On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 08:02:02 -0400 "Chris Doss" <itschris13 at hotmail.com>
writes:
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> >Several people have told me tat Ayer renounced verificationism near
> the end
> >of his life.
I am not sure that Ayer ever really renounced his verificationism. He was long aware of the difficulties of developing an airtight formulation of the verification principle of meaning, since almost every proposed formulation upon examination turned out to either exclude too much (for example condemning accepted areas of science as metaphysical nonsense) or excluding too little. However, as far as I know he always remained hopeful that someday, somebody might hit upon an adequate formulation.
> >
> >-- Luke
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> Didn't he have a classical near-death experience or something?
He had one about a year before he finally kicked off this mortal coil for good. He wrote about it in The Observer, which occasioned much controversy over whether Ayer had, as a result of this experience, come to question his atheism and his rejection of belief in immortality. However, it became clear that upon reflection Ayer did not think that there was anything about this experience that required him to renounce his atheism or his disbelief in immortality. In other words his considered opinion seems to have been that it was a fascinating hallucination. And some of the readers of his original Observer piece on it seemed not to have grapsed that he was writing about it in a somewhat tongue in cheek manner anyway.
Jim F.
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