We are aware that the logical positivism, neo-empiricism or logical empiricism, is a philosophical current that came about in the first half of the twentieth century with the Vienna Circle, based on the principle that philosophy should aspire to the methodological rigor of a science. As its name implies, at its base there are the typical concepts of the "empirical", scientific method that is testified by experience, and "logical", as its supporters believe that knowledge should be considered according to its logical criteria of the analysis of language.
The logical empiricists argue that the resolution of the misunderstandings and ambiguities related to language leads to the resolution of the same philosophical problems: their increase would depend on a misuse of words that would give rise to multiple interpretations and / or lack of logical sense. Philosophy must have a clarifying role: it can not be a purely theoretical –speculative knowledge, but be based on the experience in order to establish knowledge in a rigorous way.
One of the most famous challenges to empiricism is the book by Thomas Kuhn's ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ (1962). In his work, Kuhn argues that the change of theory is developed effectively through translations of paradigm, where a new idea is offered that is not derived from existing theories but rather proposes a unique and innovative solution to existing problems. Scientific thought, in the conception of Kuhn, proceeds through revolutions, rather than through gradual theoretical development, testing and experimentation. After the revolution occurs, scientists can see things that were not able to see before in the previous theoretical scheme.
According to Hempel, a shared attitude was the dissatisfaction about the fact that philosophy was not successful, in the course of its development, to make progress in dealing with some issues, traditionally considered fundamental in philosophy, especially the metaphysical problems. These problems dragged on for a very long time without seeing any progress in approach and solution. The members of the Circle compared this state of affairs in philosophy with the typical situation of scientific work, where progress could be seen quite clearly.
What could be done to change the impasse besetting philosophy? This was the question of the members of the ‘Circle’". Their idea was that the way metaphysical problems are formulated should be carefully examined, and an analysis be made whether these problems were actually authentic problems. In empirical science we have the possibility to carry out rigorous checks by means of suitable experiments and observations, in order to receive guidance on the validity or not of scientific theories.
It turned out, especially in the first period of the "Vienna Circle", that this was not possible, and therefore it was asserted that metaphysical doctrines were devoid of any empirical content. Meaningless empirically, metaphysical theories were considered nonsense. The problems are only scientific problems, and those metaphysical are not scientific problems and therefore can not be solved. Rather they can only be dissolved through what Carnap called the overcoming of metaphysics through logical analysis of language.
Claudio Pizzi, Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science, states that "whatever you want to call it, it is unanimous recognition that the personalities who formed the Circle were of exceptional stature and equally outstanding was the turning point that they managed to impress to the debate on science . To begin, a point characteristic of the new school of thought is that philosophy was not to be conceived as a body of doctrines or principles but as an activity. The purpose of this activity was to be the 'logical analysis of language, i.e. the language analysis performed by the tool of logic.
The above is the implicit recognition that philosophers who belong to the time before its reform of thought from Plato to St. Thomas, from Descartes to William James, have become slaves of their prejudices. They have not had the courage to face the truth pure and simple, have blocked the progress of knowledge, philosophy trivialized; and, as if this were not bad enough, they helped create the conditions for the establishment of a totalitarian and intolerant society that discourages freedom of thought and indeed prosecuted it, in short, establishing a dictatorship over minds and consciences. And philosophers have in this their big share of responsibility, because they first have self-censored and self-limited; while the philosopher should not place any limits on its research, just as a scientist.
Apparently, Russell is not even touched by the suspicion that his reasoning might be overthrown and that what he proposes, namely reducing philosophical research to methods and content that are likely to be explained by mathematical logic, with explicit exclusion of all matters relating the extra-scientific facts, can be seen as the most serious of self-limitations ... .of philosophical thought. A suicide of that "Philosophia perennis" that was always not content to explain some individual problems of the real, but aims a unifying vision of all reality. He did not remind the claim of Plato, who said that it is a philosopher who can see the whole field of reality, while it is not who does not know how to see it; or, if it comes to mind, it treats it as a hoax, a sophism, a form of presumption and intellectual dishonesty.
Gianrocco,
Far from me to defend logical positivism but I disagree that Kuhn's ideas on paradigm shifted is really a good argument against it. Poincare in ''Science and Hypothesis'' showed clearly that the changes in scientific theories in no way can be an argument for relativism. He showed that there is a continuity across theory changes : the relation among the mathematical entity survive, what does not survive is the reality assumed behind these mathematical entity. This position is currently held as structural realist.
Kuhn's idea is a degraded version of Polanyi philosophy of science. Polanyi's philosophy of science is against logical positivism not on the justification side of science but on the motivation side. For Polanyi science arise from both practice and intuition. There is a creative side to it that logical positivist not only failed to discuss but the very discourse of logical positivist even undermine scientific creativity.
Dear Gianrocco,
Philosophy is the human desire to know and its worse ennemy, what extinguish it, is making the assumption that we knows. So philosophy is its worse ennemy because the more it advances and the stronger is the pressure to think that it knows and to restrict its questioning to what it thinks it knows. Socrates renewed Greek philosophies by enlarging the questions to the human and societal domain and to destroy all false pretense of knowing. The replacement of reality by concepts and the closing in of philosophical discussion to questions making sense withing a conceptual framework is the natural trap of philosophy and science. It is a systematic extinction of the living and its replacement by a dead conceptual world. Any conceptual world is dead , is an objectivisation. But philosophy, the desire to know does not exist in a vacuum. It is an expression of the desire to live. Each era of humanity is created and maintained through a narrative and all human activities are pressured into this narrative and this include philosophy , science, etc.. The pressure is tremendous and built into the enculturation of the youth , the entertainment and fears of the adults. We are entering a apocalyptic time , a time of fears and entertainments but a time where new thoughts become vitally important for us to live.
