Logical positivism - Logical positivism Logical positivism (later referred to as logical empiricism), was one of the early manifestations of analytic philosophy. It was the philosophical position of the Vienna Circle in its early years, and gained recognition in the English speaking world through the work of A. J. Ayer. The term subsequently came to be almost interchangeable with "analytic philosophy" in the first half of the twentieth century. Logical Positivism was immensely influential in philosophy of science, logic, and philosophy of language. Even though few of its tenets are still agreed with, its role as in forming contemporary philosophy should not be underestimated; many subsequent commentators on "logical positivism" tend to attribute to it more of a singular purpose and creed than it in fact adhered to, overlooking.
Positivism - Positivism Positivism is the name for (at least) two philosophical directions. They have in common the idea of a science without theology or metaphysics, based only on facts about the physical / material world. The older positivism is based on the philosophical thinking of Auguste Comte in the 19th century. The newer logical positivism was founded in 1920s by the Vienna Circle. Structural anthropologist Edmund Leach described positivism during the 1966 Henry Myers Lecture: Positivism is the view that serious scientific inquiry should not search for ultimate causes deriving from some outside source but must confine itself to the study of relations existing between facts which are directly accessible to observation. Positivism is also the name of a legal view, usually called legal positivism. Against natural.
Vienna Circle - an irate graduate student. Many members left Austria during the rise of the Nazi party, and the circle had dissolved by 1936. Their approach to philosophy came to be known as "Logical Positivism." Prominent members of the Circle included Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Herbert Feigl, Philipp Frank, Friedrich Waissman, Hans Hahn. They were visited on occasion by Hans Reichenbach, Kurt Gödel, Carl Hempel, Alfred Tarski, W. V. Quine, and A. J. Ayer (who popularized their work in Britain). Karl Popper, though he never attended the Circle's meetings, was influential in the reception and criticism of their doctrines. For some time a few of the group's members met regularly with Ludwig Wittgenstein..
History of philosophy - life. If God exists at all, surely He is the most important feature of the universe, and therefore worthy of study. One continuing interest in this time was to prove the existence of God, through logic alone, if possible. One early effort was the Cosmological Argument, conventionally attributed to Thomas Aquinas. The argument roughly, is that everything that exists has a cause. Therefore, there must be an uncaused first cause, and this is God. Aquinas also adapted this argument to prove the goodness of God. Everything has some goodness, and the cause of each thing is better than the thing caused. Therefore, the first cause is the best possible thing. Similar arguments are used to prove God's power and uniqueness. Another important argument proof of the existence of God was the.
Hippolyte Taine - defended by Guizot: finally, after three days of discussion, it was decided that as the prize could not be awarded to Taine, it should not be awarded at all. This was the last time Taine sought the suffrages of the Academy save as a candidate, in which quality he appeared once in 1874 and failed to be elected, Mézières, Caro and Dumas being the rival candidates; and twice in 1878, when, after having failed in May, H Martin being chosen, he was at last elected in November in place of M. Loménie. In 1866 he received the Legion of Honour, and on the conclusion of his lectures in Oxford on Corneille and Racine, the University conferred upon him (1871) its degree of D.C.L. The period from 1864 to 1870 was perhaps.
George Henry Lewes - in the foundation of the Leader, of which he was the literary editor. In 1853 he republished under the title of Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences a series of papers which had appeared in that journal. In 1851 he became acquainted with George Eliot, and in 1854 left his wife to live with her. The culmination of Lewes's work in prose literature is the Life of Goethe (1855), probably the best known of his writings. Lewes's versatility, and his combination of scientific with literary tastes, eminently fitted him to appreciate the wide-ranging activity of the German poet. The work became well-known in Germany itself, despite the boldness of its criticism and the unpopularity of some of its views (e.g. on the relation of the second to the first part of Faust)..
