Logical Positivism The Vienna Circle

2015 ◽  
pp. 29-36
Keyword(s):  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Positivism

Mach, Ernst (1838–1916)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Atomic Theory ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
Neutral Monism ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Scientific Laws ◽  
Limiting Case

Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. Though not one of the great philosophers, he was tremendously influential in the development of ‘scientific philosophy’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A vigorous opponent of ‘metaphysics’, he was celebrated as a progenitor of logical positivism. His work is regarded as a limiting case of pure empiricism; he stands between the empiricism of Hume and J.S. Mill, and that of the Vienna Circle. Mach’s positivist conception of science saw its aims as descriptive and predictive; explanation is downgraded. Scientific laws and theories are economical means of describing phenomena. Theories that refer to unobservable entities – including atomic theory – may impede inquiry. They should be eliminated where possible in favour of theories involving ‘direct descriptions’ of phenomena. Mach claimed to be a scientist, not a philosopher, but the ‘Machian philosophy’ was ‘neutral monism’. Close to phenomenalism, it saw the world as functionally related complexes of sensations, and aspired to anti-metaphysical neutrality.

scholarly journals Logischer Positivismus und radikale Gesellschaftsreform

1979 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ansgar Beckermann
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World View ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Direct Connection ◽  
World War ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Scientific World

AbstractFor many years some critically engaged German sociologists have challenged Logical Positivism with the criticism that Positivism’s allegedly neutral conception of science in fact supports conservative or even reactionary political movements. This line of criticism is due, at last in part, to the fact that German scientists became acquainted with the positivistic branch of analytical philosophy after World War II almost exclusively through the works of the liberal-conservative K. R. Popper. Popper, however, is by no means representative of all Positivists. There were influential members of the Vienna Circle who saw a direct connection between the aims of the „scientific world view“ and the endeavour to renew the society on the basis of rational, i.e. socialistic, principles. This connection becomes especially clear in the manifesto Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung − Der Wiener Kreis which was published in 1929 by Carnap, Hahn and Neurath.

Later Empiricism and Logical Positivism

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Skorupski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Late Modern

The empiricist approaches to mathematics discussed in this article belong to an era of philosophy which we can begin to see as a whole. It stretches from Kant's Critiques of the 1780s to the twentieth-century analytic movements which ended, broadly speaking, in the 1950s—in and largely as a result of the work of Quine. Seeing this period historically is by no means saying that its ideas are dead; it just helps in understanding the ideas. That applies to the two versions of empiricism that were most prominent in this late modern period: the radical empiricism of Mill and the “logical” empiricism associated with the Vienna Circle positivism of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Mill and the logical positivists shared the empiricist doctrine that no informative proposition is a priori.

Ayer, Alfred Jules (1910–89)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Expression Of Emotion ◽  
Physical Objects ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Logical Notion ◽  
In Virtue Of

A.J. Ayer made his name as a philosopher with the publication of Language, Truth and Logic in 1936, a book which established him as the leading English representative of logical positivism, a doctrine put forward by a group of philosophers known as members of the Vienna Circle. The major thesis of logical positivism defended by Ayer was that all literally meaningful propositions were either analytic (true or false in virtue of the meaning of the proposition alone) or verifiable by experience. This, the verificationist theory of meaning, was used by Ayer to deny the literal significance of any metaphysical propositions, including those that affirmed or denied the existence of God. Statements about physical objects were said to be translatable into sentences about our sensory experiences (the doctrine known as phenomenalism). Ayer further claimed that the propositions of logic and mathematics were analytic truths and that there was no natural necessity, necessity being a purely logical notion. Finally the assertion of an ethical proposition, such as ‘Stealing is wrong’, was analysed as an expression of emotion or attitude to an action, in this case the expression of a negative attitude to the act of stealing. During the rest of his philosophical career Ayer remained faithful to most of these theses, but came to reject his early phenomenalism in favour of a sophisticated realism about physical objects. This still gives priority to our experiences, now called percepts, but the existence of physical objects is postulated to explain the coherence and consistency of our percepts. Ayer continued to deny that there were any natural necessities, analysing causation as consisting in law-like regularities. He used this analysis to defend a compatibilist position about free action, claiming that a free action is to be contrasted with one done under constraint or compulsion. Causation involves mere regularity, and so neither constrains nor compels.

Logical Positivism, Wittgenstein and Ethical Value of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-66
Author(s):  
Valeriy A. Surovtsev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
The Difference

The problem of interconnection of L. Wittgenstein and logical positivism is considered. It is proved that mutual influence did not exist and could not exist due to dissimilarities between the tasks proposed in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” and the goals that are basic for the representatives of the Vienna Circle. But the difference between the tasks and the goals does not diminish the value of the philosophy of early Wittgenstein, if even his philosophy cannot be interpreted from the point of view of the Unified Science. But the ethical value of the “Tractatus” is problematic too. It does not contain any positive decisions for the humanities.

