ABSTRACT
Most people talk and write nonsense some of the time; and some people talk and write nonsense all of the time. But it can be difficult to detect precisely who is talking and writing nonsense when. In Language, Truth and Logic Ayer presents what he believes to be an infallible nonsense detector, a two-pronged test for meaningfulness which he calls the Verification Principle. With this test he demonstrates that a huge swathe of philosophical writing doesn’t deserve to be called philosophy at all, since it is simply nonsensical. He suggests that we set it aside and get on with the real business of philosophy, which is to clarify the meaning of concepts. The subject that is left after he has wielded his Verification Principle is very much slimmer than philosophy as traditionally conceived: there is no place for metaphysics, for example.