God - having the feeling that existence has a divine or awe-inspiring aspect. Hinduism is often characterized as pantheistic. Panentheism holds that God contains, but is not identical to, the Universe. Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, paints a panentheistic view of God; this view of God has wide acceptance in Hasidic Judaism. This is also the view of Process theology and the Christian movement known as Creation Spirituality. Maltheism is a form of theism which holds that God is a cruel, arrogant, abusive, and untruthful being, unworthy of worship. Maltheists are often monotheistic and believe that God is dependent on worship to live. Animism is the belief that spirits inhabit every existing thing, including plants, minerals, animals and, including all the elements, air, water, earth, and fire. The first form of worship probably expressed animist.
Frederick C. Copleston - BBC Radio debate with Bertrand Russell on the existence of God Also took part in another famous debate, this one with A. J. Ayer on logical positivism and the meaningfulness of religious language.
Epistemology - there a God? Is the God of the philosophers the same as the Biblical God? Is there a reality beyond that which we can sense? Such questions are termed transcendental, because they currently go beyond the limits of rational inquiry. In the 20th century Logical Positivists have declared such metaphysical questions to be devoid of cognitive significance. But others continue to ask and search, or already have an answer -- epistemological beliefs which they prefer. No consensus exists as to which epistemological beliefs will give human beings the most accurate understanding of the truth -- or even whether there is just one 'truth'. All people have epistemological beliefs, even if unconsciously, because thinking beings cannot understand and analyze ideas without first having a system to accept and process those ideas. All.
Alfred Ayer - June 27, 1989) was a philosopher who helped popularise logical positivism in English-speaking countries in his books Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956). This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it..
Analytic philosophy - whose primary emphasis is on the analysis of language or meaning. It is characterized by its effort to clarify philosophical issues by analysis and logical rigor. Several lines of thought originate from the analytic philosophy tradition. These include: logical positivism, logical empiricism, logical atomism, logicism and ordinary language philosophy. The term "analytic philosophy" in part denotes the fact that most of this philosophy traces its roots to the movement of "logical analysis" at the beginning of the century; in part the term serves to distinguish "analytic" from other "kinds" of philosophy, especially "continental philosophy." The latter denotes mainly philosophy that has taken place on continental Europe after (but not including) Kant. One term indicates a method of philosophy and the other indicates a range of subject matter; and the "distinction," prevalent.
The relationship between religion and science - long before they were formulated by modern scientists; and, some Jewish fundamentalists make the same claim in regards to the Torah. In response to the freethought encouraged by enlightenment thinkers, over the last two centuries, many people have left organized religion altogether. Many people became atheists or agnostics, with no formal affiliation with any religious organization. Many others joined Secular Humanism or the Ethical Culture Society, non-religious organizations which have a social role similar to that which religion often plays; others joined non-creedal religious organizations, such as Unitarian Universalism. People in these groups no longer accept any religious doctrine or perspective which rests solely on dogmatic authority. In between these positions lies that of non-fundamentalist religious believers. A great many Christians and Jews still accept some or many traditional religious beliefs.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously - was mostly written in the late 1930s), the Estonian writer Eduard Vilde (1865-1933) wrote "Rabbits were running to the Eternity holding rainpipes in their mouths" etc. There are doubtless earlier examples of such sentences, possibly from the philosophy of language literature, but not necessarily uncontroversial ones, given that the focus has been mostly on borderline cases. For example, followers of logical positivism held that "metaphysical" (i.e. not empirically verifiable) statements are simply meaningless; e.g. Rudolph Carnap wrote an article where he quite literally claimed that almost every sentence from Heidegger was grammatically correct, yet meaningless. Of course, non-logical positivists disagreed with this. Examples like Tesnière's and Chomsky's are the least controversially nonsensical, and Chomsky's example remains by far the most famous..
W. V. Quine - an analytic philosopher. He served as the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 2000. His major writings include Two Dogmas of Empiricism, which influentially attacked the logical positivists' conception of analytic statements and Word and Object. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Life 2 Work 2.1 Rejection of Logical Positivism and of analytic-synthetic distinction 2.2 Develops indeterminacy of translation 2.3 Develops ontological relativity 2.4 Quine Quotes 3 Notable Books Authored by Quine 4 See also 5.
