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Notes
“Negation,”Journal of Philosophy, 49:797–815 (1952).
“Negative Things,”Journal of Philosophy, 49:433–49 (1952).
See also G. Frege, “Negation,” inFrege Translations, edited by P. Geach and M. Black, pp. 125-26. It does not follow, however, that there is no absolute distinction between positive and negative facts, however difficult it might be to state the distinction, for the difficulty of distinguishing clearly between positive and negative statements might be due, as I believe it is, to peculiarities of language. “X is empty” and “X does not contain anything” formulate the same fact. Hence, Ayer seems to me wrong when he writes, “I do not know how a positive fact is to be defined except as that which is described by some affirmative statement” (p. 804).
Pp. 810-11. This presupposition has been regarded as obvious by many besides Ayer; cf., for example, H. W. B. Joseph,An Introduction to Logic, p. 172, and Gilbert Ryle, “Negation,”Aristotelian Society Proceedings, Supplement, 9:86, 87, 89 (1929). The only other authors I recall having denied it are J. N. Findlay,Meinong's Theory of Objects, pp. 49–50, and H. H. Price, “Negation,”Aristotelian Society Proceedings, Supplement, 9:97 (1929).
Ayer writes: “I know of no criterion for deciding whether something is a genuine predicate other than that there is a limited range of things to which it applies. And on this count being eulb is just as good a property as being blue” (p. 806).
From the fact that something is colorless one can, of course, infer that it is not green, not similar to red, etc., but one cannot infer any positive properties. This statement presupposes a real and obvious distinction between the properties a thing has and those that it lacks.
Some, perhaps Ayer, would say here that virtue, for example, is neither colored nor uncolored, just as it is neither heavy nor light, it not being the sort of thing that could be colored. But this is wrong. Heavy and light are contraries, both implying weight, so something might indeed lack both; but colored and uncolored are contradictories. Further, a statement to the effect that virtue is not the sort of thing that could be colored, clearly entails that it is not colored.
We can suppose a region of vacuum in the house, to avoid the objection that every portion of space there is occupied by something other than a horse, which would have to be altered to make room for one. And, of course, to say that something is other than a horse, is to say, negatively, that it is not a horse.
Cf. J. N. Findlay,op. cit., pp. 49–50. In some ways my house would be altered by containing a horse; for example, its present contents would assume hitherto absent relations to the horse. But no positive feature of the house now excludes a horse, in the way its yellowness, for example, excludes blueness. The falsity of the doctrine of internal relations is assumed, and with it a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties.
W. V. Quine has rightly pointed out to me that the complementaries in question here are “containing a horse” and “not containing a horse.” It is in order to avoid spelling this backwards that I use the shorter words. The point of the argument would be the same either way.
It is significant that Ayer cannot even describe, much less define, the “range” of a statement or predicate, without employing the notion of consistency (p. 808).
This confusion may result from his ambiguous use of the word “predicate,” sometimes to mean predicate words, i.e., names of predicates, and sometimes to mean the predicates thus named. If he means predicate word, then his statement that he knows “no criterion for deciding whether things have something in common other than that some predicate. applies to them” (p. 806), is clearly false, the word “red,” for instance, applying to things having nothing in common, like tomatoes and radicals. But if he means a predicate named by an unambiguous predicate word, his statement is vacuous.
Phaedo, concluding argument for immortality.
Ayer's argument is fallacious, even apart from the criticism here suggested. “Red” and “smooth,” for instance, are different in meaning, yet both can describe the same aspect of something without incompatibility.
The truth of the statement “red and blue are incompatible“ depends, certainly, on what we mean by “red” and “blue,” but it depends also on the nature of colors, just as the truth of “copper conducts electricity” depends on what we mean by “copper” and “electricity,” and also on the nature of metals. The first statement no more formulates a purely semantic fact than the second; the truth of neither was nor could be discovered through mere linguistic analysis.
Cf. Ayer's own statement, p. 811: “Just as it is true of any picture as a whole, so is it true of every section of a picture that ‘it is what it is and not another thing.’ It cannot be both what it is and something different as well.” Though this statement of irreducibly negative fact is appanded to the end of the argument cited, it seems to function as an unquestioned premise of that argument.
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Taylor, R. Ayer's analysis of negation. Philos Stud 4, 49–55 (1953). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02333196
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02333196