ELUSIYAN FRANCIS TOLULOPE
INTRODUCTION
Histories
were made; stories were told that the logical positivism and logical empiricism
are very prominent aspect of science that is associated with Vienna circle.
Their mission was to unite the science (especially as opposed to metaphysics)
and give a correct sketch, description of scientific method (to dispute
metaphysics). Their task concern both scientific theory and language. This
movement can be seen as empiricism (which states for example that they are in
agreement with the methodology of natural science, and that they believe that
the source and origin of all knowledge is experience and with a very important
role for the (formal) logic to describe. By and large our concern in this paper
is to discuss the basic differences between logical positivism and logical
empiricism.
LOGICAL POSITIVISM
Logical positivism (later also known as Logical Empiricism)is a
theory in Epistemology and Logic that developed out ofPositivism and the early
Analytic Philosophy movement, andwhich campaigned for a systematic reduction of
all humanknowledge to logical and scientific foundations . Thus, astatement is
meaningful only if it is either purely formal(essentially, mathematics and
logic) or capable of empiricalverification.This effectively resulted in an
almost complete rejection byLogical Positivists of Metaphysics (and to a large
extentEthics) on the grounds that it is unverifiable. Its influence in20th
Century Epistemology and Philosophy of Science,however, has been profound.Most
early Logical Positivists asserted that all knowledge isbased on logical
inference from simple “protocol sentences”grounded in observable facts. They
supported forms ofMaterialism, Naturalism and Empiricism, and, in
particular,they strongly supported the verifiability criterion of
meaning(Verificationism), the doctrine that a proposition is onlycognitively
meaningful if it can be definitively andconclusively determined to be either
true or false. Logical Positivism was also committed to the idea of“Unified
Science”, or the development of a commonlanguage in which all scientific
propositions can beexpressed, usually by means of various “reductions” or“explications”
of the terms of one science to the terms ofanother (putatively more fundamental
) one.[1]
The main tenets of the
doctrine include:1.The opposition to all Metaphysics,
especially ontology (thestudy of reality and the nature of being), not as
necessarilywrong but as having no meaning. 2. The rejection of synthetic a priori propositions (e.g. “Allbachelors
are happy”), which are, by their nature,unverifiable (as opposed to analytic statements,
which aretrue simply by virtue of their meanings e.g. “All bachelorsare
unmarried”). 3. A criterion of meaning based on Ludwig Wittgenstein 's earlywork,
(essentially, that the meaning of a word is its use inthe language, and that
thoughts , and the language used toexpress those thoughts, are pictures or
representations ofhow things are in the world).The idea that all knowledge
should be modifiable in a singlestandard language of science, and the
associated ongoingproject of "rational reconstruction" , in which
ordinarylanguage concepts were gradually to be replaced by moreprecise
equivalents in that standard language[2].History of Logical Positivism:The most
important early figures in Logical Positivism werethe Bohemian-Austrian
Positivist philosopher Ernst Mach(1838 - 1916) and the Austrian Ludwig
Wittgenstein(especially his “Tractatus” of 1921, a text of greatimportance for
Logical Positivists).Logical Positivism in Germany rose in response to
theMetaphysics of Georg Hegel, which was the dominantphilosophical view in
Germany at the time, particularly therejection of his concept of metaphysical
entities that did nothave any empirical basis. It grew from the discussions of
the so-called "Vienna Circle"of Moritz Schlick (1882 - 1936) in the
early 20th Century. A1929 pamphlet jointly written by Otto Neurath (1882 -
1945),Hans Hahn (1979 - 1934) and Rudolf Carnap (1891 - 1970)brought together
some of the major proponents of themovement and summarized the doctrines of the
ViennaCircle at that time. The contemporaneous Berlin Circle ofHans Reichenbach
(1891 - 1953) also propagated the newdoctrines more widely in the 1920s and
early 1930s.A. J. Ayer is considered responsible for the spread ofLogical
Positivism to Britain , and his 1936 book "Language,Truth and Logic"
was very influential.[3]Criticisms of Logical Positivism:There were
many internal arguments within the LogicalPositivism movement, which in reality
was only ever a loosecollective of philosophers holding a wide range of beliefs
onmany matters, although with certain principles in common .Critics have argued
that Logical Positivism's insistence onthe strict adoption of the verifiability
criterion of meaning(the requirement for a non-analytic, meaningful sentence
tobe either verifiable or falsifiable) is problematic, as thecriterion itself
is unverifiable, especially for negativeexistential claims and positive
universal claims.Karl Popper (1902 - 1994) disagreed with the logicalpositivist
position that metaphysical statements must bemeaningless, and further argued
that a metaphysicalstatement can change its unfalsifiable status over time -what
may be “unfalsifiable” in one century may become“falsifiable” (and thus
“scientific”) in another.A. J. Ayer responded to the charge of unverifiability
byclaiming that, although almost any statement (except atautology or logical
truth) is unverifiable in the strong sense,there is a weak sense of
verifiability in which a propositionis verifiable if it is possible for
experience to render itprobable. This defence, however, was controversial
amongLogical Positivists, some of whom stuck to strongverification, and
insisted that general propositions wereindeed nonsense. Hilary Putnam (1926 - )
has argued that making adistinction between "observational" and
"theoretical" ismeaningless. W. V. O. Quine has criticized the
distinctionbetween analytic and synthetic statements, and thereduction of
meaningful statements to immediateexperience. Thomas Kuhn (1922 - 1996) has
argued that itis just not possible to provide truth conditions for
science,independent of its historical paradigm.[4]
LOGICAL EMPIRICISM
Logical
empiricism is a philosophic movementrather than a set of doctrines, and it flourishedin
the 1920s and 30s in several centers inEurope and in the 40s and 50s in the
UnitedStates. It had several different leaders whoseviews changed considerably
over time.Moreover, these thinkers differed from oneanother, often sharply.
