Logical Positivism

Dr.Neena Dash
Assistant Professor
Gangadhar Meher University, India

M.A,M.Phil,B.Ed,NET,Ph.D in Education from Kurukshetra University

CC in Inclusive Teaching from Columbia University
CC in Introduction to Data Wise: A Collaborative Process to Improve Learning and
Teaching from Harvard University
CC in German Language from Kurukshetra University
CC in Management and Training for Learning Disabled Children from INPA, Chandigarh
affilaited to IPA,Florida

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Logical Positivism
 Logical positivism (also called logical
empiricism and neo-positivism)
 It is a school of philosophy that combines
empiricism – the idea that observational
evidence is indispensable for knowledge of
the world – with a version of rationalism
 incorporating mathematical and logico-
linguistic constructs and deductions in
epistemology

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Logical Positivism
 Logical positivism grew from the discussions of a
group called the "First Vienna Circle" which gathered
at the Café Central before World War I
 After the war Hans Hahn, a member of that early
group, helped bring Moritz Schlick to Vienna.
 Schlick's Vienna Circle, along with Hans
Reichenbach's Berlin Circle, propagated the new
doctrines more widely in the 1920s and early 1930s.
 It was Otto Neurath's advocacy that made the
movement self-conscious and more widely known.

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Logical Positivism

A 1929 pamphlet written by Neurath,

Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap summarized
the doctrines of the Vienna Circle at that
time
 These included: the opposition to all
metaphysics, especially ontology and
synthetic a priori propositions;

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  the rejection of metaphysics not as wrong but
as having no meaning; a criterion of meaning
based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's early work;
 the idea that all knowledge should be
codifiable in a single standard language of
science;
 and above all the project of "rational
reconstruction",
 in which ordinary-language concepts were
gradually to be replaced by more precise
equivalents in that standard language

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Logical Positivism
 In the early 1930s, the Vienna Circle
dispersed, mainly because of political
upheaval and the untimely deaths of Hahn
and Schlick
 The most prominent proponents of logical
positivism emigrated to United Kingdom
and United States, where they
considerably influenced American
philosophy

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Logical Positivism

 Untilthe 1950s, logical positivism was

the leading school in the philosophy of
science.
 During this period of upheaval, Carnap
proposed a replacement for the earlier
doctrines in his "Logical Syntax of
Language

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Logical Positivism
 This change of direction and the
somewhat differing views of
Reichenbach and others led to a
consensus that the English name for the
shared doctrinal platform,
 in its American exile from the late
1930s, should be "logical empiricism

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Origins

 The chief influences on the early logical positivists

were the positivist Ernst Mach and the young Ludwig
Wittgenstein.
 Mach's influence is most apparent in the logical
positivists' persistent concern with metaphysics, the
unity of science, and the interpretation of the
theoretical terms of science, as well as the doctrines
of reductionism and phenomenalism, later
abandoned by many positivists

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 Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus was a text of great importance
for the positivists.
 The Tractatus introduced many doctrines
which later influenced logical positivism,
 including the conception of philosophy as a
"critique of language," and the possibility of
drawing a theoretically principled distinction
between intelligible and nonsensical
discourse

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 Contemporary developments in logic
and the foundations of mathematics,
especially Bertrand Russell and Alfred
North Whitehead's monumental
Principia Mathematica, impressed the
more mathematically minded logical
positivists such as Hans Hahn and
Rudolf Carnap

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 "Language-planning" and syntactical
techniques derived from these
developments were used to defend
logicism in the philosophy of
mathematics and various reductionist
theses

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 Immanuel Kant also had an important influence on the
positivists, both positive and negative
 On the negative side, Kant was often treated by the
positivists as something of a punching bag in their early
debates,
 and Kant's doctrine of synthetic a priori truths was the
doctrine they most wished to overthrow.
 On the positive side, Kant's views about the nature of
physical objects pervaded the "protocol sentence" debate,
 and Kantian views about the relationship between
philosophy and science were shared by the positivists to
some degree.

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Rise of Logical Positivism in
Germany
The Vienna Circle under the influence of
Moritz Schlick and the Berlin Circle under
the influence of Reichenbach consisted of
scientists, mathematicians, and scientists
turned philosophers,
 who shared a common goal of solving
newly raised problems in philosophy of
science.

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Basic tenets

 Early on, most logical positivists took

the view that all knowledge is based on
logical inference from simple "protocol
sentences" grounded in observable
facts.
 Many logical positivists supported forms
of materialism, metaphysical naturalism,
and empiricism.

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 Perhaps the view for which the logical
positivists are best known is the verifiability
criterion of meaning, or verificationism
 In one of its earlier and stronger formulations,
this is the doctrine that a proposition is
"cognitively meaningful" only if there is a finite
procedure for conclusively determining
whether it is true or false

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 They distinguished cognitive from other
varieties of meaningfulness (e.g.
emotive, expressive, figurative), and
most authors concede that the non-
cognitive statements of the history of
philosophy possess some other kind of
meaningfulness.

