It never offered a coherent solution to the problem of induction, and the notion of analysis it employed became indefensible.

I see. But, what was the problem with the notion of analysis it employed?

A huge part of it was that it was just empirically inadequate as a theory of meaning; see Wittgenstein's PI for a good antidote to the LP's view of linguistic meaning.

The tl;dr is that asserting factual/empirical propositions is only a tiny subset of what humans do with language (we also: exchange greetings, make requests, make jokes, and all sorts of things that have nothing to do with any empirical truth-conditions), and so the verification criterion of meaning just falls woefully short in describing what we do with language.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/#Iss

Quine's Two Dogmas was pivotal here, but it also became apparent that logic was not going to play along, and that logical positivism was bereft of an ethical theory.

I'd suggest that it wasn't so much a lack of an ethical theory, as the fact that the ethical theory was built on the same faulty foundation the rest of it was (i.e. this extremely limited conception of linguistic meaning as observational truth-conditions).

And its not nothing that you can trace a thread from LP to contemporary moral non-cognitivism/error theory/etc, so LP's contribution to moral philosophy wasn't entirely worthless. LP turned out to be completely wrong (and a bit wrong-headed), but it certainly did help get some more productive conversations moving along.

Perhaps; there was just much more fertile territory elsewhere.

in which they had at least some part sowing the seeds

I see. But, what was the problem with the notion of analysis it employed? — Shawn

I imagine I'll be corrected for quality control, but I believe it favored verification instead of corroboration. There is no way to verify some future event won't negate a conjecture. So, settling for the corroboration of theories better suited induction than verification.

But, if you can't verify your posits then why posit.

I never quite understood why logical positivism kinda faded out of existence and was taken over by a new methodology in science called fallibilism, so named after Popper established it as a better method than verification of conjectures or hypothesi. — Shawn

Hume was the godfather of positivism. Consider the closing paragraph of his Treatise:

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

But the same criticism can be applied to his Treatise.

David Stove used to make this point. He used to say of all forms of positivism that they're like the Uroboros, the iconographic snake that consumes itself. 'The hardest thing', he would always say, 'is the last bite'.

Whence logical positivism? 'Verificationism' is not self-consistent enough to verify itself (i.e. "only empirical statements are meaningful" is not an empirical statement and, in its own terms, therefore is not "meaningful" – self-refuting).

First, I would like to dispute that "fallibilism" is any better criteria of significance than verificationism, or even that it is mainstream today. It is true that most popular accounts of the scientific method mention Popper in this regard, but these accounts do not reflect mainstream thinking in the philosophy of science. If anything, mainstream philosophy of science today has largely abandoned the search for criteria of demarcation, being more interested either in specific questions regarding specific sciences (e.g. what is the correct interpretation of QM), in what makes a scientific research program fruitful (following Lakatos), or else in general questions of what constitutes a good scientific explanation (cf. the work of Nancy Cartwright, Wesley Salmon, and others).

As for logical positivism and its twilight, three historical remarks:

1) It's important to note that the movement was born in the very specific European context of the inter-war period, and that, in the hands of Carnap and Neurath, it had a very specific political dimension. Carnap's major work of the period was called Der logische Aufbau der Welt, which better translates to The Logical Reconstruction of the World. This is relevant, since this title alludes not only to Carnap's rational reconstruction procedure in the book (i.e. reconstructing the world of experience out of a slim conceptual basis), but also, and more importantly, to the rational reconstruction of a society that had fallen apart during the First World War. In other words, this title was carefully chosen by Carnap to signal also his alliance with a broader political movement that aimed at bringing about a more rational and just society (which for Carnap meant some form of socialism). As he himself puts it in the preface to the work:

We feel that there is an inner kinship between the attitude on which our philosophical work is founded and the intellectual attitude which presently manifests itself in entirely different walks of life; we feel the orientation in artistic movements, especially in architecture, and in movements which strive for meaningful forms of personal and collective life, of education, and of external organization in general. We feel all around us the same basic orientation, the same style of thinking and doing. It is an orientation which demands clarity everywhere, but which realizes that the fabric of life can never quite be comprehended. It makes us pay careful attention to detail and at the same time recognizes the great lines that run through the whole. It is an orientation which acknowledges the bonds that tie men together, but at the same time strives for the free development of the individual. Our work is carried by the faith this attitude will win the future. (Carnap, Preface, p. xviii)

Note the reference to an "intellectual attitude which presently manifests itself in entirely different walks of life", in particular the mention of architecture. Carnap is here referring, among other things, to the Bauhaus movement, which had close ties to the logical positivists (for more on this connection, cf. Peter Galison's work). This makes clear that Carnap and Neurath did not think of their work as just some narrowly technical philosophy of science, but rather as a contribution to a whole new way of life. This also makes clear, e.g., his opposition to Heidegger: more than a philosophical opposition, it was a political opposition. As he puts it at the beginning of the above quote paragraph:

We do not deceive ourselves about the fact that movements in metaphysical philosophy and religion which are critical of such an orientation have again become very influential of late. Whence then our confidence that our call for clarity, for a science that is free from metaphysics, will be heard? It stems from the knowledge, or to put it somewhat more carefully, from the belief that these opposing powers belong to the past. (ibid.)

That is, Carnap saw Heidegger as a reactionary, right-wing philosopher which still clung to the old world order, and saw his own participation in the Vienna Circle as heralding a new way of life. Of course, we all know how that turned out. Still, the important point is that logical positivism began as a vibrant movement that had many ties to the political and artistic context of Europe. In that context, it was revolutionary, and had revolutionary ambitions. Thus, after the rise of Nazism and the immigration of its leading exponents to the USA, the movement lost touch with its revolutionary roots (the Cold War context was also important: once they arrived in the USA, they were kept under surveillance by the FBI---cf. George Reisch's work). That is not to say that they lost all political touch. Carnap, for instance, continued to sponsor leftist causes, being apparently cited several times in the socialist newspaper The Daily Worker and being very explicit in his "Autobiography" for The Library of Living Philosopher's volume on him that even by 1963 he still considered himself a socialist of some form (cf. pp. 82-83, which I think are very enlightening in this regard). And scholars such as André Carus have been at pains to argue that Carnap's broad philosophical outlook, with its emphasis on conceptual engineering and explication, is best viewed as still part of a program for the rational reconstruction of our way of life (cf. his excellent Carnap and Twentieth Century Thought: Explication as Enlightenment). But it is to say that these political efforts were no longer part of a larger movement, with connections to all spheres of life, as they were in the European context.

Thus, once transplanted into the USA, logical positivism lost much of its vitality and eventually lost its character of a movement and became completely integrated into academic life (and even then they were still under scrutiny by the Hoover administration!).

2) Once they became a rather academic movement, however, they still retained much of their importance, only this importance was now relative to academic debates, and not to larger political movements. Thus, for instance, Hempel's deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation (cf., for instance, his "Studies in the Logic of Explanation", reprinted in Aspects of Scientific Explanation) is still considered a landmark in the field: most accounts of scientific explanation still begin by reference to this model (even if ultimately to reject it). Similarly, Carnap's Meaning and Necessity was extremely important for the development of formal semantics, especially after the overall framework was refined by Kaplan (who was a student of Carnap), Lewis, Montague, and integrated with linguistics by Barbara Partee. Carnap also had a hand in rational decision theory (especially through his studies in the logic of probability, for example in his partnership with Richard Jeffrey) and was an early scientific structuralist who resurrected the Ramsey sentence approach to scientific theories (cf. the work Stathis Psillos in this regard).