Quasi-empirical methods - errors. These are common to both science and mathematics - and do not include experimental method. Einstein's discovery of the General Theory of relativity relied upon thought-experiments and mathematics, and empirical methods only became relevant when confirmation was looked for. Some empirical confirmation was found only some time after the general acceptance of the theory. Thought experiments are almost standard procedure in Philosophy, where a conjecture is tested out in the imagination for its imagined effects on experience; where these are thought to be implausible, or unlikely to occur, or not actually occurring, then the conjecture is either rejected or amended. Logical Positivism was a perhaps extreme version of this. Post-20th-century philosophy of mathematics is mostly concerned with quasi-empirical methods especially as reflected in actual mathematical practice of working mathematicians. See.
Paul Feyerabend - in 1987). Feyerabend commenced an eclectic intellectual life reading history, sociology and then theoretical physics. He appears to have followed the logical positivism of the Vienna School, then coming under the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. He was accepted as a student by Wittgenstein, who died before Feyerabend moved to England. Feyerabend then studied under Popper. It was at the LSU that he met another of Popper’s students, Imre Lakatos. Lakatos' sudden death put an end to a planed joint publication, but Feyerabend went on to write his most famous criticism of methodology, first as an article and then as a book entitled ''Against Method'. Feyerabend’s critique of science takes place on two fronts. Having been influenced By Popper, he examines in detail the logic of scientific method, as.
Philosophical movement - of major philosophical movements, in rough chronological order: The Ancient World Platonic realism Pythagoreanism Stoicism Cynicism Neoplatonism The Modern World The Renaissance itself, which aimed to revive Classical Greek and Roman ideas Rationalism, dominant on continental Europe following Descartes Empiricism, dominant in Britain following Hobbes The Enlightenment which drew attention to the importance of science and reason to human life French materialism German idealism, fifty years from Kant's major work through the death of Hegel Continental Philosophy Romanticism Utilitarianism -- Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill Marxism Existentialism -- Søren Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre Phenomenology Sartre, Heidegger Logicism -- Gottlob Frege Logical Positivism (with the Vienna Circle, Logical Atomism (Russell), and Ideal Language Philosophy (Wittgenstein)) Analytic Philosophy -- Gottlob Frege, W. V. O. Quine Structuralism Modernism (more a movement in the arts, but.
Pseudoscience - opinion of a given field, regardless of any objective measures. If the claims of a given field can be tested it may be real science, however odd or astonishing. If they cannot be tested by any means imaginable it is likely pseudoscience. If the claims made are inconsistent with experimental results or established theory, it is often presumed to be pseudoscience. In other circumstances it may be difficult to distinguish which of two opposing "sciences" are valid; for example, both the proponents and opponents of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming have recruited the help of scientists to endorse contradictory political goals. This enlistment of science in the service of politics is sometimes called "junk science". Such fields as acupuncture and lucid dreaming may be categorized as protosciences; there is a.
Wilfrid Sellars - was, perhaps, the first pragmatist to take on English analytic philosophy and logical positivism. His most famous work is the lengthy and difficult paper, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind." One of the things that makes Sellars such a difficult read is that he insisted on writing for the ages. He considered the lingua franca of philosophy to be the history of philosophy, so his writing is a rich engagement with both the philosophy of his period and of the entire history..
Metaphysics - physical objects are: when in general can we say that physical objects come into being and when they cease to exist? Surely the apple can change in many ways without ceasing to exist. It could get brown and rotten but it would still be that apple. But if someone ate it, it would not just have changed; it would no longer exist. So there are some metaphysical questions to be answered about the notions of identity, or being the same thing over time, and change. This apple exists in space (it sits on a table in a room) and in time (it was not on the table a week ago and it will not be on the table a week from now). But what does this talk of space and time.
