What is pseudo proposition?

A.J. Ayer, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

A.J. Ayer answers

A pseudo-proposition is a form of words that has the grammatical appearance of a genuine assertion but lacks the cognitive content that would make it one. The test is straightforward. We ask, in any given case, what observations would lead us to answer the question the sentence appears to raise — one way or the other. If none can be discovered, we must conclude that the sentence does not express a genuine question, however strongly its grammatical form suggests otherwise.¹

A sentence is literally meaningful if and only if it is either analytic — true or false in virtue of the meanings of its terms — or empirically verifiable in principle, meaning that some possible observation would count for or against it. Statements satisfying neither condition are not false; they are simply without cognitive content. Consider the Bradley remark I used as an example in Language, Truth and Logic: "the Absolute enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution and progress." One cannot conceive of any observation that would determine whether the Absolute did or did not enter into evolution and progress.²

The sentence is not a false claim about the world; it is no claim at all. The author, if pressed, would have to admit that his words were not intended to express anything empirically verifiable — in which case, the utterance has no literal significance whatever.² There are two distinct ways a pseudo-proposition can arise. The first is through the use of words that are simply devoid of meaning — terms for which no criteria of application are specified.³

Most of the characteristic vocabulary of metaphysics falls here: "the Absolute," "the Unconditioned," "being-in-itself," "the Infinite," "emanation" — these are not obscure names for real things; they are expressions without empirical truth-conditions, and the metaphysician who insists he "means something" by them is pointing only to associated images and feelings, which do not constitute meaning.⁴

The second way is through combining meaningful words in an arrangement that produces neither an analytic statement nor an empirical one — syntactically well-formed, semantically empty.⁵ It is worth noting that the verdict of meaninglessness falls not only on speculative metaphysics but equally on normative ethics and aesthetics, insofar as these claim to assert objective values.⁶

Either empirical criteria are supplied for terms like "good" and "beautiful," in which case the statement becomes a factual judgment rather than a value judgment, or no such criteria are supplied, in which case the statement is a pseudo-proposition. There is no third option.⁶ One technical difficulty I acknowledged in the Introduction to the second edition concerns the formulation of the principle itself.

If a sentence is literally meaningless, it does not express a proposition; yet to say it fails verification seems to imply there is something it expresses that fails.⁷ The device of speaking of "putative propositions" and what a sentence "purports to express" was my attempt to navigate this, though I conceded the device is not entirely satisfactory.⁷

The difficulty is real but does not undermine the criterion; it is a problem about how to state the principle cleanly, not about whether the distinction between genuine assertion and pseudo-proposition is one we can and must draw.

Sources

1. We enquire in every case what observations would lead us to answer the question, one way or the other; and, if none can be discovered, we must conclude that the sentence under consideration does not, as far as we are concerned, express a genuine question, however strongly its grammatical appearance may suggest that it does.

   Language, Truth and Logic, pp. 35–36

2. such a metaphysical pseudo-proposition as 'the Absolute enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution and progress,' is not even in principle verifiable... one cannot conceive of any observation which would enable one to determine whether the Absolute did, or did not, enter into evolution and progress.

   Language, Truth and Logic, pp. 35–36

3. metaphysics... is compelled to employ words for which no criteria of application are specified and which are therefore devoid of meaning, or else to combine meaningful words in such a way that neither an analytic (or contradictory) statement nor an empirical statement is produced. In either case pseudo-statements are the inevitable product.

   Logical Positivism, pp. 88–89

4. The metaphysician tells us that empirical truth-conditions cannot be specified; if he adds that, nevertheless he 'means' something, we know that this is merely an allusion to associated images and feelings which, however, do not bestow a meaning on the word.

   Logical Positivism, p. 79

5. There is a second kind of pseudo-statement. They consist of meaningful words, but the words are put together in such a way that nevertheless no meaning results.

   Logical Positivism, pp. 88–89

6. Either empirical criteria are indicated for the use of 'good' and 'beautiful' and the rest of the predicates that are employed in the normative sciences, or they are not. In the first case, a statement containing such a predicate turns into a factual judgment, but not a value judgment; in the second case, it becomes a pseudo-statement.

   Logical Positivism, pp. 88–89

7. in the case where the 'putative proposition' is neither analytic nor empirically verifiable, there would, according to this way of speaking, appear to be nothing that the sentence in question could properly be said to express. But if a sentence expresses nothing there seems to be a contradiction in saying that what it expresses is empirically unverifiable.

   Language, Truth and Logic, p. 5