wow-signal

wow-signal t1_itxqszb wrote

logical positivism != logical analysis (fortunately!)

logical positivism is a constellation of views about knowledge and meaning which centers around the idea of identifying the meaning of a content-bearer (e.g. a statement about the color of grass) with its 'empirical content' (e.g. a certain kind of visual experience). it's just a theory (or more accurately, a theoretical temperament) like any other

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wow-signal t1_itwlutv wrote

it's historically significant in the way that alchemy is historically significant, and some influence does live on, especially among a certain generation of scientists who unwittingly absorbed the central ideas from faculty while they were in graduate school, but as john passmore wrote in 1967, "logical positivism is dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes." by that he meant that the central tenets, most significantly the verification criterion of meaning, had been demonstrated to be false.

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