Logical positivism/Talk

From an earlier version of this page:

Logical positivism asserts that only statements about empirical observations are meaningful, effectively asserting that all metaphysical? statements are meaningless.

Unfortunately, this fundamental tenet of logical positivism belongs to the family of statements that it asserts to be meaningless. As a result, the entire edifice of logical positivism vanishes in a puff of logic.

This insight appears not to have occurred to the logical positivist school of philosophers.

Although this may have been stated in an amusing way, and perhaps the language needs toning down, I assert that as:

1. The first sentence quoted is an accurate statement of the fundamental tenet of logical positivism
2. It is a metaphysical statement of the kind that it states are meaningless

the text quoted is a valid comment, (as well as being a bad joke).

Note that none of the above is an attack on Popper's valid (and related) idea of falsifiability which has no such problems

-- The Anome

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As far as I remember logical positivist philosophy, this is "statement about language" or something like that, and such statements fall into special category in logical positivism. For example all math falls into this category: it's not empirical, but positivists didn't reject it. --Taw

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I have restored the observations quoted, but this time with language toned down, your comment merged, and an attempt at NPOV. Is this more acceptable?

-- The Anome

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This is a start, but logical positivism was an entire philosophical movement, not just a theory of cognitive significance. This--"only statements about empirical observations are meaningful, effectively asserting that all metaphysical statements are meaningless"--appears to be an attempt at formulating the verifiability theory of meaning, which was essential to the Vienna Circle's thinking, but does not exhaust what logical positivism was about. Maybe you could do some more research? The topic is eminently researchable--many books have been written about it. --LMS