This is all to say that, once they became integrated into academic life, their impetus and technical innovations still animated much of the debate. Indeed, I would say that, in this sense, logical positivism is still alive, as their specific research programs (in the logic of explanation, in formal semantics, in rational decision theory) are still alive and well. Of course, their particular proposals have been superseded, but that was only to be expected, and, indeed, encouraged by the logical positivists themselves. Going back to the Preface to the Aufbau, Carnap there says:

The basic orientation and the line of thought of this book are not property and achievement of the author alone but belong to a certain scientific atmosphere which is neither created nor maintained by any single individual. The thoughts which I have written down here are supported by a group of active or receptive collaborators. This group has in common especially a certain basic scientific orientation. (...) This new attitude not only changes the style of thinking but also the type of problem that is posed. The individual no longer undertakes to erect in one bold stroke an entire system of philosophy. Rather, each works at his special place within the one unified science. (...) If we allot to the individual in philosophical work as in the special sciences only a partial task, then we can look with more confidence into the future: in slow careful construction insight after insight will be won. Each collaborator contributes only what he can endorse and justify before the whole body of his co-workers. Thus stone will be carefully added to stone and a safe building will be erected at which the following generation can continue to work.

This spirit certainly animates much of current philosophy and especially current philosophy which works in problems first set by the logical positivists. So, again, I think that in this sense logical positivism has not faded away, and is still with us.

3) Finally, a word about the so-called verifiability criterion. Carnap did not put forward this criterion as an empirical observation. Rather, he put it forward as a proposal about how to best conduct scientific investigations. It is in his sense analytic, and therefore it does not apply to itself, since it only mentions synthetic statements. Note that for a statement to be analytic for Carnap is not for it to capture some pre-existing meaning. Instead, a statement is analytic if it is part of the setup of a (formal or semi-formal) linguistic framework. Linguistic frameworks, and therefore analytic statements, in their turn, are not be judged by empirical adequacy criteria (indeed, for Carnap, linguistic frameworks are empirical adequacy criteria), but rather by their usefulness in the advancement of science (this is very clearly stated in "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology", but was already clear in the early 30s in his The Logical Syntax of Language, as encoded in his Principle of Tolerance, and also in "Testability and Meaning", which is very relevant for the discussion here).

So the idea that the whole movement foundered because of an obvious logical inconsistency is just bizarre (and even more bizarre when one considers that its members were all logical proficient).

Facts describe the way things are. — Shawn

Very true. That's the definition. But what and how or why is the way things are?

Interesting. I don't agree with you about Popper (though I'm sympathetic to both Feyerabend's & Lakatos' works that move the philosophy of science past Popper) but I do appreciate your historical
clarifications. :up:

Brilliant corrective, thank you. Still... if,

the idea that the whole movement foundered because of an obvious logical inconsistency is just bizarre — Nagase

... then how did the label become such a popular insult?

Largely, one suspects the (indirect) influence of Wittgenstein, through the crude narrative of his later abandoning an earlier crude theory of the relation of language to the world, in which the mistake had been (allegedly) to model language as logic.

You often hear it pointed out that the Tractatus wasn't positivism, but usually that's in order to defend the first at the expense of the second.

If anything, mainstream philosophy of science today has largely abandoned the search for criteria of demarcation — Nagase

Why is that true if I may ask?

So the idea that the whole movement foundered because of an obvious logical inconsistency is just bizarre (and even more bizarre when one considers that its members were all logical proficient). — Nagase

:100: This is so commonly used as a "got eem" in countless books on metaphysics today, particularly those of a religious bent.

Your commentary on the connection between LP and leftist/socialist movements was very intriguing.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that Popper is irrelevant or whatever. It's just that popular accounts of science tend to portray him as being the be-all-end-all of philosophy of science, and particularly his falsificationism as being almost consensual when that is far from the case in the philosophy of science. I mean, maybe it should be consensual, but as a sociological observation, I don't think it is.



