The Vienna Circle ( German : Wiener Kreis ) of logical empiricism was a group of elite philosophers and scientists drawn from the natural and social sciences , logic and mathematics who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna , chaired by Moritz Schlick . The Vienna Circle had a profound influence on 20th-century philosophy , especially philosophy of science and analytic philosophy .
181-464: The philosophical position of the Vienna Circle was called logical empiricism (German: logischer Empirismus ), logical positivism or neopositivism . It was influenced by Ernst Mach , David Hilbert , French conventionalism ( Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem ), Gottlob Frege , Bertrand Russell , Ludwig Wittgenstein and Albert Einstein . The Vienna Circle was pluralistic and committed to
362-477: A correspondence theory of truth (versus a coherence theory of truth ). Wittgenstein's influence also shows in some versions of the verifiability principle . In tractarian doctrine, truths of logic are tautologies , a view widely accepted by logical positivists who were also influenced by Wittgenstein's interpretation of probability although, according to Neurath, some logical positivists found Tractatus to contain too much metaphysics. Gottlob Frege began
543-615: A logical syntax . A scientific theory would be stated with its method of verification, whereby a logical calculus or empirical operation could verify its falsity or truth . In the late 1930s, logical positivists fled Germany and Austria for Britain and the United States. By then, many had replaced Mach's phenomenalism with Otto Neurath 's physicalism , whereby science's content is not actual or potential sensations, but instead consists of entities that are publicly observable. Rudolf Carnap , who had sparked logical positivism in
724-745: A system of 12 categories , divided into the four classes: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. More recent theories of categories were proposed by C. S. Peirce , Edmund Husserl , Samuel Alexander , Roderick Chisholm , and E. J. Lowe . Many philosophers rely on the contrast between concrete and abstract objects . According to a common view, concrete objects, like rocks, trees, and human beings, exist in space and time, undergo changes, and impact each other as cause and effect. They contrast with abstract objects, like numbers and sets , which do not exist in space and time, are immutable, and do not engage in causal relations. Particulars are individual entities and include both concrete objects, like Aristotle,
905-559: A tautological character, that is its statements are analytical statements , thus very different from Kantian synthetic statements. The only two kinds of statements accepted by the Vienna Circle are synthetic statements a posteriori (i.e., scientific statements) and analytic statements a priori (i.e., logical and mathematical statements). However, the persistence of metaphysics is connected not only with logical mistakes but also with "social and economical struggles". Metaphysics and theology are allied to traditional social forms, while
1086-400: A fire, is always followed by another phenomenon, like a feeling of pain. According to nomic regularity theories, regularities manifest as laws of nature studied by science. Counterfactual theories focus not on regularities but on how effects depend on their causes. They state that effects owe their existence to the cause and would not occur without them. According to primitivism, causation
1267-414: A gradual continuum. The word metaphysics has its origin in the ancient Greek words metá ( μετά , meaning ' after ' , ' above ' , and ' beyond' ' ) and phusiká ( φυσικά ), as a short form of ta metá ta phusiká , meaning ' what comes after the physics ' . This is often interpreted to mean that metaphysics discusses topics that, due to their generality and comprehensiveness, lie beyond
1448-422: A higher degree of existence than matter, which can only imperfectly reflect Platonic forms. Another key concern in metaphysics is the division of entities into distinct groups based on underlying features they share. Theories of categories provide a system of the most fundamental kinds or the highest genera of being by establishing a comprehensive inventory of everything. One of the earliest theories of categories
1629-568: A key role in ethics regarding the moral responsibility people have for what they do. Identity is a relation that every entity has to itself as a form of sameness. It refers to numerical identity when the very same entity is involved, as in the statement "the morning star is the evening star " (both are the planet Venus ). In a slightly different sense, it encompasses qualitative identity, also called exact similarity and indiscernibility , which occurs when two distinct entities are exactly alike, such as perfect identical twins. The principle of
1810-475: A long history in metaphysics, meta-metaphysics has only recently developed into a systematic field of inquiry. Metaphysicians often regard existence or being as one of the most basic and general concepts. To exist means to form part of reality , distinguishing real entities from imaginary ones. According to the orthodox view, existence is a property of properties: if an entity exists then its properties are instantiated. A different position states that existence
1991-587: A merely true regularity—for instance, George always carries only $ 1 bills in his wallet —a law suggests what must be true, and is consequent of a scientific theory 's axiomatic structure. ) By the Humean empiricist view that humans observe sequences of events, (not cause and effect, as causality and causal mechanisms are unobservable), the DN model neglects causality beyond mere constant conjunction , first event A and then always event B . Hempel's explication of
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#17327764059882172-432: A pillar of scientism , Carl Hempel was key in establishing the subdiscipline of the philosophy of science, where Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper brought in the era of postpositivism . John Passmore found logical positivism to be "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes". Logical positivism's fall reopened the debate over the metaphysical merit of scientific theory, whether it can offer knowledge of
2353-479: A priori methods have been the dominant approach. They rely on rational intuition and abstract reasoning from general principles rather than sensory experience . A posteriori approaches, by contrast, ground metaphysical theories in empirical observations and scientific theories. Some metaphysicians incorporate perspectives from fields such as physics , psychology , linguistics , and history into their inquiry. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive: it
2534-448: A priori knowledge. Logical positivists rejected Kant's synthetic a priori , and adopted Hume's fork , whereby a statement is either analytic and a priori (thus necessary and verifiable logically) or synthetic and a posteriori (thus contingent and verifiable empirically). Early, most logical positivists proposed that all knowledge is based on logical inference from simple "protocol sentences" grounded in observable facts. In
2715-475: A priori reasoning and view metaphysics as a practice continuous with the empirical sciences that generalizes their insights while making their underlying assumptions explicit. This approach is known as naturalized metaphysics and is closely associated with the work of Willard Van Orman Quine . He relies on the idea that true sentences from the sciences and other fields have ontological commitments , that is, they imply that certain entities exist. For example, if
2896-401: A priori ), whereas truths by states of actualities (concrete) always align on the other side (synthetic, contingent, a posteriori ). Of any treatises containing neither, Hume orders, "Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion". Thus awakened from "dogmatic slumber", Immanuel Kant quested to answer Hume's challenge—but by explaining how metaphysics
3077-465: A single cloud is an overlay of countless clouds, one for each cloud-like collection of water droplets. Mereological moderatists hold that certain conditions must be met for a group of entities to compose a whole, for example, that the entities touch one another. Mereological nihilists reject the idea of wholes altogether, claiming that there are no clouds or tables but only particles that are arranged cloud-wise or table-wise. A related mereological problem
3258-402: A statement is possibly true if it is true in at least one possible world, whereas it is necessarily true if it is true in all possible worlds. Modal realists argue that possible worlds exist as concrete entities in the same sense as the actual world, with the main difference being that the actual world is the world we live in while other possible worlds are inhabited by counterparts . This view
