Philosophy - Logical Positivism

Logical Positivism

Logical Positivism - Moritz Schlick founder, active between the two world wars, known as Vienna Circle, Scientific Empiricism, majority of members were mathematicians and scientists, “Philosophy is a logical syntax,” “the meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification,” Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico - Philosophicus was a foundation.

Verification principle - to understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is true; the meaning of a proposition coincides with its truth-conditions

- anyone who wishes to understand a proposition must first know the conditions under which it is true.

- sense observation is necessary for verification

philosophy was redefined as a mental activity which seeks to analyse or clarify the meaning of scientific propositions (it is an active attempt to clarify thought).

- the propositions of logic and mathematics are tautologies, that is, uninformative assertions which state nothing factual about the world (empirically void).

- a metaphysical proposition has no meaning because it is without truth-conditions.

Alfred Ayer - empirical evidence is necessary to determine the meaning of a statement or proposition, consequently the nature of ultimate reality is not a legitimate topic for philosophical consideration.

- it is interesting to note that the verification principle is not itself verifiable

* value judgements are not permissible, therefore we cannot judge one act morally right and another morally wrong.

philosophy = search for meaning,    science = pursuit of verifiable truth

Schlick - knowledge must consist of structural relations which we all have in common as a consequence of our private experiences.

Otto Neurath - sense experience is a biological process, not a mental state.

Correspondence theory of truth - an idea is true if it corresponds with its real object.

Coherence theory of truth-ideas are true if they consist of logical, integrated, consistent, interrelated statements.

Rudolf Carnap - protocol statements (referring to immediate facts of experience).

- philosophy is to be replaced by the logic of science, and the logic of science is nothing more than the syntax of the language of science.

Syntactical statements are those dealing with form or order of the symbols rather than the meaning of the statements.

Alfred Tarski - truth is predicated on sentences as a meta-language (a language which makes symbolic assertions about another language).