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 An intended consequence of this view, for most
logical positivists, is that metaphysical, theological,
and ethical statements fall short of this criterion, and
so are not cognitively meaningful
 The positive characterization of cognitive
meaningfulness varies from author to author.
 It has been described as the property of having a
truth value, corresponding to a possible state of
affairs, naming a proposition, or being intelligible or
understandable in the sense in which scientific
statements are intelligible or understandable

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 Another characteristic feature of logical
positivism is the commitment to "Unified
Science"; that is, the development of a
common language or, in Neurath's
phrase, a "universal slang" in which all
scientific propositions can be expressed

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Criticism and influences

 Universal claims could apparently never

be verified
 Karl Popper was a well-known critic of
logical positivism,
 Hilary Putnam's objection
 A.J. Ayer's objection

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Influence of logical
positivism
 Logical positivism spread throughout almost
the entire western world
 It was disseminated throughout the European
continent
 It was spread to Britain by the influence of A. J.
Ayer
 And later, it was brought to American
universities by members of the Vienna Circle
after they fled Europe and settled in the United
States during and after WWII.

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 Logical positivism was essential to the
development of early analytic
philosophy
 The term subsequently came to be
almost interchangeable with "analytic
philosophy" in the first half of the
twentieth century.

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 Logical positivism was immensely
influential in the philosophy of language
and represented the dominant
philosophy of science between World
War I and the Cold War

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Further Reading

 Achinstein, Peter and Barker, Stephen F. The Legacy of Logical Positivism:

Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969.
 Ayer, Alfred Jules. Logical Positivism. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1959.
 Barone, Francesco. Il neopositivismo logico. Roma Bari: Laterza, 1986.
 Bergmann, Gustav. The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism. New York:
Longmans Green, 1954.
 Cirera, Ramon. Carnap and the Vienna Circle: Empiricism and Logical Syntax.
Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1994.
 Edmonds, David & Eidinow, John; Wittgenstein's Poker, ISBN 0-06-621244-8
 Friedman, Michael. Reconsidering Logical Positivism. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1999
 Gadol, Eugene T. Rationality and Science: A Memorial Volume for Moritz
Schlick in Celebration of the Centennial of his Birth. Wien: Springer, 1982.
 Geymonat, Ludovico. La nuova filosofia della natura in Germania. Torino, 1934

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Further Reading

 Giere, Ronald N. and Richardson, Alan W. Origins of Logical

Empiricism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
 Hanfling, Oswald. Logical Positivism. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1981.
 Jangam, R. T. Logical Positivism and Politics. Delhi: Sterling
Publishers, 1970.
 Janik, Allan and Toulmin, Stephen. Wittgenstein's Vienna. London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973.
 Kraft, Victor. The Vienna Circle: The Origin of Neo-positivism, a
Chapter in the History of Recent Philosophy. New York: Greenwood
Press, 1953.
 McGuinness, Brian. Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations
Recorded by Friedrich Waismann. Trans. by Joachim Schulte and Brian
McGuinness. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1979

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Further Reading

 Mises von, Richard. Positivism: A Study in Human Understanding. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1951.
 Parrini, Paolo. Empirismo logico e convenzionalismo: saggio di storia della filosofia della
scienza. Milano: F. Angeli, 1983.
 Parrini, Paolo; Salmon, Wesley C.; Salmon, Merrilee H. (ed.) Logical Empiricism - Historical
and Contemporary Perspectives, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003.
 Reisch, George. How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science : To the Icy Slopes
of Logic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
 Rescher, Nicholas. The Heritage of Logical Positivism. Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, 1985.
 Richardson, Alan and Thomas Uebel (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Logical
Positivism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
 Salmon, Wesley and Wolters, Gereon (ed.) Logic, Language, and the Structure of Scientific
Theories: Proceedings of the Carnap-Reichenbach Centennial, University of Konstanz, 21-
24 May 1991, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994

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Further Reading

 Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) The Emergence of Logical Empiricism: From 1900 to the
Vienna Circle. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996.
 Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) Logical Empiricism at its Peak: Schlick, Carnap, and
Neurath. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
 Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) Logical Empiricism and the Special Sciences:
Reichenbach, Feigl, and Nagel. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
 Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) Decline and Obsolescence of Logical Empiricism: Carnap
vs. Quine and the Critics. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
 Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) The Legacy of the Vienna Circle: Modern Reappraisals.
New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
 Spohn, Wolfgang (ed.) Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial Volume for Rudolf
Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.
 Werkmeister, William (May 1937). "Seven Theses of Logical Positivism Critically
Examined". The Philosophical Review (Cornell University) 46 (3): 276–297.

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