3439-464: A substratum, also called bare particular , together with various properties. The substratum confers individuality to the particular while the properties express its qualitative features or what it is like. This approach is rejected by bundle theorists , who state that particulars are only bundles of properties without an underlying substratum. Some bundle theorists include in the bundle an individual essence, called haecceity , to ensure that each bundle
3620-461: A term from German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 's theodicy , many metaphysicians use the concept of possible worlds to analyze the meaning and ontological ramifications of modal statements. A possible world is a complete and consistent way the totality of things could have been. For example, the dinosaurs were wiped out in the actual world but there are possible worlds in which they are still alive. According to possible world semantics,
3801-401: A truthmaker for the statement "a tomato is red". Based on this observation, it is possible to pursue metaphysical research by asking what the truthmakers of statements are, with different areas of metaphysics being dedicated to different types of statements. According to this view, modal metaphysics asks what makes statements about what is possible and necessary true while the metaphysics of time
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#17327764059883982-621: A unified dimension rather than as independent dimensions. Empirically focused metaphysicians often rely on scientific theories to ground their theories about the nature of reality in empirical observations. Similar issues arise in the social sciences where metaphysicians investigate their basic concepts and analyze their metaphysical implications. This includes questions like whether social facts emerge from non-social facts, whether social groups and institutions have mind-independent existence, and how they persist through time. Metaphysical assumptions and topics in psychology and psychiatry include
4163-531: A universal language that could reconstruct mathematics and thereby encode physics. Yet Kurt Gödel 's incompleteness theorem showed this impossible except in trivial cases, and Alfred Tarski 's undefinability theorem shattered all hopes of reducing mathematics to logic. Thus, a universal language failed to stem from Carnap's 1934 work Logische Syntax der Sprache ( Logical Syntax of Language ). Still, some logical positivists, including Carl Hempel, continued support of logicism. In Germany, Hegelian metaphysics
4344-523: A wide range of general and abstract topics. It investigates the nature of existence , the features all entities have in common, and their division into categories of being . An influential division is between particulars and universals . Particulars are individual unique entities, like a specific apple. Universals are general features that different particulars have in common, like the color red . Modal metaphysics examines what it means for something to be possible or necessary. Metaphysicians also explore
4525-499: Is corroboration of scientific theory, which strives for scientific realism but accepts the maximal status of strongly corroborated verisimilitude ("truthlikeness"). Popper thus acknowledged the value of the positivist movement's emphasis on science but claimed that he had "killed positivism". Although an empiricist, American logician Willard Van Orman Quine published the 1951 paper " Two Dogmas of Empiricism ", which challenged conventional empiricist presumptions. Quine attacked
4706-410: Is "the notion that thinking can either lead to knowledge out of its own resources without using any empirical material, or at least arrive at new contents by an inference from given states of affair". Synthetic knowledge a priori is rejected by the Vienna Circle. Mathematics, which at a first sight seems an example of necessarily valid synthetic knowledge derived from pure reason alone, has instead
4887-399: Is a basic concept that cannot be analyzed in terms of non-causal concepts, such as regularities or dependence relations. One form of primitivism identifies causal powers inherent in entities as the underlying mechanism. Eliminativists reject the above theories by holding that there is no causation. Mind encompasses phenomena like thinking , perceiving , feeling , and desiring as well as
5068-435: Is a fundamental aspect of reality, meaning that besides facts about what is the case, there are additional facts about what could or must be the case. A different view argues that modal truths are not about an independent aspect of reality but can be reduced to non-modal characteristics, for example, to facts about what properties or linguistic descriptions are compatible with each other or to fictional statements . Borrowing
5249-418: Is a movement whose central thesis is the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning). This theory of knowledge asserts that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. Starting in the late 1920s, groups of philosophers , scientists , and mathematicians formed
5430-521: Is a property of individuals, meaning that it is similar to other properties, such as shape or size. It is controversial whether all entities have this property. According to Alexius Meinong , there are nonexistent objects , including merely possible objects like Santa Claus and Pegasus . A related question is whether existence is the same for all entities or whether there are different modes or degrees of existence. For instance, Plato held that Platonic forms , which are perfect and immutable ideas, have
5611-442: Is a well-known principle that gives preference to simple theories, in particular, those that assume that few entities exist. Other principles consider explanatory power , theoretical usefulness, and proximity to established beliefs. Despite its status as one of the main branches of philosophy, metaphysics has received numerous criticisms questioning its legitimacy as a field of inquiry. One criticism argues that metaphysical inquiry
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5792-704: Is an exaggeration. Rather, most neopositivists viewed talk of unobservables as metaphorical or elliptical: direct observations phrased abstractly or indirectly. So theoretical terms would garner meaning from observational terms via correspondence rules , and thereby theoretical laws would be reduced to empirical laws . Via Bertrand Russell 's logicism , reducing mathematics to logic, physics ' mathematical formulas would be converted to symbolic logic . Via Russell's logical atomism , ordinary language would break into discrete units of meaning. Rational reconstruction , then, would convert ordinary statements into standardized equivalents, all networked and united by
5973-440: Is controversial and various alternatives have been suggested, for example, that possible worlds only exist as abstract objects or are similar to stories told in works of fiction . Space and time are dimensions that entities occupy. Spacetime realists state that space and time are fundamental aspects of reality and exist independently of the human mind. Spacetime idealists, by contrast, hold that space and time are constructs of
6154-401: Is determined. Hard determinists infer from this that there is no free will, whereas libertarians conclude that determinism must be false. Compatibilists offer a third perspective, arguing that determinism and free will do not exclude each other, for instance, because a person can still act in tune with their motivation and choices even if they are determined by other forces. Free will plays
6335-400: Is divided into subdisciplines based on the perspective they take. Metaphysical cosmology examines changeable things and investigates how they are connected to form a world as a totality extending through space and time. Rational psychology focuses on metaphysical foundations and problems concerning the mind, such as its relation to matter and the freedom of the will. Natural theology studies
6516-436: Is fundamentally neither material nor mental and suggest that matter and mind are both derivative phenomena. A key aspect of the mind–body problem is the hard problem of consciousness or how to explain that physical systems like brains can produce phenomenal consciousness. The status of free will as the ability of a person to choose their actions is a central aspect of the mind–body problem. Metaphysicians are interested in
6697-420: Is impossible because humans lack the cognitive capacities needed to access the ultimate nature of reality. This line of thought leads to skepticism about the possibility of metaphysical knowledge. Empiricists often follow this idea, like Hume, who argued that there is no good source of metaphysical knowledge since metaphysics lies outside the field of empirical knowledge and relies on dubious intuitions about
6878-478: Is in many cases unsettled. The partition into "members" and "those sympathetic to the Vienna Circle" produced in the manifesto from 1929 is representative only of a specific moment in the development of the Circle. Depending on the criteria used (regular attendance, philosophical affinities etc.) there are different possible distributions in "inner circle" and "periphery". In the following list (in alphabetical order),
