After reading A. J. Ayer and Wittgenstein (Language, Truth and Logic and Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus respectively), I’m starting to lean heavily towards this branch of philosophy. To me, it makes a hell of a lot of sense and seriously debunks a lot of the pseudo-philosophical nonsense that has been floating around for a while. Karl Popper’s adjustments to the theory of verification also seem persuasive.
Any comments about it? Arguments for/against?
I’m mainly wondering what was so devastating to the movement that caused it to effectively become extinct today.
Logical Postivism has been completely debunked. It relies heavily on the verification principle, which claims that no truth is meaningful unless it is analytic, true by definition, or synthetic, emperical, verified by sense experience. The problem is, the verification principle, itself, is neither analytic nor synthetic. Therefore, it refutes itself.
Check out NickOtani’sNeo-Objectivism. It is a much more viable philosophy.
Logical positivism is not so much dead as extraneous. The reason it does not have much currency in conversation is that it does not improve upon Russell and Frege as a development of logic, nor on Hume as epistemology. Its attack on moral principles is ineffective, for it allows for no moral principles to have a truth value, but we like moral principles even if they are not “objectively” true. Like Hume, it is mainly an answer to metaphysics, or religion. Metaphysicians will ignore Ayer, and go on their merry way. For they must. But they already had so much to ignore before Ayer. Materialists do not require the premises that positivism provides, but they can come in handy at times.
What do you mean by “ineffective”? The point that logical positivism makes about moral principles is precisely that we “like” having them - because they are entirely created by emotion.
While this may be the common refutation of logical positivism, I find it pretty weak. I think there is a lot of value in describing the verification principle in terms akin to Occam’s Razor - as in, “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Roughly, this means that it is needless to hypothesise beyond what can be immediately proven. This, I believe, is how the verification principle works; it is how metaphysical statements fall down upon close analysis and how we can distinguish between different scientific hypotheses after experimentation.
Can any type of statement such as “statements need to contain verbal entities that can be empirically verified in order that the statement has meaning” ever be verified? To me this suggests an hierarchy of statements to distinguish methodologies/hypotheses and empircally verifiable statements. The principle of verification has value as a methodology in its effectiveness in scientific method and debunking useless metaphysics. It works a posteriori, while technically not working a priori.
Logical positivists like to think that the only source of morality is sentiment. They ignore the purely utilitarian reasons for morality. They are correct in that moral tenets do not withstand verification, but incorrect that emotion is the only source of these tenets. If emotion were the only justification for morality, then the positivists would be wholly correct. Their focus was simply not wide enough, but accurate as far as it went. I agree, in the main, with positivism. It is just incomplete in its descriptive elements.
I am a big advocate of Logical Positivism myself. AngryElvis, to the best of my knowledge, Logical Positivism is so thorougly out of favor because of the contradiction NickOtani describes - the self-contradiction of the verification principle. However, I do not think this is a meaningful attack at all. I think this attack is much like looking at a building, identifying a single weak structure, and then tearing down the whole building. Why not just reinforce that single structure?
Mathematically, we know that you need assumptions before you can get anywhere. Any argument boils down to unquestioned and unprovable assumptions. So what are the assumptions of science? Scientists assume that math works, they assume that information about the past allows them to predict the future. They make assumptions that science cannot prove, but that serve as tools for gathering information in the future, and predicting information about the future.
Because of this, it seems very reasonable to “fix” Logical Positivism by saying that the verification principle isn’t to be applied to the initial assumptions of science - it is only to be applied to possible new conjectures.
I know this may seem like a “hack” fix, but I don’t think it is. We don’t ask science to prove its own methods using math or science. Science can’t prove that math is correct - it merely assumes it. Science must assume the basic tools it needs to gather new information. Similarly, we won’t ask that science prove the verification principle, which is a tool for acquiring knowledge about our universe, and not knowledge in itself.
I don’t understand why people have been content to say “Logical Positivism has been completely debunked”. In a strict sense, it’s true - but there are so many ways to fix the small error, it’s surprising that we haven’t seen more recent philosophy in favor of Logical Positivism.
