Logical Positivism

I encountered a couple internet logical positivists recently. It's unusual that someone will know what "logical positivism" is and still adhere to it, as some of its primary adherents have all but pronounced it dead. It refers to a movement in the 1920s and 30s which emphasized syntax and empiricism. In any case, these particular logical positivists were emphasizing one of the primary tenets of logical positivism: metaphysics is semantically meaningless. It was interesting how quickly these logical positivists were able to get those to whom they were replying to assume with them that some of the more foundational concepts of logical positivism were true, and given that I've been reviewing logical positivism in my philosophy class over the past few weeks, I thought I'd share some thoughts on it so that one can anticipate these subtle tactics and effectively counter them. As the more insightful critiques of a given philosophy usually come from those who used to believe it, for those who wish to skip the text and just listen to the problems inherent in logical positivism, this interview of A. J. Ayer (begin at 6:28) gives a nice, short summary, although Ayer seems a little reluctant to say logical positivism is a wholly unsatisfying philosophy.

Language

Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics all pertain to linguistics. Syntax refers to the rules or structure of a theory of language, semantics refers to the meaning of words, and pragmatics designates that field of study whereby one utilizes the usefulness of language. A development in logical positivism that allowed men in the Vienna Circle (the original logical positivists) such as Carnap to bridge what was thought to be a metaphysical gap between syntax and semantics/pragmatics was the following postulation: “a sentence ‘S’ is true if and only if S.” Meta-language, whose subjects are sentences (“S”), became connected to object-language, whose subjects are real world referents (S). Example: "The snow is white" is true if and only if it is really the case the snow is white.

Problems: an immediately perceivable problem with logical positivism here is that it is basically susceptible to all the problems of empiricism. Examples: the reliability of sensation must be unreasonably presupposed; "snow" and "white" are ostensibly, arbitrarily defined such that knowledge of communication between persons is, as Augustine anticipated some 1600 years prior to logical positivism, impossible - that is to say, empiricism is solipsistic; etc. But as a matter of fact, logical positivism was radically empirical, as shall be seen in the below.

Verificationism and the Verification Criterion of Meaningfulness

Verificationism is the position that a proposition must be able to be determined to be true or false in order to be meaningful. So, for example, propositions in the future tense are apparently not meaningful. The verificationism of logical positivism and its extreme emphasis on empiricism led to the verification criterion of meaningfulness, the principle to which logical positivists (such as the ones I met recently) refer when asked why they believed metaphysics is nonsensical. The verification criterion of meaningfulness refers to the following: propositions which are not analytic (i.e. tautologous) must be empirically verifiable or else they are meaningless. Such being the case, metaphysics would by definition be meaningless.

Problem: the most obvious problem - one which caused Ayer to step back from logical positivism - was that the verification criterion of meaningfulness is a proposition which cannot itself be verified on its own grounds. It's a self-defeating principle. This is, in my estimation, the crushing blow to logical positivism. Popper was another individual who saw this flaw and attempted to replace verificationism with falsificationism as the demarcation criterion of science. This has its own problems, but at least Popper didn't reject metaphysics outright. Even with these problems, one final subject related to logical positivism merits note.

Ethics

Ayer, consistent with verificationism and Positivism, taught that ethical posits are neither true nor false. “Ought” and “should” statements are rather emotive. This is the ethical theory known as emotivism. Stevenson, another logical positivist, contributed to this theory by explaining that emotivism does not preclude a means of ethical dialogue. By distinguishing between beliefs (eg. “this actor is in the movie”) and attributes (eg. “I prefer tennis to movies”), Stevenson made significant strides in an attempt to resolve disagreements of this nature. He noted that increasing one another’s awareness of facts can only stimulate beneficial conversation, although he realized differences in attributes are irresolvable.

Feigl, on the other hand, thought emotivists missed the point. Forwarding the concepts of validation and vindication, analogous to internal and external questions, Feigl believed he came the closest to resolving ethical disputes. Validation refers to the idea that if two disputants share the same belief in a general ethical principle, this shared belief can function as a means by which they can seek to resolve differences on a specific point. And even in there are no shared principles, according to vindication, the persons can nevertheless compare their respective systems in hopes one will persuade the other. It is only when disagreement on this level persists that one can claim there is no means of resolution on Positivistic grounds.

Problem: I would agree that each of these contributions takes Positivism to its logical end. But that's precisely the problem. One can describe ethical beliefs but not account for them. Ethical discourse is possible, although ultimately, it may certainly be the case conflicts are irresolvable. In fact, it seems to me the emotivists frame the issue in a different manner than does Feigl, but they don’t differ significantly in that both agree insofar as ethical statements are unjustifiable and ethical dialogue can only go so far.

Many logical positivists bite the bullet and accept moral nihilism, in which case one can always appeal to one of the plethora of intrinsically insoluble difficulties, some of which are mentioned above, but given that one will usually hear arguments from incredulity from logical positivists regarding the idea metaphysical statements can be meaningful, it doesn't hurt to be able to throw incredulity back in their face when you ask if they can seriously believe there is nothing objectively objectionable about rape, murder, et. al.

