Talk:Logical positivism

Old talk

(Because this talk page was becoming difficult to read, I made some minor edits: I moved unanswered questions and comments about remaining deficiencies in the article to the top, formatted conversations so as to make the conversation structure clear, and deleted one unattributed, off-topic comment.)

We need to rethink the scope of this article. Should it discuss the verifiability theory of meaning in depth? I think that it shouldn't, because there is already a page for a treatment of that subject. Should it discuss criteria of meaning in general? I think that it shouldn't, and that an article with that title would be useful as a place for much of the material that is here. What is difficult for me to understand, and what I think should be the subject matter of this article, is what logical positivism is.

Logical positivism is a theory holding that scientific rigor should be applied to philosophy. (from the first sentence) Is it the only such theory? Is there more than one way to understand its premises? What is the history of people's understandings of what logical positivism is? What is the origin of the term "positivism" - what does the word for nonnegative, nonzero numbers have to do with scientific rigor?

An important tenet of logical positivism is the verifiability criterion of meaning, which implies that matters of fact and relations of ideas are the only meaningful statements. (from the the third sentence) Is it the only tenet? And so forth - I ought to go to sleep.

Anyway, I think that this article should treat the meaning and usage of the term "logical positivism", and the history of the logical positivist movement, with links to relavent philosophy.

-- Jrn 05:33, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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This is a start, but logical positivism was an entire philosophical movement, not just a theory of cognitive significance. This--"only statements about empirical observations are meaningful, effectively asserting that all metaphysical statements are meaningless"--appears to be an attempt at formulating the verifiability theory of meaning, which was essential to the Vienna Circle's thinking, but does not exhaust what logical positivism was about. Maybe you could do some more research? The topic is eminently researchable--many books have been written about it. --LMS

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To follow up on LMS's comments, it should be noted that Otto Neurath (and to a lesser extent Rudolf Carnap envisioned logical positivism as having wide sweeping implications not just for logic and the philosophy of science but also for education, the arts, and politics. The ambitions that Neurath and Carnap had for this movement are apparent in their manifesto, "The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle." Neurath, in particular, attempted to link logical positivism with other cultural movements like the Bauhaus movement in Germany, and with the socialist movement in politics (Neurath considered himself to be a Marxist). One of the most intriguing aspects of the history of logical positivism is how these broader aspects of the philosophy were generally lost during its reception into British and American philosophy.

Jim F.

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This article needs either a discussion of "positivism" in general (starting from Comte) or a link to a separate article on positivism, SR

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Michael Polanyi seems to be another opponent of positivism. I'm studying his book. Anyone else interested in discussing Polanyi's rejection of positivism? <>< tbc

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Logical positivism asserts that only statements about empirical observations are meaningful, effectively asserting that all metaphysical statements are meaningless.

I copied the sentence above to use in the pseudo-science article. I received this feedback from another forum: "[You] tacitly imply that non-empirical statements are equivalent to metaphysical statements. The difficulty with the LP criterion confronts us long before we consider traditionally metaphysical questions. Most of mathematics and virtually all of the humanities are problematic. History is curiously problematic because of the the "repeatability" issue - an apparently apriori standard of what is accepted as "empirical". And finally since science itself embodies its own "scientific metaphysics", the criterion was self-defeating." --Chris

Positivism and Imperatives/Questions?

Questions and imperatives don't seem to meet the positivistic criterion for "meaningfulness". Would positivists thus say that something like "go to your room!" is "meaningless"? If so, does this imply we should stop issuing commands and asking questions? --Ryguasu 01:30, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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I seem to remember that Richard_Swinburne says in The Coherence of Theism that "The toys in the cupboard come to life and dance when they are not being observed" is a meaningful statement which is at the same time impossible to falsify, under verifiability. Am I right, and if so, does this merit inclusion under Criticisms? (I'm new here, and still working this all out; your help is appreciated) --Shikasta 22:22, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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From an earlier version of this page:

Logical positivism asserts that only statements about empirical observations are meaningful, effectively asserting that all metaphysical statements are meaningless.

Unfortunately, this fundamental tenet of logical positivism belongs to the family of statements that it asserts to be meaningless. As a result, the entire edifice of logical positivism vanishes in a puff of logic.

This insight appears not to have occurred to the logical positivist school of philosophers.