In essence, Logical Positivism is just an attempt to formalize that which many of us know instinctually to be true: if a person makes a conjecture about the world, about knowledge, that fundamentally cannot be proven or disproven, it’s a useless conjecture. Carl Sagan had an excellent demonstration of this in his book “The Demon Haunted World”, which went along this line:
Person A: I have a dragon in my garage.
Person B: Incredible! Please show him to me.
A: Oh, you can’t see him. He’s invisible.
B: That’s too bad. At least I’ll be able to hear him, or feel the air from his wings, or the heat of his fire.
A: No, sorry, he makes no noise, and he’s physically immaterial, so his wings don’t beat air. Oh, and his fire is always the temperature of his environment, so you can’t perceive that either.
…and so on. Now, even after all these caviats, there is still the assertion that this bizarre dragon exists in my garage. But there is absolutely no way to test whether or not this is true. Philosophically, there can be debate on the issue; but practically, scientifically, and for all intents and purposes, we must dismiss this unverifiable conjecture as worthless, and use Occam’s Razor to say that it isn’t true.
You and I seem to have formulated that link independently. I also wouldn’t be terribly surprised if that link has been explicitly made before, but if it has, I haven’t seen it.
It just generally seems to be the case that the verification principle is an application of Occam’s Razor to the process of acquiring knowledge. The neat thing about this is that there’s a metamathematical justification for Occam’s Razor, which actually works on the same abstract reasoning as Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. That’s probably not something we need to go into, but it’s a cool thing nonetheless.
We should continue to talk about this off the forum! My email is msnbillfish@gmail.com.
Yeh I looked at that as well - I’m trying to find a book to explain Godel’s theorums.
Einstein had a bit to say on it - several positivists around the time of the formulation of molecular theory used Occam’s Razor and the principle of verification to deny the existence of molecules because they were not directly perceivable. Yet, Einstein came along and showed how Brownian Motion worked and how a number of other things fitted together using molecular theory as a basis. Some people have used this as a an argument against Positivism and Occam’s Razor - but to me it seems that those positivists were not viewing the evidences correctly. Could there be any basis for saying that the molecules were perceivable in some way?
Godel’s Theorems are actually not that hard to understand. The only truly hard part of the theorem is the proof, which is not necessary for understanding of the theorem. The wikipedia article isn’t bad, and I can answer any questions you have.
In the case you describe, it doesn’t seem like there would be any direct reason to suspect that molecules exist. However, the verification principle doesn’t dismiss their existence, because there was clearly the potential to determine whether or not they exist, even if that potential was a few decades away. (Similarly, life may or may not exist in our solar system. We don’t have the ability to know yet, but we will in the relatively near future, say within 200 years. Thus, we can’t dismiss the question using LP.) So the rational stance at the time wouldn’t be “molecules don’t exist”, but rather “we don’t yet have any evidence supporting the conjecture that molecules exist”. Einstein’s use of molecular theory to generate precise physics is a definite argument in favor of the existence of molecules.
So Logical Positivism (at least, the verification principle) couldn’t have been used to dismiss the existence of molecules, but Occam’s Razor could have. Either way, it doesn’t really matter - the verification principle and Occam’s Razor are NOT irrefutable proofs, but rather pragmatic stances. They say, don’t bother thinking about the “dragon in my garage”, because it’s unverifiable and redundant. However, if someone came up with a method by which the existence of intangible dragons could be measured, their existence would become verifiable, and thus it would be a conjecture worthy of (very brief) consideration, no longer dismissable via nonverifiability.
I find logical positivism to be troubling on a few accounts.
The notion that metaphysics and morals is literally nonsense. That is absolutely without a doubt the most pointless thing to say I have ever heard. Ok, so its nonsense, or even nonsense on stilts, but I’m still interested in it.
The whole verification principle issue is much more fundamental than you say it is. To quote you:
The verification principle isn’t empirically provable, and so fails it’s own test. In other words, it is just like your dragon. In a reasonable response to that, you’ve allowed an exception to the verification principle as a basic assumption of the system, which seems fair enough except for the can of worms it opens.