That is a complex historical question, and one that I don't have a definite answer. Still, here are some pointers:

1) First, it is undeniable that the reception of logical positivism in the USA was largely colored by Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic (cf., for example, Scott Soames's very whiggish history of analytic philosophy, Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, devotes considerable space to Ayer in his narrative). Now, in that work, Ayer gives pride of place to the verification criterion of meaning, and his version of it does suffer from some problems (though he was aware of them and tried to successively refine it). Thus, if all one read was that work, it is easy to come away with the impression that the movement was largely concerned with the demarcation problem, that Ayer's version of the verificationist criterion was the one proposed by the movement, and that it failed. Since I think more people read Ayer than (say) Carnap or Hempel, it is no wonder this view is still widespread.

Notice that reading logical positivism through Ayer also has a further deleterious effect, namely of isolating logical positivism from its historical roots. Ayer presents the movement as being largely a better version of British empiricism, as if Carnap, Schlick, and Neurath were largely involved in a research program that went back to Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. But that is a serious distortion: they were much more engaged with the Neo-Kantians (in their various guises), for example, than with British empiricism. This is a problem because it makes one read, e.g., Carnap's Aufbau as being an exercise in a phenomenalistic reduction of science to sense data, when it's actually an exercise in the uncovering of the logical structure of science. That is, unlike the British empiricists, but similar to the Neo-Kantians, Carnap thought that what is important viz. science is that it leaves behind its sensory origins and attends to the structure of our experience (in fact, Carnap is clear that he thought that he objects of science can all be captured by purely structural descriptions).

More to the point, one consequence of this is that the verificationist criterion of meaning appears as if it was merely an empiricist weapon against traditional metaphysics, when in fact it was part of a larger program to rationally describe the logic of science (and thus that had one of its roots in Neo-Kantism), which in turn was just one branch of a larger political project to promote the unity of science, a goal that Carnap and Neurath in particular thought as advancing the cause of the rational reconstruction of society.

2) Relatedly, another major factor in the reception of logical empiricism was Quine. And, again, even though he was a close friend of Carnap's, it is undeniable that some of his remarks on Carnap's philosophy are highly misleading, to say the least. This is especially true of the highly cited "Epistemology Naturalized" (an otherwise brilliant essay, by the way), in which Quine also assimilates Carnap's Aufbau to the British empiricism program. Moreover, I think the early Quine simply misread Carnap, confusing his philosophy with that of C. I. Lewis. More specifically, Quine read Carnap as engaged in an epistemological project of explaining the truth of mathematics and logic, and of appealing either to truth by convention or to analyticity in order to explain this. This is true of Lewis, but it is importantly not true of Carnap, who had by then abandoned the old epistemological project and was more interested in a conceptual engineering project of devising new tools for the development of science. Unfortunately, Quine's conflation (particularly acute in "Two Dogmas") was widely circulated, and still today you see people complaining that Carnap's distinction cannot carry the "epistemological" burden he imposed on it, when the truth is that Carnap was simply not interested in epistemology anymore (part of the problem here was that Quine's German apparently wasn't all that good when he read Carnap; moreover, as he often said, he read the Logical Syntax as it "came out of Ina's [Carnap's wife] typewriter", which means that he most likely read the first version of LSL, one that did not contain Carnap's Principle of Tolerance).

Anyway, the net result is that most people read Carnap as engaged first in a reductionist project in the line of British empiricism, and then as engaged in an epistemological project to certify the credentials of mathematics and logic. In both cases, we have a picture of Carnap as engaged in a broadly foundationalist project which tries, first, to draw a clear line between science and metaphysics, and, second, to show that this line does not exclude mathematics and logic. The verificationist criterion then emerges as a natural solution to both problems. Statements are divided into analytic and synthetic. The analytic ones are true by convention or definition, whereas the synthetic statements are those which have empirical consequences. This provides the demarcation line---metaphysical statements are neither true (or false) by convention, nor have empirical consequences, and are therefore meaningless)---and also solves the problem of mathematical knowledge (it is analytic). Again, this may be a fair depiction of Ayer's (and perhaps C. I. Lewis's) philosophy, but not of Carnap's.

