Critical analysis of elimination of ethical propositions of A. J Ayer and Carnap with reference to Buddhist ethics

Abstract

In “Language truth and logic” A.J Ayer argues all the ethical statements are essentially meaningless and only expressions of emotive meaning and they are not based on empirical observation. All the statements are empirically or logically verifiable as having factual content are meaningful. The statements that are unable to verifiable as factual content are the expression of emotion and they are neither true nor false. So the normative statements are not essentially factual such as statement like “stealing money is wrong”. These kinds of statements are considered to be as ethical judgment or statement. The above statements are comprised with ethical words .These words do not express the literal meaning but expresses the emotive meanings which reinforce the emotions of the man to do only actions which considered to be good .Therefore according to A.J Ayer the ethical statements are meaningless. Carnp also stands in the similar notion on the ethical sentences. According to him philosophical investigations of what is good and what is evil, what is right to do and what is wrong to do, are pretended be factual investigations. The purpose of this philosophical or normative ethics is to state norms for human’s actions or judgment about moral values. For instance, the statement “do not kill” has grammatically the imperative forms and will therefore it does not consider as meaningful assertion. He moreover mentioned that someone might think that “If a person kills anybody,he will have feelings of remorse”. So,the sentence “killing is evil.”would be possible to verify through the remorse. But it is only emotional reactions of the person, so ethical statements are pseudo proportions. A.J Ayer and Carnap reject the normative ethics in order to the method of verification. Nevertheless their method of elimination of ethics can not be employed to reject the ethical statements made by the Buddha as its basis comprises with empirical content. The method adopted by the Buddha to verify the ethical statements is “inference by oneself” (attanan upamankatva). All the ethical statements made by the Buddha would be possible to verify through the above method such as very common statement for ethics is “killing is evil” can verify. Suppose, someone stabs you with purpose to kill you, but with the medical treatments you get cure. Now you have an experience on harmfulness as you experience the suffering .Then you should infer that if such an action is harmful to me, it is common to all other beings. In this way one can verify the meaningfulness of an ethical statement. Therefore, the method adopted by A.J Ayer and Carnap to eliminate the ethical statements as meaningless would not be possible to employed for the rejection of Buddhists ethics.