Essentially, you’ve let it off the hook for the fundamental question. But if you let it off the hook for that question why are there not other sorts of propositions that deserve equal treatment? If this is one that doesn’t need to be empirically experienced, why, logically, are there not metaphysical or moral ones that are not subject to testing by the verification principle?
Logical positivism feels to me like the absolute epicentre of everything that is bad about philosophy.
Cold, sterile, esoteric, disconnected, and antiemotional. It may be logically sound but how good of a person does it help us become? Would it be pleasant to be married to a true logical positivist? After all, he would have to think that his (or her - suprisingly few females that I’ve ever met are LPs though) love for his/her spouse was literal nonsense. His love for his child, again, literal nonsense.
If you have to believe that love is nonsense to be part of a school of thought, I don’t want to be in the club.
Wrong. We made this distinction already, in that the verification principle is part of a scientific, pragmatic methodology, in the same way that principles concerning the use of the past in scientific investigation are part of that methodology. Statements such as “the past can be used to support present argument” is an assumption that cannot be emprically verified, much like the verification principle.
Fine, don’t be in the club. But this seems to me a case of “If I close my eyes and block my ears, you won’t exist”.
Love is not nonsense - it is an emotion. The metaphysical concepts people draw from this emotion are nonsense. I think you’ve confused logical positivism somewhat.
Well I’d be inclined to say what you’ve expounded here is in fact this “epicentre of bad”. Pointless emotionality and ridiculous illogic are what is bad about philosophy, and what makes people view it so disapprovingly today. Logical positivism seeks to clean up philosophy from the metaphysical crap that has been blocking it up for so long. Sure, you might be interested in that metaphysical crap. Fine, you can be interested in it in the same way that their are coprophiles out there. Excuse me when I just want to flush that crap away, though.
Gemty, I do think your objections to LP can be resolved.
LP doesn’t claim that all metaphysics is nonsense - it merely claims that statements that cannot be argued logically, and cannot be demonstrated empirically, are nonsense. Morals generally do fall under this category - there isn’t an objective logical argument for any particular moral system, nor can we empirically observe that some morals are correct, while others are not. However, many aspects of moral discussion still remain. If one holds with Kant’s Categorical Imperative (as a moral supposition), one can then discuss whether certain moral assertions are validated by the Categorical Imperative, or not. This sort of meta-discussion is very much encouraged by Logical Positivism - they just want us to avoid conjectures like “The Categorical Imperative is correct”, which cannot be verified or well-argued.
I believe that AngryElvis and I have addressed this already. The idea, essentially, is that you have an initial body of methods by which you will acquire new information. The principle of verification is one of these methods, and it states that a conjecture being considered for new information must be verifiable. It doesn’t apply to itself because it is a method, not information about the world - and there is a huge difference between the two. Metaphysical and moral issues that are assertions about our universe cannot be excused in this manner. Only methods for arriving at truth do not require the principle of verification, and even those methods should be subject to a principle that says “only retain these methods if they allow for science that predicts and explains observations very well”. The principle of verification certainly does this.
Academic philosophy is not concerned with improving individuals, but rather focuses exclusively (in theory) on determining what is and isn’t true about the universe, in a way that science does not. (Philosophy focuses more on a priori / analytic truths, whereas science works on a posteriori truths.) Demanding that Logical Positivism be an uplifting, enlightening viewpoint is not only unfair, it is missing the point of Logical Positivism. Logical Positivism enables good science and good philosophy. It’s true that it probably won’t make someone into a better husband, but it certainly won’t make someone a bad husband as you seem to assert. Logical Positivism is science. It can’t be used to argue against love, since we have introspective and behavioral evidence for the existence of love. No rational scientist would believe that love is nonsense. Nor is LP cold and antiemotional any more than the rest of science and mathematics - it is merely independent of emotion. LP is about truth, not about emotion or the lack thereof.
