What do you know about Logical positivism and its Background

Logical Positivism is the most recent trend in philosophy. Though, its parallels may be found in all times and ages in philosophy in the form of anti-speculation tendencies, it is only in the 20th century that this philosophy has been fully elaborated and has come to dominate the philosophic scene. In the 20th century, logical positivism came into existence with the establishment of Vienna Circle.

The Vienna Circle was a group of philosophers or scientists with philosophic inkling who met off and on under the chairmanship of Moritz Schlick, who, at that time was holding the chair of philosophy in the University of Vienna. The common thread binding this group together was a thorough dissatisfaction with the current philosophy which, according to them, was nonscientific, speculative and non-empirical.

They wanted to cry halt to all speculation and give a new turn to the philosophy by basing it upon science and experience. G. Weinberg in his book, An Examination of Logical Positivism, has said that “the official programme on which the Viennese Circle was first organized had two principal aims: to provide secure foundation for sciences and to demonstrate the meaninglessness of metaphysics.”

Thus, the aim of the founders of Vienna Circle was to show that only a philosophy based on experience and scientific methodology has any validity and that the speculative philosophy of the past was merely will-of-the-wisp and lacked all validity and veracity. They wanted to usher in a new era in philosophy wherein all speculation would be abandoned.

Foundation

In the beginning, the activities of the Vienna Circle amounted to the activities of a private club and were not like an open movement that is during the incipient stages the philosophers of Viennese circle debated and discussed the various issues amongst them and had not as yet formulated any positive philosophic programme.

In order to propagate and disseminate their views, the members of the Vienna Circle published a pamphlet, “The Vienna Circle, its Scientific Outlook” wherein they put forward their point of view and programme. Indeed, it was the manifesto of the logical positivism.

In the early twenties, the logical positivism has had most impact on the philosophers of Vienna and Cambridge Universities; but soon, the movement of logical positivism swept the whole world.

The philosopher whose views had maximum impact on the Vienna circle philosophers in turning them away from Metaphysics and formulating a philosophy sans Metaphysics was Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein’s Tractus Logic Philosophicus has paved way for anti-speculation philosophy. He had asserted that the traditional philosophical problems were merely verbal tricks and that philosophy must fight this “bewitchment of intelligence.

“The period between 1930 and 1939 was a golden age of Vienna circle; during this period logical positivism was riding the high crest of philosophic tidal wave. It was a young movement and had all the enthusiasm and zeal of the youth.

Many top intellectuals of the world joined the movement in these years. In 1930, the eminent Polish logician Alfred Tarske was invited to deliver his discourses on mathematics. Rudolf Carnap was greatly impressed by these lectures and he propounded his logical principles on these lines.

Though, logical positivism has made sufficient progress since then, the Vienna Circle has begun disintegrating during Second World War. In 1934, Professor H. Hahn died of heart failure. In 1936, Professor Schlick was murdered by his student. After schlick the mainstay of the Vienna circle was gone.

The best known members of this group were M. Schlick, R. Carnap, F. Waismann, O. Neurath, Feigl, feigl, F. Kaufmann, H. Hahn, K. Mengerand Kurt Godel.

What were the Aims of Logical Positivism?

If we make a close examination of logical positivism we find in it two strains; one positivist and the other negativist. On the positive side, the aim of these philosophers was to make the foundations of the science to rid it of the pseudo concepts of metaphysics and to lay its foundations on strictly empirical principles.

On the negativist side their aim was to prove the futility and barrenness of the traditional philosophy and condemn metaphysics as meaningless, invalid and misleading.

| According to logical positivists, it is sheer waste of time and energy to indulge in speculation because, that which transcends experience has no meaning, no sense. Only those statements, theories or principles have meaning and relevance which are about something within our experience and which can be validated or invalidated by reference to the facts of experience.

And in as much as lie theories and principles of Metaphysics are not based upon any experience, they are meaningless. Metaphysics, which literally means after-experience, is exhypothesi concerned with something that transcends experience.

And as only empirical facts can be the subject matter of science and can have any validity or meaning, the subject matter of metaphysics, if any, is therefore beyond the realm of sense or meaning.

That is why; the logical positivists are so fond of debunking Metaphysics as ‘nonsense”. What they mean is not that metaphysics is a folly or foolish but that it has no relevance because, it is non-sense (non-experiential) or not about sense experience.

If philosophy cannot deal ninth transcendental spheres without losing sense and with regard to facts of experience it stands nowhere before science, then what can be the proper function of philosophy?

Some thinkers are of the opinion that the proper business of philosophy is to harmonize or synthesize the scientific knowledge. The science deals with particular aspects of the Reality. In order to gain a general or total viewpoint, we need philosophy. This, philosophy is the science of sciences.

However, this view is unacceptable to logical positivists. According to them the conception of harmony, synthesis, totality etc. belong to the sphere of literature and poetry.

What are the Proper functions of philosophy?

Explaining the proper function of philosophy Rudolf Carnap writes: “The proper function of philosophy is to analyze the statements asserted by scientists, study their kinds and relations.

“Thus, the logical positivists deprived philosophy of its traditional function of being surveyor of all knowledge and determiner of what should constitute valid knowledge and to reveal to man the hidden laws of the universe. They have restricted philosophy to a narrow and technical function of evaluating the scientific assertion.

According to logical positivists philosophy is to science what grammar is to language. As the knowledge of grammar does not enable us to create the language but equips us only with the rule which any linguistic expression must follow, similarly, philosophy frames the rules whereby, it can be determined, particular scientific assertion is correct or incorrect.