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Ayer thinks that confusion about language can lead us into metaphysics. He uses this as an example of such a confusion:
{ 1 } - "We can only know the properties of a thing (that it's white, for example); so we can't know the thing itself -- the substance underlying these properties."
{ 2 } - "When we say 'Unicorns don't exist,' we must be talking about something; so unicorns are possible beings who don't have actuality."
{ 3 } - "Since we can speak about nothing, this nothing must exist; thus the nothingness is real."
{ 4 } - He uses all these examples.
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Ayer thinks that confusion about language can lead us into metaphysics. He uses this as an example of such a confusion:
{ 1 } - "We can only know the properties of a thing (that it's white, for example); so we can't know the thing itself -- the substance underlying these properties."
{ 2 } - "When we say 'Unicorns don't exist,' we must be talking about something; so unicorns are possible beings who don't have actuality."
{ 3 } - "Since we can speak about nothing, this nothing must exist; thus the nothingness is real."
{ 4 } - He uses all these examples.
To talk about a thing, we must use a noun or pronoun (like "chair" or "it") to refer to it. This is an accident of language. We can define the thing in terms of its empirical manifestations; there's no "mysterious substance" underneath these.
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Ayer thinks that confusion about language can lead us into metaphysics. He uses this as an example of such a confusion:
{ 1 } - "We can only know the properties of a thing (that it's white, for example); so we can't know the thing itself -- the substance underlying these properties."
{ 2 } - "When we say 'Unicorns don't exist,' we must be talking about something; so unicorns are possible beings who don't have actuality."
{ 3 } - "Since we can speak about nothing, this nothing must exist; thus the nothingness is real."
{ 4 } - He uses all these examples.
"Unicorns don't exist" simply denies that there are unicorns. It doesn't assert that there are possible beings who are unicorns but who lack actuality.
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Ayer thinks that confusion about language can lead us into metaphysics. He uses this as an example of such a confusion:
{ 1 } - "We can only know the properties of a thing (that it's white, for example); so we can't know the thing itself -- the substance underlying these properties."
{ 2 } - "When we say 'Unicorns don't exist,' we must be talking about something; so unicorns are possible beings who don't have actuality."
{ 3 } - "Since we can speak about nothing, this nothing must exist; thus the nothingness is real."
{ 4 } - He uses all these examples.
"Nothing" is a term we use to deny that something fits in a given category. So "Nothing is a unicorn" means "It's false that there are unicorns." So "nothing" is not the name of an entity at all -- let alone the name of a metaphysically mysterious entity.
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Ayer thinks that confusion about language can lead us into metaphysics. He uses this as an example of such a confusion:
{ 1 } - "We can only know the properties of a thing (that it's white, for example); so we can't know the thing itself -- the substance underlying these properties."
{ 2 } - "When we say 'Unicorns don't exist,' we must be talking about something; so unicorns are possible beings who don't have actuality."
{ 3 } - "Since we can speak about nothing, this nothing must exist; thus the nothingness is real."
{ 4 } - He uses all these examples.
They all show how we can use language analysis to attack metaphysics.
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