In brief, Logical Positivism makes good scientists and good philosophers. Being a well-adjusted, loved and loving indivudual is a part of what makes good husbands. I am very thankful that it’s possible to have both.
billfish, I must object to several things you say here. I do not like the quote-and-response thing, so I will try to address your points a different way, although they are several.
LP is specifically designed to thwart any Kantian attempt at morals. Kant is metaphysics, which is precisely what LP precludes in moralising. LP claims that only statements that can be assigned a truth value belong in deductive arguments. But this truth value is dependent upon empirical methods. We are to assign truth values in the same way that the scirentific method does. Even Kant wouldn’t claim that his approach allows for that - he is a rationalist. Again, rationalism is exactly (one of them) what the LP’s went after. Even where it can be argued that Kant is not a rationalist, he is a metaphysician of some ilk. Metaphysics is nonsense, quite literally, to LP’s. If we cannot use metaphysical premises in an argument, we literally do not make sense.
We should always demand that philosophy improve individuals, and that it be uplifting. And generally, philosophers do just that, including LP’s. To be free of religious morality is uplifting indeed. There is not a thing gloomy about LP.
LP does not preclude morality, by any stretch. It precludes morality that has as its basis any metaphysic. A social contract absent natural rights, for instance, is not precluded. But if we cannot say “The CI is correct”, then we can infer nothing from it. It is useless to a positivist. Their mission was to show it is useless to us. In this, I believe, they succeeded. You underestimate them.
Perhaps it’s useful to see LP as an extension of logical analysis. Russell once made an objection like gempty’s, I think, but it was besides the point. In fact, LP accomplished nothing that Russell and Frege hadn’t already. LP is simply an extrapolation from the idea that logic and math is the same thing, and that math is not a science at all, but a method. This is why the objection to LP that you mention is not effective, but this is not news. Russell had already shown this. No one conceives of math as an empirical science, yet everyone accepts it as the bones of the scientific method by which we verify facts.
It is these facts that LP is concerned with - what criteria we use to accept a potential fact. LP claims that Kant’s CI cannot be a fact. But moral tenets that are accepted as, and desigend as, contingencies are allowed. The CI is designed to be an absolute truth, not a contingent one.
Gemty - LP has nothing to say about hearts and flowers. There is nothing cold, nothing that precludes treating each other right - LP is really another Hume-like attempt to refute religion’s authority, to refute religion as a provider of even possible facts. That is all they were trying to do. It is of no great concern, it had already been done by Nietzsche and Russell. The LP’s were simply drawing the inference more specifically.
Faust, it sounds like we’re mostly on the same page. But there are some definite disagreements that are discussion-worthy, I think.
It’s true that LP formulated to allow only deductive truths rejects all metaphysics by definition. However, most versions of LP that are seriously banded around today (for purposes of discussion of truth, as opposed to the purpose of arging against LP) are modified so that, first, it is explicit that LP is a process and not a conjecture of universal truth, and second, LP allows induction as well as deduction.
I’m really only interested in that formulation of LP, since theorems that can be proven using pure logic / pure math are still demonstrated, even if not empirically - and in fact are demonstrated in a much more pure, undoubtable form. And in this sense, much of metaphysics remains as viable, verifiable conjectures, although some of it is certainly culled as a result of being unverifiable both empirically and logically. (It’s an interesting side note that to be empirically unverifiable is to be independent of science, but that to be logically unverifiable is to, quite literally, be an example of Godel’s Incompleteness.)
Conjectures like “X is good” or “we should do Y” are unverifiable in this sense of LP, since there has been no good empirical evidence or logical argument that morality is objective. Rather, all evidence seems to point to genetic and societal bases for morality, but nothing beyond that. However, the statement “The principle of utility satisfies the criteria of the Categorical Imperative” is quite verifiable. So if you accept that morality is subjective (which many do not), then LP (in the aforementioned sense, of course) dismisses all claims of moral truth. However, it encourages analytic statements about morality.
Viewing LP as an extention of logical analysis - I don’t think that’s the best way to look at it. LP is a pragmatic tool of science, just as the scientific method is.