In short, although much more needs to be said about this, I definitely think that the reception of logical positivism was influenced by Ayer and Quine, and that had as an effect to obscure the main contributions of the movement.



There are many reasons for that, but the main one seems to be that no criterion is forthcoming. Moreover, much of philosophy of science has turned to more concrete matters, being more interested in how science is actually developed and justified than in a priori pronouncements of what is legitimate or not. In other words, that particular line of research did not prove much fruitful, I think.



Yes, it is somewhat fashionable nowadays to associate scientism with (covertly) right-wing ideologies, but, historically at least, that was simply not the case. Carnap and Neurath were firmly leftists, and even the more conservative members of the Vienna Circle were mostly progressists (certainly by today's standards). In fact, one interesting line of research today is whether Horkheimer, and the early Frankfurt School more generally, could be considered as an ally of the logical positivists against, e.g., Heidegger.

:up: Well done.

There are many reasons for that, but the main one seems to be that no criterion is forthcoming. Moreover, much of philosophy of science has turned to more concrete matters, being more interested in how science is actually developed and justified than in a priori pronouncements of what is legitimate or not. In other words, that particular line of research did not prove much fruitful, I think. — Nagase

But, as a neo-Kantian, isn't the limits of intelligibility or landmarks in thought itself of interest or serve as a method of ascertaining the complexity of a field? I mean this in the positive as to why it's worthwhile to learn about what one should focus on. Do you think that what Godel was to mathematics, that quantum mechanics is to the principle of sufficient reason?

I brings those two examples up because I believe that by demarcating one can better understand where one is in a level of understanding of a field. I might as well speak for myself as a holistic learner in such a broad field that is science.

Collingwood observes that positivism "failed to see [that] 'fact' is a term belonging to the vocabulary of historical thought. Properly speaking, a 'fact' is a thing of the kind which is the business of historians to ascertain.... Here, facts are always and notoriously historical facts.... Positivism thus implied, but did not attempt to furnish, a theory of historical knowledge as a foundation for its theory of natural science. Failing that, it was bankrupt from the start. It had staked its solvency on assets it did not possess." An Essay on Metaphysics, pp. 145 - 146.

A couple of remarks:

1) The logical positivists were influenced by the Neo-Kantians, but weren't themselves Neo-Kantians. So Neo-Kantian worries do not automatically carry over to them.

2) Logical positivism also wasn't a completely homogeneous movement, by the way. So whereas strictly epistemological projects may have driven them initially (especially Schlick), such projects were not pursued by all members of the group. In the specific case of Carnap, he later came to the view that foundational disputes about what is or is not intelligible as fruitless, since they depend on previous criteria that were not necessarily agreed by all parties. That is why he proposed his Principle of Tolerance, and suggested the replacement of traditional philosophy by the logic of science:

To eliminate this standpoint, together with the pseudo-problems and wearisome controversies which arise as a result of it, is one of the chief tasks of this book. In it, the view will be maintained that we have in every respect complete liberty with regards to the forms of language; that both the forms of construction for sentences and the rules of transformation (...) may be chosen quite arbitrarily. (...) By this method, also, the conflict between divergent points of view on the problem of the foundations of mathematics disappears. For language, in its mathematical form, can be constructed according to the preferences of any one of the points of view represented; so that no question of justification arises at all, but only the question of the syntactical consequences to which one or other choice leads, including the question of non-contradiction.

