Rise and Fall of Logical Positivism Research Papers (original) (raw)

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up. Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it. In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically. I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

- by
- •
- Metaphysics, Philosophy Of Language, Kant, Metaphilosophy

I originally entitled this paper ‘Why are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense?’, but since this seemed apt to provoke rather superficial responses, I decided to re-title it. In it I ponder the fact that, not only are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense, there are no uncontroversial examples of what one might call ‘analogue philosophical nonsense’. These would be non-philosophical cases of someone’s believing he means something when in reality he means nothing. (Someone’s saying, ‘It’s 5 o’clock on the sun’ is sometimes offered as an example.) I ask what conditions such cases would need to satisfy. What would count as a compellingly clear case of an illusion of meaning? Why has no one described one?

- by ian dearden
- •
- Psychoanalysis, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy Of Language

.Taking as my starting-point Cora Diamond’s paper ‘What nonsense might be’, I extend her ‘austere’ conception of nonsense to encompass the talking of nonsense. We need to focus on the utterer as well as the utterance. This brings out how difficult it is going to be to DIAGNOSE the talking of (philosophical) nonsense, without falling into the ‘sense that is senseless’ trap (PI, I, 500). It is not clear to what extent Diamond sees the problem here. I suggest that if there is a way round the difficulty, it will involve adopting a therapeutic approach.

- by ian dearden
- •
- Discourse Analysis, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy Of Language, Analytic Philosophy

Edward Witherspoon distinguishes Wittgenstein’s conception of nonsense from Rudolf Carnap’s. The latter does not fully take into account the fact that, if something really is nonsense, it has no more meaning than ‘Ab sur ah’ and therefore cannot have any logical properties. He finds the Carnapian conception even in professed Wittgensteinians such as Peter Hacker and Gordon Baker who think of themselves as rejecting it. My question is where this leaves the notion of PHILOSOPHICAL nonsense. Could anything that was utterly devoid of content play the crucial deceptive role that nonsensicalists, including Wittgensteinians, assign it? Could it ever be detected if it did?

- by ian dearden
- •
- Metaphysics, Philosophy Of Language, Metaphilosophy, Empiricism

The aim of this paper is to provide context for and historical exegesis of Carnap's alleged move from syntax to semantics. The Orthodox Received View states that there was a radical break, while the Unorthodox Received View holds that Carnap's syntactical period already had many significant semantical elements. I will argue that both of them are partly right, both of them contains a kernel of truth: it is true that Carnap's semantical period started after his Logical Syntax of Language – in one sense of semantics. But it is also true, that Carnap had semantical ideas already in LSL: though not (just) in the sense as URV maintained it. This latter sense of semantics is related to what is usually called inferentialism, and by getting a clearer picture of Carnap's original aims, context, and concept-usage, we might be in a better position to approach his alleged inferentialism.

- by Adam Tamas Tuboly
- •
- History of Analytic Philosophy, Semantics, Lvov-Warsaw School, Vienna Circle

- by ian dearden
- •
- Metaphysics, Philosophy Of Language, Metaphilosophy, Philosophy Of Religion

Nietzsche’s favourable comments about science and the senses have recently been taken as evidence of naturalism. Others focus on his falsification thesis: our beliefs are falsifying interpretations of reality. Clark argues that Nietzsche eventually rejects this thesis. This article utilizes the multiple ways of being science friendly in Nietzsche’s context by focussing on Mach’s neutral monism. Mach’s positivism is a natural development of neo-Kantian positions Nietzsche was reacting to. Section 15 of Beyond Good and Evil is crucial to Clark’s interpretation. The presented interpretation makes better sense of this passage and shows that Nietzsche can accept both falsification and empiricism.

- by Nadeem J . Z . Hussain
- •
- Empiricism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Naturalism

Realism refers to a range of ontological and epistemological positions within which research may be conducted. Realist ontologies (assumptions about the nature of reality) range from the view that the world of objects and social structures exist independently of human experience to the idea that, although the world exists independently of any one person, human perception is such that our reality is a pre-interpreted one. Realist epistemologies (theories about what counts as knowledge) range from view that the world can be known directly through the senses to the idea that internally consistent interpretations of reality can count as knowledge if bounded by, and revisable in light of, interactions with the world. Holding a realist ontology does not always commit a researcher to a realist epistemology.......

- by Anna Madill
- •
- Sociology, Social Theory, Sociology of Culture, Philosophy

This essay argues that acknowledging the existence of mind-independent facts is a matter of vital importance, in that acquiescence before the layout of the world is something demanded of knowing agents from the most elementary empirical deliverance to the most abstract construct. Building on the idea that normativity requires the presence of more than one option to choose from, the essay shows how the cessation of one's life is the disjunctive alternative of any experiential episode. This much has been missed, it argues, because of a generalized failure to appreciate how even the simplest atomic contents embroil their subjects in acts of assent. Its account thus casts a new light on relativism and skepticism, revealing them to be provisional luxuries supported only by the cognitive labor of others.

- by Marc Champagne
- •
- Philosophy, Philosophy Of Language, Analytic Philosophy, Epistemology
- by Wim A. Christiaens
- •
- Logic, Marxism, Jean Piaget, Causation

Nesin Felsefe Köyü Bilim Tarihi ve Felsefesi yaz okulu kapsamında hazırlanmış olan dersin sunumudur.