I agree that there is not a thing gloomy about LP; however, I disagree with the rest of what you say. To say “we should always demand…” is a subjective stance. To say “to be free of religious morality is uplifting…” is also subjective in the strictest sense. Although I strongly share your sentiment, there are some who find religious morality itself uplifting, and the prospect of “being free of it” horrible. This is precisely why philosophers try to steer clear of involvements they think of as subjective, and always restrict their inquiry to what is philosophy proper - they rarely apply their philosophy to how people should live. (Philosophy can affect this, as math can affect physics, but in the same way, most philosophy is not done with this goal in mind.)
I vehemently disagree with the notion that philosophy should always be uplifting. This is entirely at odds with the notion of the search for truth. Much truth is depressing, horrible, or generally negative. The concensus among philosophers is generally that we have no free will (at least, in the sense of ‘I could have done otherwise’). There is a debate about whether or not there is even such a thing as human identity. There is probably no soul, probably no afterlife. All of these are unfortunate truths, but insisting that philosophy be more uplifting does absolutely nothing but hinder the search for truth.
Often, truth coincides with what is uplifting. When it doesn’t, tough luck! Philosophy is about truth, not catering to whim.
Billfish. Again, I see LP as an outgrowth of, as an inference from, Russellian logical analysis. That does not disagree with your view - I was trying to provide context, a sort of historical context. Russell endeavored to provide logic as a tool of science - to give a better justification of this, by showing that it is reducible to mathematics. Deductive logic is mathematics and is also the structure of the scientific method. Induction, of course, provides the empirical data for this method. Neither you, nor I, nor (other ) logical positivists have any objection to that. We have no disagreement on that count.
It is clear that it is not an unintended consequence of logical positivism that metaphysics is disallowed by logical positivism. To throw up one’s hands in shock and disbelief that logical positivism coincidentally turns out to preclude metaphysics is naive. The principle of verification is not a result of logical positivism, it is its main premise. There can be no doubt that it is aimed at Plato, Descartes and Kant. Ayer is, I recall (it’s been a long time) always explicit that he is going after metaphysics. I am sure I can find a quote in a first chapter of his. You must have some Ayer handy. The task at hand for him was not to establish that metaphysics has no meaning (Russell did that), but to show us exactly how this is so, and what the implications of this are.
I would love to see a metaphysical claim that will withstand a logical positivist assault. Please give one of the examples you are thinking of.
That the priciple of utility satisfies the criteria of the CI does not establish that the CI should in any way be accepted. I am sure that no LP would stir for a moment to hear this kind of statement, because it is of no significance to anyone but Kantian utilitarian. Just try to find one.
A societal basis for morality is all the basis it requires. This is one of the ideas that Nietzsche provided long before LP. Russell did all the required work for linguistical analysis that LP employs. LP has nothing to say about morality itself, only the traditional (religious or rationalist) arguments for it.
Yes, I took a subjective stance - call it friendly advice. Don’t be getting so “logical” that you can’t take some friendly advice. They have already cast Mr Spock. You’re a person before your a budding star of the philosophical universe, whether you like it or not. Truth shmuth. Philosophy is not the search for truth - science is. Philosophy is the search for a better life.
No logical positivist would prate on about truth anyway - truth, ultimate truth, truth that is not contingent upon some arbitrary model, is a metaphysical concept. I think your tongue slipped.
And by the way, every single philosopher has, in every instance, at every moment, sought to tell people how to live. You have missed the entire point of everything you have ever read if you do not see that. Where you get this notion that philosophers think we have no free will, I cannot fathom. It is the religious who stake that claim. You seem to be gritting your teeth and preparing for the worst as a logical positivist. You are over-reacting to its critics. Nothing bad is going to happen. Philosophy is not about what we know - it’s about what we don’t. There is no reason why it should make you sad. We should (there’s that word) own our philosophy, and not let it own us. Anything else is just irresponsible.
