[lit-ideas] Ayer on Negative Facts
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 23:28:48 EST
In a message dated 1/2/2010 9:36:19 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
--- On Sat, 2/1/10, Torgeir Fjeld <torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Can a fact be known outside its
> awareness?
Typical Oxbridege answer:- Yes, if the fact has no awareness (including of
itself) and there is a subject which knows it.
---- I would distinguish, and this is my last post today, between a Cantab.
(poor) answer, and a truly Oxon. one; and Grice's generation are only Oxon
ones. He was born in 1913.
But before him, Ayer was born, in 1911. Ayer, who didn't know, really, the
first thing about philosophy (but he had 'class' and attended the All Souls
Meetings pre-War at Berlin's rooms) has a charming essay on
Negative Facts
"There is no higher mountain than the Everest"
is Ayer's example. This is, he dubs it, a 'negative' fact.
It is translatable to a positive (or, as I prefer, affirmative) fact:
The Mountain Everest is the highest mountain ever.
Another example:
My grandmother cannot play the electric guitar.
This is a negative fact (regarding my grandmother). A false one, too, since
she CAN play it, only she won't.
A better example
2 + 2 = 5
This is another 'negative' fact. A negative fact need not include a
'negative' number.
Another example:
"Snow is not green"
"Grass is not white"
These are negative facts.
Of course, they don't exist.
Neither do facts, as a matter of ... fact?
Cheers,
JL Speranza
"Nowwhere man, can you see me at all?"
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] Ayer on Negative Facts - jlsperanza
