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Ayer claims that to say that a certain material object exists is to say that

    { 1 } - God has perceptions of the object.
    { 2 } - certain sensations are obtainable.
    { 3 } - there's an independently existing "substance" that underlies the perceived qualities.

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1 is wrong. Please try again.

Ayer claims that to say that a certain material object exists is to say that

This was Berkeley's view, but Ayer regards talk about God as metaphysical nonsense.

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2 is correct!

Ayer claims that to say that a certain material object exists is to say that

    { 1 } - God has perceptions of the object.
    { 2 } - certain sensations are obtainable.
    { 3 } - there's an independently existing "substance" that underlies the perceived qualities.

This is a linguistic claim. "This material object exists" is logically equivalent to a complex claim about what sensations are obtainable under what conditions.

We can only verify the existence of material objects by referring to sensations. So it must be possible to define material objects in terms of sensations.

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3 is wrong. Please try again.

Ayer claims that to say that a certain material object exists is to say that

    { 1 } - God has perceptions of the object.
    { 2 } - certain sensations are obtainable.
    { 3 } - there's an independently existing "substance" that underlies the perceived qualities.

Ayer regards this as metaphysical nonsense. We're led to this nonsense by the fact that talking about a thing requires that we 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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