And a little later:

The first attempts to cast the ship of logic off from the terra firma of the classical forms were certainly bold ones, considered from the historical point of view. But they were hampered by the striving after 'correctness'. Now, however, that impediment has been overcome, and before us lies the boundless ocean of unlimited possibilities. (LSL, Preface, p. xv)

In other words, Carnap is essentially proposing: let a thousand flowers bloom! If you have a proposal for the logic of science or for a new scientific theory, then write it clearly, preferably in a formal or semi-formal system, and we can then assess its usefulness. But there is no sense in trying to decide a priori which forms are acceptable, since, again, such a decision would have to employ a logical framework, and then the question arises about the validity of this framework. Rather, people should be free to employ whatever framework they need, and the validity of the framework is decided not by a theoretical argument, but by pragmatic considerations. Does it achieve its goal? Does it promote human flourishing? And these pragmatic considerations are not guided by rules established once and for all, but by negotiation among the relevant parties.

3) This moves the debate in a rather different direction. Instead of asking whether something is science or pseudo-science, it asks whether a given theory is a fruitful research program or a degenerate one. This seems (to me) a much more interesting question, and much more amenable to debate.

Instead of asking whether something is science or pseudo-science, it asks whether a given theory is a fruitful research program or a degenerate one. This seems (to me) a much more interesting question, and much more amenable to debate. — Nagase

:up:

Excellent post. :clap:

I'd suggest, again, that this was merely a symptom of the more fundamental failure: observational verification is not a descriptively adequate account of linguistic meaning (it simply doesn't capture how we actually use words), which had the result that the verification criteria could not satisfy itself, despite the fact that the criteria was clearly perfectly meaningful (albeit empirically/descriptively wrong).

If we can understand the verification criteria as a meaningful proposal (which we clearly can), but the criteria cannot satisfy itself as a meaningful proposal, then clearly this criteria is not a good one for linguistic meaning. Ayer might have had a case for verification as a principle for scientific theories or factual claims or something like this, but his aim drastically exceeded his reach.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that Popper is irrelevant or whatever. It's just that popular accounts of science tend to portray him as being the be-all-end-all of philosophy of science, and particularly his falsificationism as being almost consensual when that is far from the case in the philosophy of science. I mean, maybe it should be consensual, but as a sociological observation, I don't think it is.

Isn't it pretty widely agreed that falsificationism is, at best, far too simplistic if not outright wrong? Sort of ironic that many scientists and non-philosophers seem to regard falsificationism as definitive when the view among philosophers is... somewhat more complicated (at least, this was my impression of the scholarly consensus). Not that falsificationism was useless or anything (far from it- obviously a hugely influential and fruitful idea), but that it turned out to be, at best, not the whole story.

Great posts, btw. :strong:

(I'm definitely guilty of conflating logical positivism with verificationism, partially because Ayer was the one I was most familiar with... though obviously the verification criteria of meaning was pretty central to the whole LP project, such as the rejection of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, etc on the grounds that it is literally meaningless according to the verification criteria)

One of the LP's weakness was refusing to talk about Metaphysics, which made themselves look embracing intolerance and dogmatism.

Facts describe the way things are.

With the above in mind, I am, and have been for a long time, quite fond of logical positivism. I never quite understood why logical positivism kinda faded out of existence and was taken over by a new methodology in science called fallibilism, so named after Popper established it as a better method than verification of conjectures or hypothesi. — Shawn

Okay. Let's analyse this with an actual case. Say I have a new theory about the state of affairs during and shortly before and Planck era. How must I proceed? Falsifying and criticising firstly?9

The analytic and logical methods which were their main tool,  were good for checking out linguistic validities in texts, but were not up to the job for covering all the objects and their workings in the universe.

Facts describe the way things are.

With the above in mind, I am, and have been for a long time, quite fond of logical positivism. I never quite understood why logical positivism kinda faded out of existence and was taken over by a new methodology in science called fallibilism, so named after Popper established it as a better method than verification of conjectures or hypothesi. — Shawn

The reason why it took over is powerplay. Pure and simple. LP, of which Feyerabend once was a proponent, is in fact the same as falsificationism, but with a positive attitude instead of the negative one of Popper. Maybe he wanted to kill all physics theories.