- by Dinçer Çevik
- •
- History of Science, Rise and Fall of Logical Positivism, Otto Neurath

Keywords: Philipp Frank, sociology of knowledge, sociology of science, logical empiricism, philosophy of science

1962 marked an important point in intellectual history not only for historians, philosophers, sociologists and scientists but also for educated laymen. After a long and productive decade Thomas Kuhn published his Structure of Scientific Revolutions as Volume 2 Issue 2 of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, edited (after the death of Otto Neurath) by Rudolf Carnap and Charles Morris. 2012 marked another important date—it was the 50th anniversary of Structure's first edition. The many conferences, workshops and presentations were documented in special issues and collections; one of them is Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions – 50 Years On, edited by William J. Devlin and Alisa Bokulich. The review aims to shed light on the collections relevance for current interdisciplinary studies.

In 1948, A.J. Ayer was attacked on the pages of The New Statesman and Nation magazine where it was claimed that his views were partly responsible for increasingly Fascist attitudes at Oxford. Ayer was charged with promoting a philosophy of values (or one lacking therein) that allowed Fascism to fill the moral vacuum. Ayer noted that he knew who had written the article (and the ones that followed) and that this person had done so for entirely contingent and non-philosophical reasons. This paper aims to examine the historical context by discussing the article and the events that followed it; to show that the specific charges against Ayer were rooted in deeper philosophical/ practical issues, namely the nature and status of philosophy; and to demonstrate that logical empiricism, or rather logical positivism as a movement, was indeed especially sensitive to political issues.

This paper appeared in the journal "Bionomina". While it addresses some important nomenclatural proposals and debates among taxonomists, it is part of some much more extensive research I am planning in the next months and years on the relation between reference, semantics and temporality. These are fundamental issues that I think have contributed many at least questionable developments in the philosophy of language underlying both logico-mathematical formalist programs and much of postmodern Continental philosophy, especially in its often derived and distorted applications in literary theory and criticism.

I am planning a history of the concept of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up. Charles Pigden has argued that it goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it. In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first nonsensicalist, whether Kant was a nonsensicalist at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically. I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

- by ian dearden
- •
- Metaphysics, Philosophy Of Language, Analytic Philosophy, Kant

Rudolf Carnap’s Der logische Aufbau der Welt is considered to be the magnum opus of (early) analytic philosophy. Contrary to this analytic tradition stands, as the saying goes, everything else – the so called continental philosophies. It has been highlighted recently, however, that the contexts of the Aufbau differ radically from the usual received view. In order to obtain a better picture of (the influences of) the Aufbau, I will present in Sect. 1 the received view which characterizes the book as a reductive empiricist, foundationalist and phenomenalist work. In Sect. 2 I will show step-by-step that this view is mistaken and the influences on the Aufbau could be located around Neo-Kantianism, the philosophy of Husserl and the human sciences [Geisteswissenschaften]. The contribution of this paper is connected to these approaches and argues for a different and currently unanalyzed and mainly ignored aspect of Carnap’s work, namely his theory of geistige Gegenstände. After all, I will claim that the motivations and continental roots of the Aufbau are just much deeper than it is usually thought.

- by Adam Tamas Tuboly
- •
- Philosophy, History of Analytic Philosophy, Wilhelm Dilthey, Vienna Circle

The book Theory and Thought in Contemporary Sociology, one of its kind, written in Bengali, divided into thirty chapters, is designed for students of sociology in higher education. The book aims to reduce the artificially created gap between the classical thinkers of the discipline and theoretical perspectives that emerged thereafter. By exploring the linkages, the book establishes not only the emergent dynamics of the discipline of Sociology, but also exhibits the rudiments of contemporaneity of the every thinker and theoretician in Sociology. From cover to cover, the book starts from the emergence of the discipline to its latest perspectives and orientations. Deviating from standard format usually followed in social theory books, this book also takes up major theories that explain concepts like change, stratification, deviance, anomie, alienation, reference group, and elite. Detailed bibliography given at the end of the book will serve well the purpose of students of Sociology in doing reference work and further reading.
ISBN: 978-81-910380-1-9, 2010, p. 528+viii, INR280/-, Kolkata: Reena Books

- by Prof. Ramanuj Ganguly
- •
- Sociology, Social Sciences, Conflict, Global Social Change

I consider the dispute, not with a view to reaching a final verdict, but for the light it sheds on the notion of philosophical nonsense. How does it look to a sceptic about philosophical nonsense? It is generally agreed that the Tractatus is an unsatisfactory work, if the traditional reading of, for example, G. E. M. Anscombe or Peter Hacker is correct. But is it any better on the ‘resolute’ reading of Cora Diamond or James Conant? I maintain that it is more difficulty to handle the concept of nonsense than nonsensicalists of any stripe realise. If the ‘ineffable truths’ and ‘important nonsense’ of traditional readings raise problems, so too do the contrast between meaningful frame and nonsensical core, Diamond’s idea that one can imaginatively identify with the nonsense-talker and the mysterious new entity, ‘transitional’ nonsense. Meaning and communication, I suggest, keep reappearing precisely where they should not.

- by ian dearden
- •
- Psychoanalysis, Philosophical Scepticism, Hobbes, Theories of Meaning
- by Adam Tamas Tuboly
- •
- Philosophy, Analytic Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Logic

Steve Fuller's take on Science Studies (SS) differs from that of most SS people. He disagrees with Bruno Latour on most issues. He defends the logical positivists and Karl Popper against much of postmodernism. He claims Thomas Kuhn had seriously misled the SS community. He criticizes the notions of tacit knowledge and of trust that many SS people use.

- by Adam Tamas Tuboly
- •
- Mathematics, Philosophy, Metaphysics, Analytic Philosophy

... George Reisch, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic Reviewed by. Francis Remedios. Bookmark and Share. This journal is published under the terms of the Creative Commons... more