#verificationism

▤ Reading group: A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936), chapters 1, 2, 4 and 6

Every year a student asks me whether mathematics "says anything about the world". Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic gives the boldest answer I know (no, it is all tautology) and the boldest dismissal of metaphysics. He was in his mid-twenties when he…