Dear Artur,
as a flash, it came to my mind that what we are discussing has a subtle vein of irony.
Apparently, Russell is not even touched by the suspicion that his reasoning might be overthrown and that what he proposes, namely reducing philosophical research methods and content that are likely to explain the logical-mathematical, with explicit exclusion of all matters relating to the extra-scientific fact of reality, can be seen as the most serious of self-limitations ... .of philosophy, as the suicide of the "Philosophia perennis" that has always been not content to explain some individual problems, but aimed at a unifying vision of all reality. He did not think of the claim of Plato, that is the philosopher who can see the whole field of reality, while it is not who does not know how to see; or, if also comes to mind, treats it as a hoax, a sophism, a form of presumption and intellectual dishonesty.
As the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, he is convinced that philosophy, when subjected to severe crash diet he advocated, can do much to bring men to the truth. Not the truth about matters ‘idle or irrelevant’, as the immortality of the soul; but the truth that comes from a series of questions much more realistic, for example, what is a number, what are space and time. Questions, as we see, that can not be formulated by the outdated and a little ridiculous figure of catch-clouds that is, or rather was, the classical philosopher and especially the metaphysical, but the modern philosopher, namely the follower of the logic of Russell: a mathematician-scientist who always adheres to the formal-logical process. He, yes, can make a useful contribution to the progress of civil society; can also show the individual what is the right way forward in life (strange, just the kind of claim that Russell had strongly condemned of the "old" philosophy): because it is known that, to find the right path in life, we must have been able to respond to questions about number, space and time, matter and spirit.
Arthur,
While reading you posts, I thought that philosophy , mathematics, science are only about one aspect of the universe: order and that order is always a mechanism, a cyclic process. The other aspects of the universe that is not include in order is: history, the evolutionary part, what is singular and the living. The human mind is equiped to handle the two aspect: objective/mechanical/repetititive and the historical/living/narrative. Culture prior to the existence of history and philosophy and mathematics had all aspects integrated in anthropomorphic narratives. Philosophy and science and mathematic is a separation and an exclusion of history and of the anthropomorphic and there started the separation of the natural sciences and the humanities and many attempts to reduce the later to the former. But the original separation preclude this unification in the terms of the former. History will never be within the order but the order may be include into the history. So the harmonisation will not be a reduction of the humanities to the sciences but rather an harmonious inclusion of the sciences and philosophy into the humanities as it existed prior to the separation. So we will give up the reductionist project and replace it by an inclusionist anthropomorphic project and return to life.
What has characterized the sciences in the last few centuries is that they are all being conceived in term of different evolutionary process all being include into the evolution of the whole universe. In that sense the natural sciences are moving towards an general historical framework. But what is missing in these historical processes and cannot enter the sciences is what is singular at key historical events. The indidual cannot exist in the science because it is a language of universals and can only know what repeat but can't explain what make it start to repeat. There can be no rule for that and so no science.
Dr. Tucci,
You have used very harsh words here, but it is true:
This kind of dictatorship over minds and consciences exists even in the 21st century. I have to agree because I am personally experiencing in computer science. There is a fundamental flaw in the seed axioms at the root of the software engineering. The axioms were proposed 50 years ago, which no one validated but every one concluded and keep insisting that they are self-evident truths. The existing software engineering paradigm has been evolving for past 50 years by relying on those untested and undocumented axioms (by assuming they were self-evident truths require no validations).
We all know what happened due to such self-evident truth (i.e. the Earth is static), which required no validation. Mankind relied on this so called self-evident truth (that required no validation) for hundreds of years creating geocentric paradigm – an altered perception of reality and a paradoxical paradigm.
In real science, there are no self-evident truths. Anything that is not tested and proved (e.g. by using sound rational reasoning backed by irrefutable and repeatable empirical results) must be treated as an assumption. Such assumptions must be documented, so that future generations aware of them to validate (if and when inexplicable retrograde motions and epicycles are found; or new tools and technologies available to validate them).
Saying that the Sun is at the centre offended the common-sense and deeply entrenched conventional wisdom 500 years ago. Experts feel offended, if I say true CBD (Component Based Design) for software is not software-ICs but implementing over 90% of the features and functionality in functional components, where each component can be unplugged for refining and testing individually (free from spaghetti code). Each real software component is free from spaghetti code. Since over 90% of the code for a software product can be implemented as real software components, 90% of the code for the software product is free from spaghetti code.
I contacted hundreds of best minds, but my efforts end up futile. I have been fighting losing battle for years, both in my research-gate account and my website www.real-software-components.com. Recently I created most advanced GUI-API for building data driven graphics intensive web applications – Only GUI-API in the world that is capable of creating real-software-components. Since no other GUI API (e.g. Java/Swing or Windows-API) is designed to create real software components, which can be quickly assembled to build hierarchy of replaceable components. Even a junior Java programmer can achieve real CBD for software by creating and assembling real software components.
How one can prove reality, every one refuse to see reality. I feel, the sacred duty of scientists and researchers is pursuit of Truth. Most abdicated this sacred duty. Let me paraphrase your sentence: They have no courage to face the truth pure and simple, and blocking the progress of knowledge.
Who discovered that “the Earth is static?” Answer was no one. No one asked for proof to before accepting this lie, but it took 150 years to accept the Truth “the Sun is at the centre”. Who discovered useful software parts (e.g. equivalent to ingredient parts) are components? Answer is no one. No one asked for proof, but everyone refusing to even see the conclusive evidence for real software components. A truth can withstand rigorous validation and prevail, but can’t prevail if everyone ignores, evades and try to cover-up. One can prepare for rigorous validation, but can’t do anything if everyone ignores and/or evades by using every possible excuse imaginable.
Best Regards,
Raju
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