Logical positivism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Mathematical Techniques ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The University

Logical positivism (logical empiricism, neo-positivism) originated in Austria and Germany in the 1920s. Inspired by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revolutions in logic, mathematics and mathematical physics, it aimed to create a similarly revolutionary scientific philosophy purged of the endless controversies of traditional metaphysics. Its most important representatives were members of the Vienna Circle who gathered around Moritz Schlick at the University of Vienna (including Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Kurt Gödel, Hans Hahn, Karl Menger, Otto Neurath and Friedrich Waismann) and those of the Society for Empirical Philosophy who gathered around Hans Reichenbach at the University of Berlin (including Walter Dubislav, Kurt Grelling and Carl Hempel). Although not officially members of either group, the Austrian philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper were, at least for a time, closely associated with logical positivism. The logical positivist movement reached its apogee in Europe in the years 1928–34, but the rise of National Socialism in 1933 marked the effective end of this phase. Thereafter, however, many of its most important representatives emigrated to the USA. Here logical positivism found a receptive audience among such pragmatically, empirically and logically minded American philosophers as Charles Morris, Ernest Nagel and W.V. Quine. Thus transplanted to the English-speaking world of ‘analytic’ philosophy it exerted a tremendous influence – particularly in philosophy of science and the application of logical and mathematical techniques to philosophical problems more generally. This influence began to wane around 1960, with the rise of a pragmatic form of naturalism due to Quine and a historical-sociological approach to the philosophy of science due mainly to Thomas Kuhn. Both of these later trends, however, developed in explicit reaction to the philosophy of logical positivism and thereby attest to its enduring significance.

The Vienna Circle

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Murray
Keyword(s):  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Gottlob Frege ◽  
Rudolf Carnap ◽  
Ernst Mach ◽  
Kurt Gödel ◽  
The World ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Scientific Worldview

In 1922 Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) transformed the Verein Ernst Mach (Ernst Mach Society), a weekly reading group concerned with logical positivism, into an international assembly of academics known as der Weiner Kreis, or the Vienna Circle, which responded to recent developments within analytic philosophy by leading thinkers Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). Early members included Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970), Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) and Otto Neurath (1882–1945). In 1929, Neurath published Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis (The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle), a pamphlet delineating the group’s rejection of metaphysics in favour of a scientific worldview predicated upon empirical phenomena.

The Relational Nature of Species Concepts

1998 ◽  
pp. 9-16
Author(s):  
José E. Burgos
Keyword(s):  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Species Concepts ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Intellectual Movement

Édouard Le Roy as early as 1901 observed the existence of an intellectual movement seeking to break from traditional positivism and set for himself the task of drawing up the program of this new positivism. Noting that this program precedes the Vienna Circle, I endeavor to determine its nature and to evaluate its impact on logical positivism. Viewed in this light, the discussions between Le Roy, Poincaré and Duhem appear more prolonged and substantial than is usually thought. What we have here is perhaps not a homogeneous doctrine but a vigorous intellectual movement, from which logical positivists were able to borrow specific theses in their attempts to mitigate Mach's strict positivism; more important still, they had before them an example of neopositivism. History is not the only concern: among the issues debated, one encounters the claim that facts are theory-laden. This claim still stirs controversy today. An inquiry into the origins of the claim is one way of clarifying the arguments involved.

scholarly journals POZITYVIZMAS IR MARKSIZMAS

Problemos ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 155-166
Author(s):  
Evaldas Nekrašas
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Herbert Marcuse ◽  
Auguste Comte ◽  
Common Opinion ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The 19Th Century

Straipsnyje nagrinėjama pozityvizmo ir marksizmo santykio problema. Siekiama išryškinti jų ištakas, sąveiką, panašumus ir skirtumus, parodyti, kad klasikinis marksizmas nėra toks tolimas klasikiniam pozityvizmui, kaip paprastai manoma. XIX amžiuje abi filosofijos kryptys laikėsi scientistinių ir progresyvistinių nuostatų, kurios visų pirma ir lėmė jų pažiūrų kitais klausimais artumą. Tačiau XX amžiuje susiformavus loginiam pozityvizmui ir neomarksistinei kritinei teorijai, šių krypčių metodologinės pozicijos ėmė vis labiau tolti. Straipsnyje aptariama komplikuota Vienos ratelio ir Frankfurto mokyklos santykių istorija ir vadinamasis ginčas dėl pozityvizmo (Positivismusstreit). Analizė baigiama išvada, kad daugelį skirtumų tarp pozityvizmo ir marksizmo lemia jų skirtingas požiūris į patyrimą. Svarbiausi nagrinėjami autoriai: Auguste’as Comte’as, Karlas Marxas, Vladimiras Leninas, Otto Neurathas, Maxas Horkheimeris, Herbertas Marcuse, Jürgenas Habermasas. Pagrindiniai žodžiai: klasikinis pozityvizmas, klasikinis marksizmas, loginis pozityvizmas, kritinė teorija.Positivism and MarxismEvaldas Nekrašas  Summary The author analyses the relation between positivism and Marxism. He seeks to expose their common sources and interaction, similarities and differences and to demonstrate that, contrary to the common opinion, classical Marxism and classical positivism are not so much disparate. In the 19th century both philosophies shared scientistic and progressivist views, and this accounts for their many other resemblances. Yet in the 20th century, when classical positivism was replaced by logical positivism and the Neomarxist critical theory emerged, methodological orientations of both movements started to diverge more and more. The article explores the complicated history of relations between the Vienna Circle and the Frankfurt School and inquires into the Positivismusstreit. It ends with the conclusion that the majority of differences between positivism and Marxism stem from their different notions of experience. The author deals mainly with the views of Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Otto Neurath, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas. Keywords: classical positivism, classical Marxism, logical positivism, critical theory.

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