Although this may have been stated in an amusing way, and perhaps the language needs toning down, I assert that as:

1. The first sentence quoted is an accurate statement of the fundamental tenet of logical positivism
2. It is a metaphysical statement of the kind that it states are meaningless

the text quoted is a valid comment, (as well as being a bad joke).

Note that none of the above is an attack on Popper's valid (and related) idea of falsifiability which has no such problems

-- The Anome

As far as I remember logical positivist philosophy, this is "statement about language" or something like that,

and such statements fall into special category in logical positivism. For example all math falls into this category: it's not empirical, but positivists didn't reject it. --Taw

I have restored the observations quoted, but this time with language toned down, your comment merged, and an attempt at NPOV. Is this more acceptable?

-- The Anome

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Under this view, statements such as "God exists" or "Pegasus is a winged horse" are examples of meaningless, metaphysical nonsense that are neither true nor false, and thus should not be believed.

Isn't "Pegasus is a winged horse" true by definition? --Camembert

Analytic statements relying on a metaphysical term are also meaningless. I think a logical positivist would say that the statement "Pegasus is a winged horse" presupposes that "Pegasus exists" in some metaphysical sense and that the conjunct of these two statements is meaningless. Suppose we had these statements in the article instead: "Pegasus exists" and "God is an omnnipotent being". The later could also be said to be analytic, but you'd be hard pressed to get a LP to agree that the statement is meaningful. The current article doesn't explain it this way though.

Response by Jod:

(1)The logical positivists were well aware of Russell's theory of descriptions. "Pegasus is a winged horse" would be analyzed as "There is exactly one thing x such that x is a horse, x has wings, and x is called "Pegasus."" This would be false, not meaningless, because the existence and properties of horses is subject to empirical investigation.

(2) The claim that Popper's falsifiability criterion "supplanted" the positivist criterion, and is not subject to the same problems, is both highly conentious amd, at least in part, false. In a strictly logical sense Popper's criterion is just as bad as verifiability. Verifiability cannot account for positive universal or negative existential claims; falsifiability cannot account for positive existential or negative universal claims. Very few contemporary theorists of science think Popper's can simply be taken as a replacement; the consensus is more along the lines of "things are just more complicated than that." In the light of Quine's work, Kuhn's work, and others, it is importantto recognize that economy of theory and the "inertia" of one's present beliefs can itself dictate which observations are "worth" taking seriously.

The analytic-synthetic distinction

It seems to me that the statement regarding analytic statements in the first paragraph of the Introduction...

"...and analytic truth, statements which are true or false by definition, and so are also meaningful."

...misstates the LP position regarding analytic statements. The logical positivists viewed analytic statements to be true, but meaningless truths; empty of factual content. Analytic statements are empty similarly to how tautologies are empty. Mathematics fall under the class of analytic statements to the Logical Positivists as well. We can use synthetic claims to describe the world using mathematical language (e.g. "There are five apples on the table.") but mathematic proofs, etc. are analytic and therefore empty of meaning.

I hope I haven't overlooked something that has already been covered or a crucial statement in the article itself that would immediately clear up my concern. In any event, I thought I should mention it.

Was Mao a logical positivist or influenced by them?

Logical positivists criticize "metaphysicians" in a similar way to Mao Zedong. Is there some overlap there? Was Mao influenced by the Vienna circle at all? Mao wrote his "On Contradiction" in 1937, just a year after the Vienna Circle stopped regularly meeting. Or was there perhaps just something in the general discourse of intellectuals at that time in terms of "metaphysics"?

Clearly Mao's work isn't the same as the verificationism of logical positivists but I perceive a similar sort of hewing to material reality in opposition to abstraction/rationalism/idealism. AslanFrench (talk) 01:06, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Early mistake?

In the Observation/theory gap section it says:

Early, most logical positivists proposed that all knowledge is based on...

Was this meant to be: "Early on, most logical positivists...

or maybe: Most early logical positivists...

or maybe I just need to understand what the sentence means?

פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 13:22, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

logical monism vs. logical pluralism

The article doesn't mention the conundrum logical monism vs. logical pluralism (more common in modern thought; infinite different experimental logical foundations, not necessarily useful for proofs).

We don't even have the page of logical monism.

Don't redirect to logic, etc. Redirections KILL philosophy and the study of logic if they're fraudulent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2149:8BB7:F100:CCC4:7E7E:C4E:6F6F (talk) 01:09, 23 December 2024 (UTC)