A 26-year-old argued that most of philosophy's biggest questions are meaningless

In 1936, A.J. Ayer proposed the verification principle: a statement only means something if it's true by definition or can, in principle, be checked against experience. Claims about God, the soul, or objective moral value fit neither category, so Ayer dismissed them as literally meaningless rather than simply unproven — a position that made logical positivism the terror of mid-century metaphysics.

— A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic — Gollancz, 1936
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