Logical Positivism

Logical Positivism
also called logical empiricism

a philosophical movement that arose in Vienna in the 1920s and was characterized by the view
that scientific knowledge is the only kind of factual knowledge and that all traditional metaphysical
doctrines are to be rejected as meaningless.
Logical positivism differs from earlier forms of empiricism and positivism (e.g., that of
David Hume and Ernst Mach) in holding that the ultimate basis of knowledge rests
upon public experimental verification or confirmation rather than upon personal
experience. It differs from the philosophies of Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill in
holding that metaphysical doctrines are not false but meaningless—that the “great
unanswerable questions” about substance, causality, freedom, and God are
unanswerable just because they are not genuine questions at all. This last is a thesis
about language, not about nature, and is based upon a general account of meaning
and of meaninglessness. All genuine philosophy (according to the group that came to
be called the Vienna Circle) is a critique of language, and (according to some of its
leading members) its result is to show the unity of science—that all genuine knowledge
about nature can be expressed in a single language common to all the sciences.
David Hume
An Empiricist
he believed "causes and effects are discoverable not by reason, but by experience"

He goes on to say that, even with the perspective of the past, humanity cannot dictate future
events because thoughts of the past are limited, compared to the possibilities for the future.
Ernst Mach
● (born February 18, 1838, Chirlitz-Turas, Moravia, Austrian Empire
[now Brno-Chrlice, Czech Republic]—died February 19, 1916,
Haar, Germany)
● Austrian physicist and philosopher who established important
principles of optics, mechanics, and wave dynamics and who
supported the view that all knowledge is a conceptual organization
of the data of sensory experience (or observation).
In Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen (1886; Contributions to the
Analysis of the Sensations, 1897), Mach advanced the concept that all
knowledge is derived from sensation; thus, phenomena under scientific
investigation can be understood only in terms of experiences, or
“sensations,” present in the observation of the phenomena. This view
leads to the position that no statement in natural science is admissible
unless it is empirically verifiable. Mach’s exceptionally rigorous criteria of
verifiability led him to reject such metaphysicalconcepts as absolute time
and space, and prepared the way for the Einstein relativity theory.
Auguste Comte

● (born January 19, 1798, Montpellier, France—died September 5, 1857,

Paris)
● French philosopher known as the founder of sociology and of
positivism
● Comte gave the science of sociology its name and established the new
subject in a systematic fashion.
Comte’s main contribution to positivist philosophy falls into five parts:
his rigorous adoption of the scientific method; his law of the three
states or stages of intellectual development; his classification of the
sciences; his conception of the incomplete philosophy of each of these
sciences anterior to sociology; and his synthesis of a positivist social
philosophy in a unified form. He sought a system of philosophy that
could form a basis for political organization appropriate to modern
industrial society.
John Stuart Mill
● (born May 20, 1806, London, England—died May 8, 1873,
Avignon, France)
● English philosopher, economist, and exponent of utilitarianism.
● He was prominent as a publicist in the reforming age of the 19th
century, and remains of lasting interest as a logician and an ethical
theorist.