Falsificationism and Inductivism

After posting an essay criticizing falsificationism, I received a request for a definition of it. You gotta laugh! Anyways, because I don't want to fall asleep on the job... again... this post will also briefly cover inductivism. My reply:

Falsificationism is a specific form of empiricism; as an epistemological position, it presupposes the tenets of empiricism (reliability of sensation &c.). Falsificationism has been, in the history of science, stated opposite inductivism. One could say that the difference between the two positions is as follows:

Inductivists utilize induction: they infer universal properties on the grounds of a finite amount of observations. Example: swans A, B, C,..., Z are all white. “Therefore,” says the [epistemological] inductivist, “all swans are white.” Induction, however, is always tentative; in the future, I could conceivably observe a black swan. Thus, inductivists often admit they are only interested in "progress" (not knowledge, per se): one scientifically “progresses” insofar as one’s belief that all swans are white increases in rationality with every new observation of a white swan (with no contrary cases).

This is fine so far as it goes, but falsificationists, perceiving the problem of induction to empirical epistemology, hope[d] that by discarding the inductivist methodology, they could achieve true knowledge. Rather than moving from specific observations to universal conclusions (per inductivists), falsificationists "falsify" universal conclusions by specific observations. A falsificationist would, for example, say "I observe this swan is white. Therefore, not all swans are black." Falsificationists, unlike inductivists, purport valid arguments.

The points I am making in my previous post are intended to show that, be that as it may, the arguments of falsificationists are unsound (I assume the reader knows the difference between a “valid” argument and a “sound” argument). The first few points are intended to show that falsificationism, because it presupposes empiricism, is likewise suspect to the errors of empiricism. When I state that "I observe this swan is white" is true, I am assuming answers to a number of epistemic questions empiricism is ill-equipped to handle – in this case, at least the subjectivity of sensation, problem of unknown variables, and, relatedly, the lack of an answer to the question of the contingency of knowledge.

These are problems falsificationism does not solve, so it fails in its endeavor to escape the end of inductivism: skepticism. On top of these unsatisfied questions, falsificationism leaves one without knowledge of which of the contradictory propositions (viz. the observation statement and the universal proposition) has been falsified, falsificationism is a relatively easily satisfied criterion to denote what "is" science (hence, less meaningful), and falsificationism would have, if it were adopted by 17th century empiricists, stifled many hypotheses which are [con]temporarily (!) favor (i.e. falsificationism is, on an empiricist's own grounds, historically untenable).

These considerations compelled its decline in favor amongst empiricists over the past half century or so. If nothing else, I hope this post is illustrative of how many philosophies of science have so quickly risen and fallen. The only constant seems to be that empiricism is constantly uncertain of its ground. Soli Deo Gloria, friends.

Philosophy of Science 1

As my debate opponent is slow, as I am on spring break (no new Modern Philosophy posts for a week), and as I am still working on other material I'd rather not post until it is to my liking, I've been a little quiet this past week. To remedy that, I plan to post (in no particular order) some essays I wrote in last semester's Philosophy of Science.

For the class in Philosophy of Science I took last semester, we had to write at least 7 revised essays on various topics pertaining to the philosophy of science. These essays incorporate class discussion and points from Chalmers' "What is This Thing Called Science?"

Falsificationism

“What is, or what are, the main problem(s) of the falsificationist approach according to Chalmers?”

The falsificationist approach has several problems that Chalmers relates and we discussed in class: Firstly, if an observation contradicts a theory or hypothesis, the falsificationist has no method by which he can discern which is or if both are false. In other words, that either the hypothesis or observation statement predicated on the observation has been falsified does not help the falsificationist know which of the two has been falsified. From prior discussions, we noted observations can be biased by unknown variables. Unless the falsificationist can solve this dilemma such that he knows that an observation statement is true or false, he cannot know the hypothesis is necessarily contradictory to reality. Moreover, this inhibits the scientist’s ability to know at what point a new hypothesis should be framed.

Secondly, one might perceive a problem of falsificationism is that from a logical standpoint, one can, at best, only hope to make scientific progress. This problem would also be attributable to the epistemological problem of discerning which observation statements are accurate depictions of the nature of reality. The reason that one can only hope to aspire to scientific progress is that, per paragraph one, we cannot know whether or not the hypothesis or the observation statement or both is falsified. To state that the hypothesis has been falsified would be presumptuous, then, as his observation was not infallible. This led the class to conclude that a problem with falsificationism is that its demarcation criterion of science – that is, the idea that falsifiability marks what is and is not genuinely scientific – is too easy to satisfy.

Thirdly, we noted that falsificationism is inadequate on historical grounds. This especially was shown in our discussion of the Copernican system. Falsificationism doesn’t explain why one observation (naked-eye) should be preferable to another (telescopic). Also, as one might suggest that Aristotelian, Ptolemaic, and Copernican systems are complex, we don’t know for example, what Galileo’s observations falsified. It could be the initial conditions of the experiments, it could be one of the multitude of premises which comprise each system, it could be the accuracy of available technology, or any number of other factors. The last one (available technology) especially compelled us to remark on one more important point: if falsifiability is the demarcation criterion for a scientist, then many promising theories would have been immediately falsified due to limitations with regards to the instruments he uses. This and the other aforementioned factors prompted us to conclude that a certain amount of dogmatism is necessary in order for science to make the headway that falsificationists hope to acheive.