Logical Positivism

The Vienna Circle

Wittgenstein - Language games - Everything you've ever thought takes place in a series of rules.
A situation bound by certain rules.

Personalities associated with the movement.

The meaning of a word is determined by the way it is used in a particular language game.

'We speak how we do because of what we do'.

Wittgenstein was a mechanic, eventually felt there was no point in language.

Wrote 'The Book' and 'The Other Book' (also known as 'The Brown Book' and 'The Blue Book').

Art - Paul Klee - Modern abstract art.
'A house is a machine for living in.

Logical Positivists generally admire Hume.
People in the Vienna Circle were hated by Nazis.

Inductive propositions about humans impossible (Freudian Influence)
Social Darwinism/progressivism - 'Social evolution'.

No dialectics, no hegel, no necessary processes in nature.

Most deductive/ analytic propositions are not valid ('emotive' - Ayer)
Some 'revisionist' Marxist principle accepted (partic-ideology).

Wittgenstein - Emoting and thinking are not the same thing.

Marxist - 'dialectical materialism' rejected as metaphysical dogma.

Pragmatism and provisional truths - the method the scientific laboratory.
Technical work on logic.

The Verification Principle
(most important aspect of the movement)
It is the view that a statement or question is only legitimate if there is some way of determining whether the statements true or false.

If you speak of doubt you can't speak of knowledge.

To say you have an idea of pain is senseless.
Don't look inside yourself, look at the use of words in everyday life.
Linguistic, mathematical, religious problems - No philosophical problems.
Philosophy is a biproduct of misunderstanding language.
In philosophy they try to give things a physical form when it doesn't have one. Eg- Soul, Pain etc...

Freddy Ayer - Language, Truth and Logic.

The previous debate about what is true and what is not true has been a waste of time.

Statements that cannot be verified are rubbish.

'The method of verification is the truth of a statement' - says Ayer.

'Of that which we can not speak, we must remain silent' - Wittgenstein.

Karl Popper - A statement which is unfalsafiable can never be scientifically valid.

Russell - Invisible teapot proposition.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

1 - The world is everything that is the case.
2 - What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
3 - The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
4 - The thought is the significant proposition.
5 - Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions.
(An elementary propisition is a truth-function of itself)
6 - The general form of truth-functions is - This is te genera form of proposition
7 - Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

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