7059-485: Is indicated only in Schlick 1936a.) A second element that began to do so soon was the recognition of the problem of the irreducibility of disposition terms to observation terms ... A third element was that disagreement arose as to whether the in-principle verifiability or support turned on what was merely logically possible or on what was nomologically possible, as a matter of physical law etc. A fourth element, finally,
7240-434: Is interested in the truthmakers of temporal statements about the past, present, and future. A closely related topic concerns the nature of truth. Theories of truth aim to determine this nature and include correspondence , coherence , pragmatic , semantic , and deflationary theories . Metaphysicians employ a variety of methods to develop metaphysical theories and formulate arguments for and against them. Traditionally,
7421-468: Is made up of only one kind. According to idealism , everything is mental, including physical objects, which may be understood as ideas or perceptions of conscious minds. Materialists, by contrast, state that all reality is at its core material. Some deny that mind exists but the more common approach is to explain mind in terms of certain aspects of matter, such as brain states, behavioral dispositions , or functional roles. Neutral monists argue that reality
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7602-419: Is no consensus about the validity of these criticisms and whether they affect metaphysics as a whole or only certain issues or approaches in it. For example, it could be the case that certain metaphysical disputes are merely verbal while others are substantive. Metaphysics is related to many fields of inquiry by investigating their basic concepts and relation to the fundamental structure of reality. For example,
7783-411: Is one of the oldest branches of philosophy . The precise nature of metaphysics is disputed and its characterization has changed in the course of history. Some approaches see metaphysics as a unified field and give a wide-sweeping definition by understanding it as the study of "fundamental questions about the nature of reality" or as an inquiry into the essences of things. Another approach doubts that
7964-408: Is opposed by so-called serious metaphysicians , who contend that metaphysical disputes are about substantial features of the underlying structure of reality. A closely related debate between ontological realists and anti-realists concerns the question of whether there are any objective facts that determine which metaphysical theories are true. A different criticism, formulated by pragmatists , sees
8145-457: Is possible to combine elements from both. The method a metaphysician chooses often depends on their understanding of the nature of metaphysics, for example, whether they see it as an inquiry into the mind-independent structure of reality, as metaphysical realists claim, or the principles underlying thought and experience, as some metaphysical anti-realists contend. A priori approaches often rely on intuitions—non-inferential impressions about
8326-542: Is possible. Eventually, in his 1781 work , Kant crossed the tines of Hume's fork to identify another range of truths by necessity— synthetic a priori , statements claiming states of facts but known true before experience—by arriving at transcendental idealism , attributing the mind a constructive role in phenomena by arranging sense data into the very experience of space , time , and substance . Thus, Kant saved Newton's law of universal gravitation from Hume's problem of induction by finding uniformity of nature to be
8507-448: Is rejected by probabilistic theories , which claim that the cause merely increases the probability that the effect occurs. This view can explain that smoking causes cancer even though this does not happen in every single case. The regularity theory of causation , inspired by David Hume 's philosophy, states that causation is nothing but a constant conjunction in which the mind apprehends that one phenomenon, like putting one's hand in
8688-485: Is restricted to Basissätze / Beobachtungssätze / Protokollsätze ( basic statements or observation statements or protocol statements ). Hempel elucidated the paradox of confirmation . The second edition of A. J. Ayer 's book arrived in 1946, and discerned strong versus weak forms of verification. Ayer concluded, "A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established by experience", but
8869-418: Is studied by mereology . The problem of the many is a philosophical question about the conditions under which several individual things compose a larger whole. For example, a cloud is made up of many droplets without a clear boundary, raising the question of which droplets form part of the cloud. According to mereological universalists, every collection of entities forms a whole. This means that what seems to be
9050-449: Is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality . It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the fundamental categories of human understanding. Some philosophers, including Aristotle , designate metaphysics as first philosophy to suggest that it is more fundamental than other forms of philosophical inquiry. Metaphysics encompasses
9231-406: Is the cause and the spill is the effect. Besides the single-case causation between particulars in this example, there is also general-case causation expressed in statements such as "smoking causes cancer". The term agent causation is used when people and their actions cause something. Causation is usually interpreted deterministically, meaning that a cause always brings about its effect. This view
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#17327764059889412-431: Is the method of clarification of philosophical problems; it makes an extensive use of symbolic logic and distinguishes the Vienna Circle empiricism from earlier versions. The task of philosophy lies in the clarification—through the method of logical analysis—of problems and assertions. Logical analysis shows that there are two different kinds of statements; one kind includes statements reducible to simpler statements about
9593-417: Is the most basic inquiry upon which all other branches of philosophy depend in some way. Metaphysics is traditionally understood as a study of mind-independent features of reality. Starting with Immanuel Kant 's critical philosophy , an alternative conception gained prominence that focuses on conceptual schemes rather than external reality. Kant distinguishes transcendent metaphysics, which aims to describe
9774-488: Is true via terms' arrangement and meanings , thus a tautology —true by logical necessity but uninformative about the world—whereas the synthetic adds reference to a state of facts, a contingency . In 1739, David Hume cast a fork aggressively dividing "relations of ideas" from "matters of fact and real existence", such that all truths are of one type or the other. By Hume's fork, truths by relations among ideas (abstract) all align on one side (analytic, necessary,
9955-401: Is unique. Another proposal for concrete particulars is that they are individuated by their space-time location. Concrete particulars encountered in everyday life, like rocks, tables, and organisms, are complex entities composed of various parts. For example, a table is made up of a tabletop and legs, each of which is itself made up of countless particles. The relation between parts and wholes
10136-458: Is verifiable in the weak sense "if it is possible for experience to render it probable". And yet, "no proposition, other than a tautology , can possibly be anything more than a probable hypothesis ". Thus, all are open to weak verification. Upon the global defeat of Nazism, and the removal from philosophy of rivals for radical reform— Marburg neo-Kantianism, Husserlian phenomenology, Heidegger 's "existential hermeneutics"—and while hosted in
10317-465: Is whether there are simple entities that have no parts, as atomists claim, or whether everything can be endlessly subdivided into smaller parts, as continuum theorists contend. Universals are general entities, encompassing both properties and relations , that express what particulars are like and how they resemble one another. They are repeatable, meaning that they are not limited to a unique existent but can be instantiated by different particulars at
10498-528: The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (edited by Neurath, Carnap and Charles W. Morris , 1938–1970). From the beginning of the 1930s first signs of disintegration appeared for political and racist reasons: Herbert Feigl left Austria in 1930. Carnap was appointed to a chair at Prague University in 1931 and left for Chicago in 1935. 1934 marks an important break: Hahn died after surgery, Neurath fled to Holland because of
