A. J. Ayer (1910–1989)

British philosopher, the principal English-language exponent of logical positivism in the 1940s–60s. Author of Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) — the foundational English-language statement of Vienna-Circle positivism and verificationism. Visiting professor at New York University 1948–49 (overlapping with MP's March 1949 New York visit). January 1951 Paris encounter with MP at the Collège philosophique (under Wahl's auspices). The MP-Ayer exchange on the cogito-as-proposition is recorded in MP's "La signification de l'existentialisme français" notes (Inédits II pp. 403–407) and constitutes MP's first sustained dialogue with analytic philosophy.

Key Points

  • Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) — Vienna Circle / verificationism for an English audience. Includes the critique of the cogito as a complicated proposition on which MP responds in 1951.
  • The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940) — the second main pre-MP-encounter work.
  • Visiting professor at NYU 1948–49 (Ayer was MP's possible auditor at Columbia for "Science and Philosophy" March 1949, but unconfirmed).
  • January 1951 Collège philosophique conferences: "L'idée de vérité et la logique contemporaine" (10 January) and "La philosophie contemporaine en Grande Bretagne" (12 January, Sorbonne). MP meets Ayer in a Paris café with Wahl and others (per Andreas Vrahimis's reconstruction).
  • Long-term Oxford colleague of Gilbert Ryle (Ayer's mentor); both are MP's principal analytic-philosophical interlocutors. MP debates Ryle at the Royaumont 1958 colloquium (8th Royaumont Decade).
  • Ayer's later report on the encounter (Part of My Life, 1977): "We did indeed attempt it [find some common ground for philosophical discussion] on several occasions, but we never got very far before we began to wrangle over some point of principle, on which neither of us would yield. Since these arguments tended to become acrimonious, we tacitly agreed to drop them and meet on a pure social level."

Role in This Wiki

The cogito-as-proposition dispute

Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) treats the cogito as a complicated, problematic proposition:

"He thought he had found such a proposition in 'cogito,' which must not here be understood in its ordinary sense of 'I think,' but rather as meaning 'there is a thought now.' In fact he was wrong, because 'non cogito' would be self-contradictory only if it negated itself: and this no significant proposition can do."

MP's response (Inédits II p. 404):

"Le Cogito: certitude de l'existence pour soi avant les mots et pour que les mots aient un sens. — Ayer: proposition compliquée, problématique."

The dispute is over the locus of meaning: for Ayer, "il n'y a de sens que le sens défini" — but MP asks: "Mais par quel langage?" The cogito for MP is the certitude pré-verbale that founds the meaning of words rather than being founded by them. The Mexico III formulation of the same anti-positivism is: "Antithèse avec positivisme logique: pour trouver sens à quelque chose, il faut que ce quelque chose entre dans définitions de notre langage. Penser hors de sa situation. Le cogito ne veut rien dire. Le sens n'est que sens thématisé ou possédé. Bonne conscience philosophique. Positivisme phénoménologique. Ciel et terre" (Mexico III p. 342).

The "signification" axis

Both philosophers agree that the central question is the notion of signification. MP retrospectively writes to Jacques Garelli (1955): "Autant que je vois (je connais mal le logical positivism), vous avez entièrement raison de penser que le centre de la question est la notion de 'signification.'" The MP-Ayer dispute is thus located — even if not resolved — at the right level: what does meaning mean? Ayer's answer: only in terms of a defined language. MP's answer: only against the background of pre-linguistic perceptual evidence.

The 1958 Royaumont continuation

The MP-Ryle debate at Royaumont 1958 is the Anglo-French continuation of the MP-Ayer dispute. Ryle (Ayer's mentor) and MP debate the question of philosophical method — Ryle's ordinary-language analysis vs MP's phenomenology. The 1949–51 MP-Ayer encounter is the structural origin of this longer Anglo-French dialogue.

The "metamorphosis-of-thought" thesis

The MP-Ayer dispute is structurally a metamorphosis of MP's thought: MP's late-1940s vocabulary of signification (Mexico III, Métaphysique du langage course, La Prose du monde 1950–51, RULL 1953) develops partly in dialogue with the analytic conception of meaning. The dispute is not merely polemical: Ayer's challenge forces MP to thematize what was implicit in PhP (1945) — the non-thetic, pre-linguistic, pre-conceptual founding of language by perception. Cf ny-science-philosophy-as-earliest-mp-english-statement (candidate).

Connections

  • parallel encounter with Ryle at Royaumont 1958 — the same dispute continued in person.
  • encountered at Wahl's Collège philosophique January 1951 — the institutional matrix of MP's late-1940s engagement with analytic philosophy.
  • target of MP's anti-positivist articulations in Mexico III (March 1949) and "La signification de l'existentialisme français" (probably 1951).
  • Anglo-American counterpart to Wittgenstein in MP's Bibliothèque de philosophie editorial role (where MP and Sartre considered including the Tractatus "despite our little sympathy for that philosophical tendency").

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-2022-inedits-ii-1947-1949 — the MP-Ayer encounter documented in "La signification de l'existentialisme français" (pp. 403–407); editorial introduction (pp. 393–397) reconstructs the encounter context. The cogito-as-proposition dispute is the central exchange.
  • Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) — Ayer's foundational work, source of the cogito critique.
  • The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940) — Ayer's second major pre-1949 work.
  • A. Vrahimis, Encounters between Analytic and Continental Philosophy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) — reconstructs the January 1951 Paris encounter.