Because logicalempiricism is here construed as a movementrather than as
doctrine, there is probably noimportant position that all logical empiricists
shared including, surprisingly enough empiricism. And while most participants
in themovement were empiricists of one form oranother, they disagreed on what
the best formof empiricism was and on the cognitive status ofempiricism. What
held the group together was acommon concern for scientific methodology andthe
important role that science could play inreshaping society. Within that
scientificmethodology the logical empiricists
wanted tofind a natural
and important role for logic andmathematics and to find an understanding ofphilosophy
according to which it was part of thescientific enterprise.[5]
The term ‘logical empiricism’ has no
veryprecise boundaries and still less thatdistinguishes it from ‘logical positivism’. It istherefore
hard to map. ‘Logical empiricism’ isused here to include the following three groups:(1) the Vienna
Circle, here taken broadly toinclude those who were part of various
privatediscussion groups, especially that around MoritzSchlick, and also the
members of the morepublic Ernst Mach Society (Verein Ernst Mach),(2) the
smaller, but perhaps more influentialBerlin Society for Empirical Philosophy
(latercalled the BerlinSociety for ScientificPhilosophy), and (3) those who
were influencedby or interacted with members of the first twogroups and shared
a broadly intellectual kinshipwith them. Besides those in Vienna and
Berlinthere were important centers of the movementin England, France, Scandinavia,
at severaluniversities in the U.S., and as far from centralEurope as China.
This characterization isspecifically meant to include thinkers whodisagreed
with doctrines espoused by membersof the original groups and even some
whodefined themselves in opposition to themovement. This results in a vague
boundary,but it suffices to identify a movement in which alarge number of able
philosophers self-consciously participated and to distinguishlogical empiricism
from other movements.It does not, however, distinguish logicalempiricism from logical
positivism, and it isdoubtful that any principled such boundary canbe drawn
along doctrinal or sociological lines.Another way of mapping the boundaries
oflogical empiricism is to list the specificphilosophers who were centrally or
peripherallypart of it. Indeed, many of the most importantphilosophers of the
mid-twentieth century wereeither members of the logical empiricistmovement or
associated with it in some way.Hans Hahn, Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap,
andOtto Neurath were leaders of the Vienna Circle,and Kurt Gödel regularly attended its meetings.The list of its members,
visitors, andinterlocutors is staggering. To name only a few,these include A.J.
Ayer, Herbert Feigl, PhilippFrank, Hans
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOGICAL
POSITIVISM AND LOGICAL EMPIRICISM
The positivism
holds that one can and should understand reality via a scientific method. While
empiricism says that empirical tools are right for the job(as opposed to say, a
priori mental acrobatics).
It is important
to note that this can and should be a scientific method, rather than it is a
common misconception that there is only one such “method”
In a broad sense,
empiricism also covers logical positivism. In a narrow sense both differ by the
historical time and the opponents of each school of thinking. A main topic of
the logical positivism from 20th century was the question, how to
separate science from metaphysics. In the end, it was Karl popper who against
logical positivism detected, that the difference is the possibility of
falsification not verification. This insight of popper is considered by many as
a breakthrough in epistemology
In any case, also
empiricism must concede that knowledge cannot be deduced from experience alien.
Science gets it life from the interplay of experience and theory. And theory
often uses concepts which are freely created by man e.g. Hilbert space for
quantum mechanics, Riemann manifold for the general theory of relativity, gene
for biology.
Empiricism is the
thesis that knowledge comes from experience. Logical positivism is the thesis
that the meaning of a sentence is the set of conditions under which that
sentence could be verified to be true. (This implies that any sentence which
cannot be verified empirically is either meaningless nonsense or a tautology).
All logical
positivists are empiricists, but not all empiricists are logical positivists.
For instance, Aristotle would agree that all knowledge comes from sensation.
(To my knowledge, he is actually the first to make this claim). However,
Aristotle might well reject that a sentence is meaningful even if there is no
way for us to tell whether it is time or not. (I can’t think of any examples of sentences that Aristotle would take to
be like that, but I also cannot think of any reason he would have to deny this
either.
CONCLUSION
By way of
conclusion on the account of this discourse, we have been able to give a brief explanation
of logical positivism and logical empiricism as well as their differences which
is the central focus of the work. Even though they are been associated to the
same group, the venial circle, we were able to find some differences between
them which serve as the fulfillment of this paper. Hence it is a very important
aspect of science that cannot be neglected because they form the bases of what
we talk about today and as such they should be treated with critical analyses
and examination.
[1]
Stanford encyclopedia,www.wikipedia.com,retreieved,16/o1/2016
[2]
ibid
[3]
Ayer A.J “Language truth and logic” gollancz car nap press,London 1928/1967 pg
7
[4]
ibid
[5]
Der logischeAufbau, translated by R.A George as the logical structure of the
world, Berkeley: university of califonia press. 1934/1937 pdfpg 4
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