10679-404: The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science : The Vienna Circle cannot be assigned one single philosophy. First, there existed a plurality of philosophical positions within the Circle, and second, members often changed their views fundamentally in the course of time and in reaction to discussions in the Circle. It thus seems more convenient to speak of "the philosophies (in the plural) of
10860-410: The pseudoscientific , which occurs when an unscientific theory is proclaimed true and coupled with seemingly scientific method by "testing" the unfalsifiable theory—whose predictions are confirmed by necessity—or when a scientific theory's falsifiable predictions are strongly falsified but the theory is persistently protected by "immunizing stratagems", such as the appendage of ad hoc clauses saving
11041-708: The Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle , which, in these two cities, would propound the ideas of logical positivism. Flourishing in several European centres through the 1930s, the movement sought to prevent confusion rooted in unclear language and unverifiable claims by converting philosophy into "scientific philosophy", which, according to the logical positivists, ought to share the bases and structures of empirical sciences ' best examples, such as Albert Einstein 's general theory of relativity . Despite its ambition to overhaul philosophy by studying and mimicking
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#173277640598811222-510: The Upanishads in ancient India , Daoism in ancient China , and pre-Socratic philosophy in ancient Greece . During the subsequent medieval period in the West, discussions about the nature of universals were influenced by the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. The modern period saw the emergence of various comprehensive systems of metaphysics, many of which embraced idealism . In
11403-485: The analytic/synthetic division , which the verificationist program had been hinged upon in order to entail, by consequence of Hume's fork , both necessity and aprioricity . Quine's ontological relativity explained that every term in any statement has its meaning contingent on a vast network of knowledge and belief, the speaker's conception of the entire world. Quine later proposed naturalized epistemology . In 1958, Norwood Hanson 's Patterns of Discovery undermined
11584-557: The annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938 meant the definite end of the activities of the Vienna Circle in Austria. With the emigration went along the internationalization of logical empiricism . Many former members of the Vienna Circle and the Berlin Circle emigrated to the English-speaking world where they had an immense influence on the development of philosophy of science . The unity of science movement for
11765-626: The completeness of first-order logic and the incompleteness of formal arithmetic . Another very interesting congress was the one held in Copenhagen (1936), which was dedicated to quantum physics and causality . Between 1928 and 1937, the Vienna Circle published ten books in a collection named Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung ( Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception ), edited by Schlick and Frank. Karl Raimund Popper 's book Logik der Forschung
11946-492: The concepts of space, time, and change , and their connection to causality and the laws of nature . Other topics include how mind and matter are related , whether everything in the world is predetermined , and whether there is free will . Metaphysicians use various methods to conduct their inquiry. Traditionally, they rely on rational intuitions and abstract reasoning but have more recently also included empirical approaches associated with scientific theories. Due to
12127-633: The covering law model of scientific explanation . And ultimately, by supplying boundary conditions and supplying bridge laws within the covering law model, all the special sciences' laws would reduce to fundamental physics , the fundamental science . After World War II, key tenets of logical positivism, including its atomistic philosophy of science, the verifiability principle, and the fact/value gap , drew escalated criticism. The verifiability criterion made universal statements 'cognitively' meaningless, and even made statements beyond empiricism for technological but not conceptual reasons meaningless, which
12308-460: The explanans . Explanans must be true or highly confirmed, contain at least one law, and entail the explanandum. Thus, given initial conditions C 1 , C 2 , ..., C n plus general laws L 1 , L 2 , ..., L n , event E is a deductive consequence and scientifically explained. In the DN model, a law is an unrestricted generalization by conditional proposition— If A, then B —and has empirical content testable. (Differing from
12489-933: The problem of induction as rendering empirical verification logically impossible, and the deductive fallacy of affirming the consequent reveals any phenomenon's capacity to host more than one logically possible explanation. Accepting scientific method as hypotheticodeduction , whose inference form is denying the consequent , Popper finds scientific method unable to proceed without falsifiable predictions. Popper thus identifies falsifiability to demarcate not meaningful from meaningless but simply scientific from unscientific —a label not in itself unfavorable. Popper finds virtue in metaphysics, required to develop new scientific theories. And an unfalsifiable—thus unscientific, perhaps metaphysical—concept in one era can later, through evolving knowledge or technology, become falsifiable, thus scientific. Popper also found science's quest for truth to rest on values. Popper disparages
12670-998: The "inner circle" is defined using the criterion of regular attendance. The "periphery" comprises occasional visitors, foreign visitors and leading intellectual figures who stood in regular contact with the Circle (such as Wittgenstein and Popper). Inner Circle: Gustav Bergmann , Rudolf Carnap , Herbert Feigl , Philipp Frank , Kurt Gödel , Hans Hahn , Olga Hahn-Neurath , Béla Juhos , Felix Kaufmann , Victor Kraft , Karl Menger , Richard von Mises , Otto Neurath , Rose Rand , Josef Schächter , Moritz Schlick , Friedrich Waismann , Edgar Zilsel . Periphery: Alfred Jules Ayer , Egon Brunswik , Karl Bühler , Josef Frank , Else Frenkel-Brunswik , Heinrich Gomperz , Carl Gustav Hempel , Eino Kaila , Hans Kelsen , Charles W. Morris , Arne Naess , Karl Raimund Popper , Willard Van Orman Quine , Frank P. Ramsey , Hans Reichenbach , Kurt Reidemeister , Alfred Tarski , Olga Taussky-Todd , Ludwig Wittgenstein . The spread of logical positivism in
12851-447: The 1930s, Otto Neurath had argued for nonfoundationalism via coherentism by likening science to a boat ( Neurath's boat ) that scientists must rebuild at sea. ) Although Kuhn's thesis itself was attacked even by opponents of neopositivism, in the 1970 postscript to Structure , Kuhn asserted, at least, that there was no algorithm to science—and, on that, even most of Kuhn's critics agreed. Powerful and persuasive, Kuhn's book, unlike
13032-424: The 1936 and 1937 papers "Testability and meaning", individual terms replace sentences as the units of meaning. Further, theoretical terms no longer need to acquire meaning by explicit definition from observational terms: the connection may be indirect, through a system of implicit definitions. Carnap also provided an important, pioneering discussion of disposition predicates. The logical positivists' initial stance
13213-506: The 1960s. Yet the movement failed to resolve its central problems, and its doctrines were increasingly criticized, most trenchantly by Willard Van Orman Quine , Norwood Hanson , Karl Popper , Thomas Kuhn , and Carl Hempel . Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , by the young Ludwig Wittgenstein , introduced the view of philosophy as "critique of language", offering the possibility of a theoretically principled distinction of intelligible versus nonsensical discourse. Tractatus adhered to
13394-404: The 20th century, traditional metaphysics in general and idealism in particular faced various criticisms, which prompted new approaches to metaphysical inquiry. Metaphysics is the study of the most general features of reality , including existence , objects and their properties , possibility and necessity, space and time , change, causation , and the relation between matter and mind . It
13575-480: The British academia with the work of the Vienna Circle with his book Language, Truth, and Logic (1936). Karl Popper was also important for the reception and critique of their work, even though he never participated in the meetings of the Vienna Circle. The Vienna Circle was very active in advertising their new philosophical ideas. Several congresses on epistemology and philosophy of science were organized, with
13756-510: The Circle was Karl Popper , whom Neurath nicknamed the "Official Opposition". Carnap and other Vienna Circle members, including Hahn and Neurath, saw need for a weaker criterion of meaningfulness than verifiability. A radical "left" wing—led by Neurath and Carnap—began the program of "liberalization of empiricism", and they also emphasized fallibilism and pragmatics , which latter Carnap even suggested as empiricism's basis. A conservative "right" wing—led by Schlick and Waismann —rejected both
