logical positivism
- noun
- /ˈlɒdʒɪkəl ˈpɒzɪtɪvɪzəm/
- Formal
:
positivismo lógico
- Logical positivism in the 1920s and 1930s reaffirmed and refined the commitment to observations as the foundation for truth.
Examples
-
Developed by the Vienna Circle, logical positivism accepted as its central doctrine Wittgenstein's verification theory of meaning.
Academic text (2012) -
They espoused logical positivism, and it carried great authority among scientists.
Academic text (1990) -
The essential spirit of logical positivism can live on without the synthetic/analytic distinction.
Academic text (1998) -
His important challenge to the attempts by logical positivism to imagine pure knowledge apart from culture and history was built on a strong social constructivism.
Academic text (1991) -
Most fundamentally, and most damaging to logical positivism, is the question of whether there is an unobservable reality, natural, social, or otherwise, that is nonetheless knowable.
Academic text (1990) -
There have been two great waves of anti-metaphysics: the Kantian system and logical positivism (and some associated forms of analytical philosophy).
Academic text (1998) -
However, common to all, from nineteenth-century Comteanism to twentieth-century logical positivism, is the assumption that science is the only method for attaining true knowledge of any kind.
Academic text (1991) -
Some events, such as Kuhn's (1996) study of the history of science and the formation of the sociology of knowledge, have strengthened the relativist position, while logical positivism provided support for the objectivist position.
Academic text (2012) -
But none of what I would consider to be the most insightful works of contemporary international relations theory seem to have resulted from commitments to epistemologies of logical positivism, operationalism, or empirical verifiability that rest at the philosophical core of behavioralism.
Academic text (1990) -
The principles of logical positivism assert that only statements verifiable through empirical observation are meaningful.
Synonyms
2
9.9
The idea that real knowledge comes only from what we can see or test
A view that knowledge comes mostly from what we learn through our senses
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally interpretable: an average learner who knows 'logical' and 'positivism' can infer this refers to a form of positivism that emphasizes logic or logical methods. However, the full technical philosophical commitments of the movement (e.g., verificationism, rejection of metaphysics) are specialized and not predictable from the parts alone, so the transparency is partial.
Etymology
The name logical positivism comes from two parts: logical (using clear logic and math) and positivism (the idea that real knowledge comes from facts you can see or test). Early thinkers wanted philosophy to accept only what could be proved by 'logic' or found in 'experience', so the name explains why the theory says knowledge should be based on 'logic' and 'experience'.