in which he saw red-light, and he came out of it claiming that he had seen it, and that he sure hoped there was no afterlife because experiencing the red light was torture.

shrugs Just something to think about.

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Re: Ayer's Near-Death experience

This probably means like jack-crap to most of you, doesn't it?

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Re: Ayer's Near-Death experience

he wasnt an atheist when he died.

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Re: Ayer's Near-Death experience

Really?

I wonder if I'm thinking of the same Ayer then!

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Re: Ayer's Near-Death experience

I think so yes :D
The Ayer I am talking about was an Atheist aswell
he had a near death-experience, and became a believer. But he kept it to himself, to protect all his work If he told the world about his new vision, all his 30-40 years of work would go down the drain
Atleast thats what I read about him...

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Re: Ayer’s Near-Death experience

uh didnt want to be a pain in ur a$$ but how did the chair transform itself into a table.. can logical positivism explain this?? :confused:

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Re: Ayer’s Near-Death experience

:blush: my mistake.

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Re: Ayer’s Near-Death experience

so what does Ayar’s near-death experience have to do with his logical positivism? I fail to see the connection :konfused:

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Re: Ayer's Near-Death experience

It was just to give some background for anyone who doesn't know what he was all about. Also, his theory was used to attempt to claim that the statement "God exists" is unverifiable and thus nonsense.