13937-578: The DN model held natural laws —empirically confirmed regularities—as satisfactory and, if formulated realistically, approximating causal explanation. In later articles, Hempel defended the DN model and proposed a probabilistic explanation, inductive-statistical model (IS model). the DN and IS models together form the covering law model , as named by a critic, William Dray . Derivation of statistical laws from other statistical laws goes to deductive-statistical model (DS model). Georg Henrik von Wright , another critic, named it subsumption theory , fitting
14118-627: The Eiffel Tower, or a specific apple, and abstract objects, like the number 2 or a specific set in mathematics. Also called individuals , they are unique, non-repeatable entities and contrast with universals , like the color red, which can at the same time exist in several places and characterize several particulars. A widely held view is that particulars instantiate universals but are not themselves instantiated by something else, meaning that they exist in themselves while universals exist in something else. Substratum theory analyzes each particular as
14299-523: The English language through the Latin word metaphysica . The nature of metaphysics can also be characterized in relation to its main branches. An influential division from early modern philosophy distinguishes between general and special or specific metaphysics. General metaphysics, also called ontology , takes the widest perspective and studies the most fundamental aspects of being. It investigates
14480-586: The English-speaking world and reintroducing empiricism in Britain. Its influence extended beyond philosophy, particularly in psychology and social sciences. What Carnap later called the 'liberalization of empiricism' was underway and different camps became discernible within the Circle ;... In the first place, this liberalization meant the accommodation of universally quantified statements and
14661-400: The English-speaking world. Concerning reality , the necessary is a state true in all possible worlds —mere logical validity —whereas the contingent hinges on the way the particular world is. Concerning knowledge , the a priori is knowable before or without, whereas the a posteriori is knowable only after or through, relevant experience. Concerning statements , the analytic
14842-500: The French philosophy of science of Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem , and also to connect them with the investigations in logic of such authors as Couturat , Schröder , Hilbert, etc. A number of further authors were discussed in the meetings such as Brentano , Meinong , Helmholtz , Hertz , Husserl , Freud , Russell , Whitehead , Lenin and Frege . Presumably the meetings stopped in 1912, when Frank went to Prague , to hold
15023-501: The United States occurred throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929 and in 1932, Schlick was a visiting professor at Stanford , while Feigl, who immigrated to the United States in 1930, became lecturer (1931) and professor (1933) at the University of Iowa . The definite diffusion of logical positivism in the United States was due to Carl Hempel, Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, and Herbert Feigl, who emigrated and taught in
15204-490: The United States. Another link to the United States is Willard Van Orman Quine , who traveled in 1932 and 1933 as a Sheldon Traveling Fellow to Vienna , Prague , and Warsaw . Moreover, American semiotician and philosopher Charles W. Morris helped many German and Austrian philosophers emigrate to the United States, including Rudolf Carnap, in 1936. In the United Kingdom it was Alfred Jules Ayer who acquainted
15385-557: The Vienna Circle and the Berlin Society took over the journal Annalen der Philosophie and made it the main journal of logical empiricism under the title Erkenntnis , edited by Carnap and Reichenbach. In addition, the Vienna Circle published a number of book series: Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung ( Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception , ed. by Schlick und Frank, 1928–1937), Einheitswissenschaft ( Unified Science , edited by Neurath, 1933–1939), and later
15566-436: The Vienna Circle in Austria. The history and development of the Vienna Circle shows various stages: The pre-history of the Vienna Circle began with meetings on the philosophy of science and epistemology from 1908 on, promoted by Philipp Frank , Hans Hahn and Otto Neurath . Hans Hahn , the oldest of the three (1879–1934), was a mathematician. He received his degree in mathematics in 1902. Afterwards he studied under
15747-421: The Vienna Circle". However, some central topics and debates can be identified. This states the scientific world-conception of the Vienna Circle, which is characterized "essentially by two features. First it is empiricist and positivist: there is knowledge only from experience. Second, the scientific world-conception is marked by the application of a certain method, namely logical analysis ." Logical analysis
15928-573: The Vienna Circle, had sought to replace verification with simply confirmation . With World War II's close in 1945, logical positivism became milder, logical empiricism , led largely by Carl Hempel , in America, who expounded the covering law model of scientific explanation. Logical positivism became a major underpinning of analytic philosophy , and dominated philosophy in the English-speaking world , including philosophy of science , while influencing sciences, but especially social sciences , into
16109-599: The Vienna Circle. In 1929 the Vienna Circle made its first public appearance under this name – invented by Neurath – with the publication of its manifesto Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis ( The Scientific Conception of the World. The Vienna Circle also known as Viewing the World Scientifically: The Vienna Circle ) The pamphlet is dedicated to Schlick, and its preface was signed by Hahn, Neurath and Carnap. The manifesto
16290-554: The World was intensely discussed in the Circle. Also Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus was read out loud and discussed. From 1927 on personal meetings were arranged between Wittgenstein and Schlick, Waismann, Carnap and Feigl. In 1928 the Verein Ernst Mach ( Ernst Mach Society ) was founded, with Schlick as its chairman. The aim of the society was the spreading of a "scientific world conception" through public lectures that were in large part held by members of
16471-402: The abstract nature of its topic, metaphysics has received criticisms questioning the reliability of its methods and the meaningfulness of its theories. Metaphysics is relevant to many fields of inquiry that often implicitly rely on metaphysical concepts and assumptions. The roots of metaphysics lie in antiquity with speculations about the nature and origin of the universe, like those found in
16652-476: The ambition of theory reduction. Logical positivists were generally committed to " Unified Science ", and sought a common language or, in Neurath's phrase, a "universal slang" whereby all scientific propositions could be expressed. The adequacy of proposals or fragments of proposals for such a language was often asserted on the basis of various "reductions" or "explications" of the terms of one special science to
16833-430: The average person thinks about an issue. For example, common-sense philosophers have argued that mereological nihilism is false since it implies that commonly accepted things, like tables, do not exist. Conceptual analysis , a method particularly prominent in analytic philosophy , aims to decompose metaphysical concepts into component parts to clarify their meaning and identify essential relations. In phenomenology ,
17014-413: The basic observational evidence statements of science. While Carnap's focus on the reduction of descriptive terms allows for the conclusive verification of some statements, his criterion also allowed universally quantified statements to be meaningful, provided they were syntactically and terminologically correct (1932a, §2). It was not until one of his Paris addresses, however, that Carnap officially declared
17195-411: The chair of theoretical physics left vacant by Albert Einstein . Hahn left Vienna during World War I and returned in 1921. The formation of the Vienna Circle began with Hahn returning to Vienna in 1921. Together with the mathematician Kurt Reidemeister he organized seminars on Ludwig Wittgenstein 's Tractatus logico-philosophicus and on Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica . With
17376-408: The climate of American pragmatism and commonsense empiricism, the neopositivists shed much of their earlier, revolutionary zeal. No longer crusading to revise traditional philosophy into a new scientific philosophy , they became respectable members of a new philosophy subdiscipline, philosophy of science . Receiving support from Ernest Nagel , logical empiricists were especially influential in
