Logical positivism

Logical positivism emerged out of the Vienna Circle in the early 20th century. The logical positivist holds up materialism, empiricism, philosophical naturalism and the scientific method as the highest pursuits of rational thought. The most famous claim of logical positivism is that any statement that is not inherently verifiable and falsifiable is a meaningless statement.

Much of ethics, theology and the supernatural is immediately reduced to nonsense under this view. Skepticism, science, and reasoning grounded firmly in the logic of an empirical reality that is verifiable by all parties becomes the only honest truth.

While there are some meta-discussion issues with logical positivism, the thrust of their meaning is an important question to address head on. Many scientists like to talk about methodological naturalism or concepts such as Non-Overlapping Magisteria, as a way of allowing theological considerations to still hold some level of sway in a reality that is being increasingly defined and understood by a process that assumes the non-existence of any deity. At some point it becomes reasonable to ask: if all of our best knowledge comes from a system that assumes that there is no supernatural cause or explanation, why do we need such a cause to begin with?

The logical positivist stands up and says that such claims are inherently lacking in meaning and substance, and that we are better off tossing them out.

Criticism

Logical positivism is criticized for "proving too much", making it self-defeating. Positivism asserts that any statement that cannot be empirically tested is meaningless. However, logical positivism is a philosophy, and cannot be itself empirically tested. By its own criterion, therefore, logical positivism is meaningless. Considering that logical positivism is a philosophy essentially "reverse engineered" to explain the success of the scientific method in explaining many aspects of the world, its statements are actually testable --- in the way that they may or may not be considered guiding principles for science.

Of course, positivism itself led to huge insights in the philosophy of language, and detailed examinations of what it means to make a statement, and how the words themselves function.

A softened version of logical positivism might hold that "ideas without a real-world basis or real world application are useless."

Later battles have been fought over the issue of falsifiability v. verifiability, with many a cagefight taking place on the turf of the "problem of universals."

The reality in human terms is that no philosophy can explain "everything", or if it tries to, it will fail to be internally consistent. This is comparable to the mathematical concept of Gödel's incompleteness theorems, and Ben & Jerry's famous Chunky Monkey v. Cherry Garcia debates.

See also

• Naturalism
• Sheep dip

External links

• Wikipedia has a "pretty good article" on logical positivism --- the "basic tenets" and "criticism and influences" sections are very good.