Review

Author(s): Charles A. Baylis

Review by: Charles A. Baylis
Source: The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Mar., 1955), pp. 58-59
Published by: Association for Symbolic Logic
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2268054
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 58 REVIEWS

in length. There follows a subject index, which occupies 1 12 pages of small type, but
does not claim to be exhaustive; and finally the complete tables of contents of the
volumes, in chronological order, from 1887 to 1953. Many of the papers are within
the field of the JOURNAL, and many more border upon this field. ALONZO CHURCH

A. J. AYER. Truth. Revue international de philosophie, vol. 7 (1953),

pp. 183-200.
In this study of some questions concerning the concept of truth, the author adopts
the semantical criterion that "To speak of a sentence ... as true is tantamount to
asserting it, and to speak of it as false is tantamount to denying it." He correctly
points out that this criterion does not make the term 'true' superfluous, for it fails
to permit its elimination from such contexts as 'all the statements made by so-and-so
are true.' In a brief subsequent discussion of Tarski's theory of truth, however, Ayer
seems mistakenly to suggest that even an explicit definition, in the manner specified
by that theory, of the term 'true' (for the sentences of some particular language) does
not make possible its elimination from all contexts in which it may occur (p. 193). -
In consideration of the semantical paradoxes, the author advocates a general rule to
the effect that the terms 'true' and 'false' may be applied only to sentences that "refer
to something which is completely statable without the use of the predicates 'true'
and 'false'." Tarski's and Carnap's relegation of those predicates to the meta-language
is viewed as the result of "following out this rule"; but it is not made clear 'that the
rule as stated is too vague to be adequate. - The author then argues plausibly that the
dissatisfaction of certain philosophers with the semantical conception of truth springs
from the fact that they are seeking, not an analysis of truth, but a criterion of validity.
He outlines, in a manner akin to his previous writings, a characterization of validity for
"a priori" and for "empirical" propositions, and he concludes with some suggestive
comments to the effect that the so-called correspondence theory of truth is either
trivial or mistaken. CARL G. HEMPEL

A. J. AYER. Negation. The journal of philosophy, vol. 49 (1952), pp. 797-815.

Ayer first notes the ancient point that every deductive sentence containing a negative
term, such as "no" or "not" is equivalent to a sentence devoid of these terms. "Mt.
Everest is the highest mountain in the world" is equivalent to "There is no mountain in
the world which is as high as Mt. Everest." "This tie is not blue" is equivalent to
"This tie is non-blue." If such expressions as "non-blue" seem negative we can construct
a name for the logical complement of blue in the class of colors, say "eulb." Instead
of dividing all possible colors into seven kinds or forty-nine kinds, we can divide them
into two subclasses, those which are blue and those which are eulb.
Next Ayer urges that equivalent sentences like these make the same statement,
have the same meaning, because the same fact would make them true. The traditionally
claimed absolute distinction between affirmative and negative statements thus
disappears.
Ayer accepts, as far as it goes, Quine's statement that "the negation of a true state-
ment is false; the negation of a false statement is true," but notes that it does not
help us to delimit a class of negative statements.
He proposes to say of two statements which are the negations of each other that
the more specific one is affirmative, the less specific one negative. Thus "This is blue"
is affirmative, and "This is eulb" is negative. This account he urges conforms fairly
well with ordinary usage but does leave us certain anomalies. E.g., the statement
that an object is colored will have to count as negative since it is less specific than the
statement that it is colorless. Again, in the case of certain complementary statements
neither seems to be more specific than the other. E.g., "Mt. Everest is the highest

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 REVIEWS 59

mountain in the world" and "Mt. Everest is not the highest mountain in the world"
seem to have the same degree of specificity. But in general, Ayer urges we judge that
the distinction in terms of specificity coincides with our feeling that reality is somehow
positive or affirmative. For "any information which is provided by a less specific
statement will always be included in the information provided by some more specific
statement." CHARLES A. BAYLIS

WILLIAM GERBER. Note on Ayer's concept of negation. Ibid., vol. 50 (1953), pp. 556
-558.
To avoid the anomalies of Ayer's account of negation in terms of specificity, Gerber
urges that we modify Quine's account in terms of contradictories by adding the notion
of context. Thus "This liquid is colorless" is negative in the context of "This liquid has
color" or "This liquid is not colorless," and affirmative in its own context. This
account he admits has its own anomalies.
Ayer seems to have taken direct account of this sort of proposal in his original
article. He urges that to assert one of a pair of contradictory statements it is not at all
necessary that its contradictory be first considered. CHARLES A. BAYLIS

RICHARD TAYLOR. Ayer's analysis of negation. Philosophical studies, vol. 4

(1953), pp. 49-55.

Ayer's account, Taylor urges suffers from two difficulties:
(1) It fails to account for mere lacks. Some things which are not blue are so not
because they have some other color quality such as eulb but because they lack all
color. This is true of strictly colorless objects, of numbers, of universals, and so on.
Even if we invent a word "deroloc" for "not colored," to say of anything that it is
colorless or deroloc, Taylor argues, is to say that it lacks a certain positive characteristic
that it is not characterized by any color. From the statement that something is deroloc
'"nothing of a positive nature seems inferable."
(2) Incompatibility, which is fundamental to Ayer's account in terms of comple-
mentary predicates, requires negation for its definition. Ayer's attempt to avoid this
difficulty, by saying that incompatibility is semantic, Taylor finds unsatisfactory. For
the reason there cannot be a round red blue square substance is due to the incom-
patibility of the colors named by "red" and "blue" and the incompatibility of the
shapes named by "round" and "square" and not to the names themselves.
CHARLES A. BAYLIS

ROMANE CLARK. More on negation. Ibid., pp. 81-87.

Clark thinks that Ayer's account can be amended to take care of the difficulty that
Taylor raises about lacks or absences. He thinks it not only logically but psychologically
possible to extend the "eulb" and "deroloc" technique so that for every determinate
property there must be a complementary property which will exhaust the range of the
determinable. Each determinable in its turn must have a complement such that the
two complementary determinables exhaust a higher range and so on. But this commits
us to an infinite hierarchy solely to escape negative facts. Isn't this, he asks, too high
a premium for the insurance provided?
The main difficulty with Ayer's account, however, Clark finds, lies elsewhere. If
Ayer thinks he has eliminated denials, he is mistaken. Clark agrees with Taylor, that
even with all the complementaries Ayer's view calls for, it still requires a denial to
state that nothing can have at once two properties which are mutually complementary.
It can not be both blue and eulb. Even to say that it must have one or the other
requires the exclusive sense of "or," and thus lets denial into our discourse. On the
other hand, if Ayer is maintaining only that the equivalence of denials to less specific
statements, while it does not obviate all need for denials helps to explain their nature,

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