17557-404: The concepts of truth , truth-bearer , and truthmaker to conduct their inquiry. Truth is a property of being in accord with reality. Truth-bearers are entities that can be true or false, such as linguistic statements and mental representations. A truthmaker of a statement is the entity whose existence makes the statement true. For example, the fact that a tomato exists and that it is red acts as
17738-553: The construction of an International Encyclopedia of Unified Science , promoted mainly by Neurath, Carnap, and Morris, is symptomatic of the internationalization of logical empiricism, organizing numerous international conferences and the publication of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science . Apart from the central figures of the Schlick Circle the question of membership in the Vienna Circle
17919-768: The correctness of specific claims or general principles. For example, arguments for the A-theory of time , which states that time flows from the past through the present and into the future, often rely on pre-theoretical intuitions associated with the sense of the passage of time. Some approaches use intuitions to establish a small set of self-evident fundamental principles, known as axioms , and employ deductive reasoning to build complex metaphysical systems by drawing conclusions from these axioms. Intuition-based approaches can be combined with thought experiments , which help evoke and clarify intuitions by linking them to imagined situations. They use counterfactual thinking to assess
18100-452: The different areas of metaphysics share a set of underlying features and provides instead a fine-grained characterization by listing all the main topics investigated by metaphysicians. Some definitions are descriptive by providing an account of what metaphysicians do while others are normative and prescribe what metaphysicians ought to do. Two historically influential definitions in ancient and medieval philosophy understand metaphysics as
18281-767: The direction of Ludwig Boltzmann in Vienna and David Hilbert , Felix Klein and Hermann Minkowski in Göttingen . In 1905 he received the Habilitation in mathematics. He taught at Innsbruck (1905–1906) and Vienna (from 1909). Otto Neurath (1882–1945) studied mathematics , political economy , and history in Vienna and Berlin. From 1907 to 1914 he taught in Vienna at the Neue Wiener Handelsakademie (Viennese Commercial Academy). Neurath married Olga, Hahn's sister, in 1911. Philipp Frank ,
18462-496: The divine and its role as the first cause. The scope of special metaphysics overlaps with other philosophical disciplines, making it unclear whether a topic belongs to it or to areas like philosophy of mind and theology . Applied metaphysics is a relatively young subdiscipline. It belongs to applied philosophy and studies the applications of metaphysics, both within philosophy and other fields of inquiry. In areas like ethics and philosophy of religion , it addresses topics like
18643-456: The division of observation versus theory , as one can predict, collect, prioritize, and assess data only via some horizon of expectation set by a theory. Thus, any dataset —the direct observations, the scientific facts—is laden with theory . With his landmark The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn critically destabilized the verificationist program, which was presumed to call for foundationalism . (But already in
18824-413: The empirically given; the other kind includes statements which cannot be reduced to statements about experience and thus they are devoid of meaning. Metaphysical statements belong to this second kind and therefore they are meaningless. Hence many philosophical problems are rejected as pseudo-problems which arise from logical mistakes, while others are re-interpreted as empirical statements and thus become
19005-566: The extant conduct of empirical science, logical positivism became erroneously stereotyped as a movement to regulate the scientific process and to place strict standards on it. After World War II , the movement shifted to a milder variant, logical empiricism. It was led mainly by Carl Hempel , who, during the rise of Nazism , had emigrated to the United States. In the ensuing years, the movement's central premises, still unresolved, were heavily criticised by leading philosophers, particularly Willard van Orman Quine and Karl Popper , and even, within
19186-744: The fault of metaphysics not in its cognitive ambitions or the meaninglessness of its statements, but in its practical irrelevance and lack of usefulness. Martin Heidegger criticized traditional metaphysics, saying that it fails to distinguish between individual entities and being as their ontological ground. His attempt to reveal the underlying assumptions and limitations in the history of metaphysics to "overcome metaphysics" influenced Jacques Derrida 's method of deconstruction . Derrida employed this approach to criticize metaphysical texts for relying on opposing terms, like presence and absence, which he thought were inherently unstable and contradictory. There
19367-447: The features that all entities share and how entities can be divided into different categories . Categories are the most general kinds, such as substance, property, relation , and fact . Ontologists research which categories there are, how they depend on one another, and how they form a system of categories that provides a comprehensive classification of all entities. Special metaphysics considers being from more narrow perspectives and
19548-468: The fundamental structure of mind-independent reality. The concepts of possibility and necessity convey what can or must be the case, expressed in modal statements like "it is possible to find a cure for cancer" and "it is necessary that two plus two equals four". Modal metaphysics studies metaphysical problems surrounding possibility and necessity, for instance, why some modal statements are true while others are false. Some metaphysicians hold that modality
19729-441: The group of people who "faces modern times, rejects these views and takes its stand on the ground of empirical sciences". Thus the struggle between metaphysics and scientific world-conception is not only a struggle between different kinds of philosophies, but it is also—and perhaps primarily—a struggle between different political, social, and economical attitudes. Of course, as the manifesto itself acknowledged, "not every adherent of
19910-526: The help of the Berlin Circle . There were some preparatory congresses: Prague (1929), Königsberg (1930), Prague (1934) and then the first congress on scientific philosophy held in Paris (1935), followed by congresses in Copenhagen (1936), Paris (1937), Cambridge , UK (1938), Cambridge, Massachusetts . (1939). The Königsberg congress (1930) was very important, for Kurt Gödel announced that he had proven
20091-471: The hope that all theoretical terms of science could be related to an observational base by such reduction chains. This admission raised a serious problem for the formulation of a meaning criterion: how was one to rule out unwanted metaphysical claims while admitting as significant highly abstract scientific claims? Articles by logical positivists Articles on logical positivism Articles on related philosophical topics Metaphysics Metaphysics
20272-404: The human mind, created to organize and make sense of reality. Spacetime absolutism or substantivalism understands spacetime as a distinct object, with some metaphysicians conceptualizing it as a container that holds all other entities within it. Spacetime relationism sees spacetime not as an object but as a network of relations between objects, such as the spatial relation of being next to and
20453-523: The ideals of the Enlightenment . It was unified by the aim of making philosophy scientific with the help of modern logic . Main topics were foundational debates in the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics; the modernization of empiricism by modern logic; the search for an empiricist criterion of meaning; the critique of metaphysics and the unification of the sciences in the unity of science . The Vienna Circle appeared in public with
20634-443: The indiscernibility of identicals is widely accepted and holds that numerically identical entities exactly resemble one another. The converse principle, known as identity of indiscernibles or Leibniz's Law, is more controversial and states that two entities are numerically identical if they exactly resemble one another. Another distinction is between synchronic and diachronic identity. Synchronic identity relates an entity to itself at
20815-415: The individual sciences by studying the most general and abstract aspects of reality. The individual sciences, by contrast, examine more specific and concrete features and restrict themselves to certain classes of entities, such as the focus on physical things in physics , living entities in biology , and cultures in anthropology . It is disputed to what extent this contrast is a strict dichotomy rather than
