LOGICAL POSITIVISM

This essay is written with the aim of informing a reader, who is approaching logical positivism for
the first time, about its main tenets, foremost advocates, reception and criticism. In exploring these
aspects, it becomes pertinent to understand the historical context which brought about the birth of
such an idea.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
To approach logical positivism coherently, it is necessary to study its roots which are found in the
philosophical ideas of Auguste Comte. It was from his ideas that postivism evolved, both as a
philosophical idealogy and movement. It then developed through various stages known by various
names such as emperiocriticism, logical positivism and logical empiricism and finally merging, in
the 20th century, into the already existing tradition known as analytic philosophy.
The basic affirmations of positivism are (1) that all knowledge regarding matters of fact is based on
the “positive” data of experience and (2) that beyond the realm of fact is that of pure logic and pure
mathematics. These two idealogical assertions were already recognized by the 18th-century Scottish
empiricist and sceptic David Hume as concerned merely with the “relations of ideas,” and, in a later
phase of positivism, they were classified as purely formal sciences. On the negative and critical
side, the positivists became noted for their repudiation of metaphysics—i.e., of speculation
regarding the nature of reality that radically goes beyond any possible evidence that could either
support or refute such “transcendent” knowledge claims. In its basic ideological posture, positivism
is thus worldly, secular, antitheological, and antimetaphysical. Strict adherence to the testimony of
observation and experience is the all-important imperative of positivism.
The influences of Hume and of Comte were also manifest in important developments in German
positivism, just prior to World War 1. An outstanding representative of this school was Ernst Mach
—a philosophical critic of the physics of Isaac Newton, an original thinker as a physicist, and a
historian of mechanics, thermodynamics and optics.

Theories and theoretical concepts, according to positivist understanding, were merely instruments
of prediction. From one set of observable data, theories formed a bridge over which the investigator
could pass to another set of observable data. Positivists generally maintained that theories might
come and go, whereas the facts of observation and their empirical regularities constituted a firm
ground from which scientific reasoning could start and to which it must always return in order to
test its validity. In consequence, most positivists were reluctant to call theories true or false but
preferred to consider them merely as more or less useful. Concern with first or final causes (see
teleology) was to be excluded from the scientific endeavour as fruitless or hopeless (if not
meaningless). Even the notion of explanation became suspect and was at best taken (as already in
Comte) to be no more than an ordering and connecting of observable facts and events by
empirically ascertainable laws.

It was with these ideas as backdrop, logical positivism grew. It found expression in the Vienna
circle and in the Berlin Society for Empirical Philosophy. The confluence of ideas from the
preivious cited sources and others gave rise to logical positivism, a label given by A.E. Blumberg
and Herbert Feigl. The members of these groups considered themselves to be conceptual
revolutionaries who cleared the stables of academic philosophy by showing metaphysics not simply
to be false, but to be cognitively empty and meaningless. Their view were solidified when they
published the “Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung: Der Wiener Kreis” or “Scientific Conception of
the World: The Vienna Circle” which was to be their declaration of independece from traditional
philosophy and was, in their opinion, “a philosophy to end all philosophies”.

MAIN IDEAS

LANGUAGE AND MEANING

The logical positivists believed that the genuine task of philosophy was to clarify the meanings of
basic concepts and assertions (especially those of science) - and not to attempt to answer
unanswerable questions such as those regarding the nature of ultimate reality or of the Absolute.
the logical positivists also had only contempt and ridicule for the ideas of the German existentialist
Martin Heidegger, whose investigations of such questions as “Why is there anything at all?” and
“Why is what there is, the way it is?” and whose pronouncements about Nothingness (e.g., “the
Nothing nots”) seemed to them to be not only sterile but so confused as to be nonsensical. The
logical positivists viewed metaphysics as a hopelessly futile way of trying to do what great art, and
especially poetry and music, already do so effectively and successfully. These activities, they held,
are expressions of visions, feelings and emotions and, as such, are perfectly legitimate as long as
they make no claims to genuine cognition or representation of reality. What logical positivism
recommended positively, on the other hand, was a logic and methodology of the basic assumptions
and of the validation procedures of knowledge and of evaluation. An adequate understanding of the
functions of language and of the various types of meaning was another of the fundamentally
important contributions of the logical positivists. Communication and language serve
many diverse purposes: one is the representation of facts, or of the regularities in nature and society;
another is the conveying of imagery, the expression and arousal of emotions; a third is the
triggering, guidance, or modification of actions. Thus, they distinguished cognitive-factual meaning
from expressive and evocative (or emotive) significance in words and sentences. It was granted that
in most utterances of everyday life (and even of science), these two types of meaning are combined
or fused. What the logical positivists insisted upon, however, was that the emotive type of
expression and appeal should not be mistaken for one having genuinely cognitive meanings. In such
expressions as moral imperatives, admonitions, and exhortations there is, of course, a factually
significant core viz., regarding the (likely) consequences of various actions. But the normative
element - expressed by such words as ought, should, right, and their negations (as in “Thou shalt
not….”) - is by itself not cognitively meaningful but has primarily emotional and motivative
significance.

VERIFIABILITY PRINCIPLE

The most noteworthy, and also most controversial, contribution of the logical positivists was the so-
called verifiability principle of factual meaningfulness. It held that a statement is meaningful only if
it is either empirically verifiable or else tautological ( such that its truth arises entirely from the
meanings of its terms). According to the principle, then, a nontautological statement has meaning
only if some set of observable conditions is relevant to determining its truth or falsity; so stated, it
reflects the view that the meaning of a statement is the set of conditions under which it would be
true.

FROM LOGICAL POSITIVISM TO LOGICAL EMPIRICISM

Logical positivism, essentially the doctrine of the Vienna Circle, underwent a number of important
changes and innovations in the middle third of the century, which suggested the need for a new
name. The emphasis that this tradition had placed, however, on the positive facts of observation and
their negative attitude toward the atomic theory and the existence of theoretical entities in general
were no longer in keeping with the spirit of modern science. Nevertheless, the requirement
that hypotheses and theories be empirically testable, though it became more flexible and tolerant,
could not be relinquished. It was natural, then, that the word empiricism should occur in any new
name. Accordingly, retaining the term logical in roughly its same earlier meaning, the new name
“logical empiricism” was coined.

CRITICISM

Logical positivism and logical empiricism were from their very beginnings subjected to
searching criticisms. At first it was the verifiability criterion of meaningfulness that produced a
storm of opposition. One group of critics asked whether the criterion was meaningful in the light of
its own standard. Carnap replied that the criterion itself was not intended as a factual assertion but
rather as a proposal for a better and clearer use of language. Nevertheless, the logical empiricists
felt that the formulation of the meaning criterion—far from being an arbitrary injunction—came
rather close to what enlightened common sense, and especially the scientific attitude, intended by
the difference between sense and non-sense. As has been conceded by all competent philosophers
of science and even by the greatest scientist-philosophers of the 20th century there is no straight
logical path, no standard recipe, by which to move from observational data to scientific theory. It
may also be admitted that, though scientific creativity has psychologically much in common with
artistic creation, the criteria of appraisal are certainly quite different. And, although, from the
critical point of view, all and any scientific assertions are in principle subject to revision, it is
nonetheless felt to be counter-productive to deny the relative stability of the empirical laws that
serve as the testing ground of alternative theories.
WEBSITES REFERRED

1. [Link]

2. [Link]

DOCUMENTS REFERRED

1. Logical Positivism. In P. Edwards (Ed.). The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Vol. 5, 52- 57)

2. The Philosophy of Logical Positivism, Mauro Murzi.