Debate about human identity? I hadn’t heard. Here’s some more advice - ignore it. It’s just stupid. No soul, no afterlife. Depressing? Toughen up. I see nothing depressing about this. Another subjective view, but LP cannot tell anyone how to feel, anyway. If you try to make it a universal truth, you are what LP is designed to eliminate. No one who needs religion is going to listen to you, anyway.
Faust, it’s starting to seem that our differences might be more fundamental - if that’s the case, we should probably just nod and go our separate ways. Nonetheless, I shall try to present my responses to your points to give it a fair shot.
I understand. I’m aware of the historical context; I was just trying to make it clear that I’m more interested in the modified (more sensible, I would say) LP, rather than a historically accurate LP.
Remember, the type of LP I am interested in allows logically based metaphysics, and only disallows metaphysics that cannot be verified using logic or empiricism. So a good example of this logically-verifiable metaphysics is the conjecture “I have free will, in that, whenever I choose to perform an action, I could have meaningfully chosen otherwise.” This statement can be proven false. Other statements, like “I should lose weight”, are unverifiable, because they cannot be proven or disproven logically.
I certainly don’t mind a subjective stance, and although I don’t need that kind of advice - I know my morals and employ them well - I do appreciate the spirit. However, there’s a very good reason why academic philosophy does not strive to improve people’s lives. Academic philosophy is a search for truth, and is not beholden to a particular subjective moral philosophy. This is the kind of philosophy that philosophers go to school for, get professorial appointments for. Individualistic philosophy, lay philosophy, personal philosophy, these can be about improving lives all you want - but that doesn’t change the fact that the intent of academic philosophy is the search for truth. As I said before, science is the search for empirical truth about the universe. Math is the search for logical truth in general - and philosophy is the search for logical truth about our universe.
It’s because I’m academically trained in philosophy that I might come across as “Mr. Spock”. Politically, morally, I’m very interested in and passionate about improving the lives of others. But in philosophy, and in math, I’m only interested in what is logically true or false or neither.
Yes, ultimate truth is a metaphysical concept. As I had explained in my last post, the type of LP I consider has no problem with metaphysics in general - only in metaphysical assertions that are independent of logic, e.g. “I should lose weight.”
There have been many philosophers who have never professionally or philosophically tried to tell anyone how to live. Most philosophers, of course, have tried to tell people how to live - but 100% of these have made philosophical assertions that are independent of this. “Free will exists.” “Induction cannot be proven using logic.” Etc. None of these relate to morality or how one should live one’s life.
As for the rest - nothing in philosophy makes me sad, and I agree that one shouldn’t be made sad by the truth. Yet, many are, and it’s understandable why. If someone believes in a god for much of his life, and then sees a proof that an omnipotent god cannot exist, he is very likely to be sad at the thought that his beliefs were wrong. If you believe in heaven, you will be sad to find out you are wrong, and that you will be worm food when you die. Ultimately, you don’t have a good basis for saying “you should / should not react negatively to truth X”, without appealing to subjective emotion. This is just to the point that philosophy is about truth, and whether or not you find its truth uplifting is another matter entirely. You can say “you SHOULD find philosophy uplifting”, and even though it’s subjective to say so, I’d agree. However, many people don’t find it uplifting, and that’s all there is to it.
I’m surprised if you’ve never heard of the metaphysical issue of identity. I agree, it is a stupid debate, and I do ignore it. I have no negative reactions to any of these topics. But others do, and they’re not objectively wrong in doing so. Philosophy is about truth, and is not always uplifting.
Bill, it might surprise you to learn that I am also academicaly trained in philosophy - I just call it “going to school”. I was being sarcastic when I said I hadn’t heard about the debate on personal identity. It’s been going on for about two thousand years or so.
The idea of logically-verifiable metaphysics is laughable. “I should lose weight” is not metaphysics. You seem to hyperventilate every time you hear the word “should”. It is not always a moral term. If “Free will exists” doesn’t suggest a way of living, no statement does. That you cannot see the implications of this is astounding to me.
I do not wish to bore you. You are much too impressed with yourself to listen, anyway. Buh-bye.