20996-427: The liberalization of empiricism and the epistemological nonfoundationalism of a move from phenomenalism to physicalism . As Neurath and somewhat Carnap posed science toward social reform, the split in Vienna Circle also reflected political views. The Berlin Circle was led principally by Hans Reichenbach . Both Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap had been influenced by and sought to define logical positivism versus
21177-482: The logical empiricist program was untenable, and it became viewed as self-contradictory: the verifiability criterion of meaning was itself unverified. Notable critics included Popper , Quine , Hanson , Kuhn , Putnam , Austin , Strawson , Goodman , and Rorty . An early, tenacious critic was Karl Popper whose 1934 book Logik der Forschung , arriving in English in 1959 as The Logic of Scientific Discovery , directly answered verificationism. Popper considered
21358-470: The mathematicians around Hahn. In 1924 Schlick's students Friedrich Waismann and Herbert Feigl suggested to their teacher a sort of regular "evening circle". From winter term 1924 on regular meetings were held at the Institute of Mathematics in Vienna's Boltzmanngasse 5 on personal invitation by Schlick. These discussions can be seen as the beginning of the Vienna Circle. The group that met from 1924 on
21539-573: The meaning criterion to be mere confirmability. Carnap's new criterion required neither verification nor falsification but only partial testability so as now to include not only universal statements but also the disposition statements of science ... Though plausible initially, the device of introducing non-observational terms in this way gave rise to a number of difficulties which impugned the supposedly clear distinctions between logical and empirical matters and analytic and synthetic statements (Hempel 1951). Independently, Carnap himself (1939) soon gave up
21720-469: The meaning of a statement is given by the procedure used to verify it, usually through the observations that would confirm it. Based on this controversial assumption, they argue that metaphysical statements are meaningless since they make no testable predictions about experience. A slightly weaker position allows metaphysical statements to have meaning while holding that metaphysical disagreements are merely verbal disputes about different ways to describe
21901-501: The method of eidetic variation is used to investigate essential structures underlying phenomena . This method involves imagining an object and varying its features to determine which ones are essential and cannot be changed. The transcendental method is a further approach and examines the metaphysical structure of reality by observing what entities there are and studying the conditions of possibility without which these entities could not exist. Some approaches give less importance to
22082-398: The mind knows only actual or potential sensory experience, verificationists took all sciences' basic content to be only sensory experience. And some influence came from Percy Bridgman 's musings that others proclaimed as operationalism , whereby a physical theory is understood by what laboratory procedures scientists perform to test its predictions. In verificationism , only the verifiable
22263-734: The mind used to order experience by classifying entities. Natural and social kinds are often understood as special types of universals. Entities belonging to the same natural kind share certain fundamental features characteristic of the structure of the natural world. In this regard, natural kinds are not an artificially constructed classification but are discovered, usually by the natural sciences, and include kinds like electrons , H 2 O , and tigers. Scientific realists and anti-realists disagree about whether natural kinds exist. Social kinds, like money and baseball , are studied by social metaphysics and characterized as useful social constructions that, while not purely fictional, do not reflect
22444-559: The movement itself, by Hempel. The 1962 publication of Thomas Kuhn 's landmark book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions dramatically shifted academic philosophy's focus. In 1967 philosopher John Passmore pronounced logical positivism "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes". Logical positivists picked from Ludwig Wittgenstein's early philosophy of language the verifiability principle or criterion of meaningfulness. As in Ernst Mach 's phenomenalism , whereby
22625-511: The natural sciences and metaphysics, the public phase of the Vienna Circle was explicitly political. Neurath and Hahn were both socialists and believed the rejection of magic was a necessary component for liberation of the working classes. The manifesto linked Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche to their political and anti-metaphysical views, indicating a blur between what are now considered two separate schools of contemporary philosophy – analytic philosophy and continental philosophy . In 1930
22806-889: The natural sciences rely on concepts such as law of nature , causation, necessity, and spacetime to formulate their theories and predict or explain the outcomes of experiments. While scientists primarily focus on applying these concepts to specific situations, metaphysics examines their general nature and how they depend on each other. For instance, physicists formulate laws of nature, like laws of gravitation and thermodynamics , to describe how physical systems behave under various conditions. Metaphysicians, by contrast, examine what all laws of nature have in common, asking whether they merely describe contingent regularities or express necessary relations. New scientific discoveries have also influenced existing metaphysical theories and inspired new ones. Einstein's theory of relativity , for instance, prompted various metaphysicians to conceive space and time as
22987-558: The neo-Kantianism of Ernst Cassirer —the then leading figure of Marburg school , so called—and against Edmund Husserl 's phenomenology . Logical positivists especially opposed Martin Heidegger 's obscure metaphysics, the epitome of what logical positivism rejected. In the early 1930s, Carnap debated Heidegger over "metaphysical pseudosentences". As the movement's first emissary to the New World , Moritz Schlick visited Stanford University in 1929, yet otherwise remained in Vienna and
23168-401: The object is present, not the object as a whole. Change means that an earlier part is qualitatively different from a later part. For example, when a banana ripens, there is an unripe part followed by a ripe part. Causality is the relation between cause and effect whereby one entity produces or affects another entity. For instance, if a person bumps a glass and spills its contents then the bump
23349-471: The objective features of reality beyond sense experience, from critical metaphysics, which outlines the aspects and principles underlying all human thought and experience. Philosopher P. F. Strawson further explored the role of conceptual schemes, contrasting descriptive metaphysics, which articulates conceptual schemes commonly used to understand the world, with revisionary metaphysics, which aims to produce better conceptual schemes. Metaphysics differs from
23530-458: The only interpretation given to the theoretical terms is their explicit definition provided by the correspondence rules". According to Hilary Putnam , a former student of Reichenbach and of Carnap , the dichotomy of observational terms versus theoretical terms introduced a problem within scientific discussion that was nonexistent until this dichotomy was stated by logical positivists. Putnam's four objections: Putnam also alleged that positivism
23711-584: The ontological foundations of moral claims and religious doctrines. Beyond philosophy, its applications include the use of ontologies in artificial intelligence , economics , and sociology to classify entities. In psychiatry and medicine , it examines the metaphysical status of diseases . Meta-metaphysics is the metatheory of metaphysics and investigates the nature and methods of metaphysics. It examines how metaphysics differs from other philosophical and scientific disciplines and assesses its relevance to them. Even though discussions of these topics have
23892-465: The past. From the perspective of the B-series theory, time is static, and events are ordered by the temporal relations earlier-than and later-than without any essential difference between past, present, and future. Eternalism holds that past, present, and future are equally real, whereas presentism asserts that only entities in the present exist. Material objects persist through time and change in
