Quote #2

If now I:say 'Stealing money is wrong,' I produce a sentence which has no factual meaning - that is, expresses no proposition which can be either true or false. It is as if I had written 'Stealing money!!' - where the shape and thickness of the exclamation marks show, by a suitable convention, that a special sort of moral disapproval is the feeling which is being expressed.

More from Alfred Ayer

  1. The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability. We say that a sentence…
  2. No moral system can rest solely on authority.
  3. There never comes a point where a theory can be said to be true. The most that one can claim for any theory is that it has shared the succe…
  4. It seems that I have spent my entire time trying to make life more rational and that it was all wasted effort.

All Alfred Ayer quotes