24073-453: The positivism but other instrumentalism —whereby scientific theory is but a human tool to predict human observations—filling the void left by positivism's decline. By the late 1960s, logical positivism had become exhausted. In 1976, A. J. Ayer quipped that "the most important" defect of logical positivism "was that nearly all of it was false," though he maintained "it was true in spirit." Although logical positivism tends to be recalled as
24254-480: The possible consequences of these situations. For example, to explore the relation between matter and consciousness, some theorists compare humans to philosophical zombies —hypothetical creatures identical to humans but without conscious experience . A related method relies on commonly accepted beliefs instead of intuitions to formulate arguments and theories. The common-sense approach is often used to criticize metaphysical theories that deviate significantly from how
24435-649: The principle that is statements cannot justify ought statements, but are separated by an unbridgeable gap. A. J. Ayer 's 1936 book asserted an extreme variant—the boo/hooray doctrine —whereby all evaluative judgments are but emotional reactions. In an important pair of papers in 1936 and 1937, "Testability and meaning", Carnap replaced verification with confirmation , on the view that although universal laws cannot be verified they can be confirmed. Later, Carnap employed abundant logical and mathematical methods in researching inductive logic while seeking to provide an account of probability as "degree of confirmation", but
24616-508: The process, like a tree that grows or loses leaves. The main ways of conceptualizing persistence through time are endurantism and perdurantism . According to endurantism, material objects are three-dimensional entities that are wholly present at each moment. As they change, they gain or lose properties but otherwise remain the same. Perdurantists see material objects as four-dimensional entities that extend through time and are made up of different temporal parts . At each moment, only one part of
24797-415: The program of reducing mathematics to logic. He continued it with Bertrand Russell , but lost interest in this logicism . Russell then continued it with Alfred North Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica , inspiring some of the more mathematical logical positivists, such as Hans Hahn and Rudolf Carnap . Carnap's early anti-metaphysical works employed Russell's theory of types . Carnap envisioned
24978-468: The publication of various book series – Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung ( Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception ), Einheitswissenschaft ( Unified Science ) and the journal Erkenntnis – and the organization of international conferences in Prague ; Königsberg (today known as Kaliningrad ); Paris ; Copenhagen ; Cambridge , UK, and Cambridge, Massachusetts . Its public profile
25159-464: The realm beyond sensory experience. A related argument favoring the unreliability of metaphysical theorizing points to the deep and lasting disagreements about metaphysical issues, suggesting a lack of overall progress. Another criticism holds that the problem lies not with human cognitive abilities but with metaphysical statements themselves, which some claim are neither true nor false but meaningless . According to logical positivists , for instance,
25340-503: The realm of historical and social assessment, rather than fitting it to the model of physics. Kuhn's ideas were rapidly adopted by scholars in disciplines well outside natural sciences, and, as logical empiricists were extremely influential in the social sciences, ushered academia into postpositivism or postempiricism. The " received view " operates on the correspondence rule that states, "The observational terms are taken as referring to specified phenomena or phenomenal properties, and
25521-448: The realm of physics and its focus on empirical observation. Metaphysics may have received its name by a historical accident when Aristotle's book on this subject was published. Aristotle did not use the term metaphysics but his editor (likely Andronicus of Rhodes ) may have coined it for its title to indicate that this book should be studied after Aristotle's book published on physics : literally ' after physics ' . The term entered
25702-433: The relation between free will and causal determinism —the view that everything in the universe, including human behavior, is determined by preceding events and laws of nature. It is controversial whether causal determinism is true, and, if so, whether this would imply that there is no free will. According to incompatibilism , free will cannot exist in a deterministic world since there is no true choice or control if everything
25883-464: The return, as it were, to salient aspects of Carnap's 1928 conception. Everybody had noted that the Wittgensteinian verificationist criterion rendered universally quantified statements meaningless. Schlick (1931) thus followed Wittgenstein's own suggestion to treat them instead as representing rules for the formation of verifiable singular statements. (His abandonment of conclusive verifiability
26064-431: The same time, whereas diachronic identity is about the same entity at different times, as in statements like "the table I bought last year is the same as the table in my dining room now". Personal identity is a related topic in metaphysics that uses the term identity in a slightly different sense and concerns questions like what personhood is or what makes someone a person. Various contemporary metaphysicians rely on
26245-559: The same time. For example, the particulars Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi instantiate the universal humanity , similar to how a strawberry and a ruby instantiate the universal red . A topic discussed since ancient philosophy, the problem of universals consists in the challenge of characterizing the ontological status of universals. Realists argue that universals are real, mind-independent entities that exist in addition to particulars. According to Platonic realists , universals exist independently of particulars, which implies that
26426-418: The science of the first causes and as the study of being qua being, that is, the topic of what all beings have in common and to what fundamental categories they belong. In the modern period, the scope of metaphysics expanded to include topics such as the distinction between mind and body and free will . Some philosophers follow Aristotle in describing metaphysics as "first philosophy", suggesting that it
26607-454: The scientific world-conception will be a fighter". Many historians of the Vienna Circle see in the latter sentence an implicit reference to a contrast between the so-called 'left wing' of the Vienna Circle, mainly represented by Neurath and Carnap, and Moritz Schlick. The aim of the left wing was to facilitate the penetration of the scientific world-conception in "the forms of personal and public life, in education , upbringing, architecture , and
26788-517: The sentence "some electrons are bonded to protons" is true then it can be used to justify that electrons and protons exist. Quine used this insight to argue that one can learn about metaphysics by closely analyzing scientific claims to understand what kind of metaphysical picture of the world they presuppose. In addition to methods of conducting metaphysical inquiry, there are various methodological principles used to decide between competing theories by comparing their theoretical virtues. Ockham's Razor
26969-433: The shaping of economic and social life". In contrast, Schlick was primarily interested in the theoretical study of science and philosophy. Perhaps the sentence "Some, glad of solitude, will lead a withdrawn existence on the icy slopes of logic" is an ironic reference to Schlick. Logical positivism Logical positivism , later called logical empiricism , and both of which together are also known as neopositivism ,
27150-504: The social sciences. Comtean positivism had viewed science as description , whereas the logical positivists posed science as explanation , perhaps to better realize the envisioned unity of science by covering not only fundamental science —that is, fundamental physics —but the special sciences , too, for instance biology , anthropology , psychology , sociology , and economics . The most widely accepted concept of scientific explanation, held even by neopositivist critic Karl Popper,
27331-457: The subject of scientific inquiries. One source of the logical mistakes that are at the origins of metaphysics is the ambiguity of natural language . "Ordinary language for instance uses the same part of speech , the substantive, for things ('apple') as well as for qualities ('hardness'), relations ('friendship'), and processes ('sleep'); therefore it misleads one into a thing-like conception of functional concepts ". Another source of mistakes
27512-566: The support of Hahn, Moritz Schlick was appointed to the chair of philosophy of the inductive sciences at the University of Vienna in 1922 – the chair formerly held by Ernst Mach and partly by Boltzmann . Schlick had already published two important works Raum und Zeit in die gegenwärtigen Physik ( Space and Time in contemporary Physics ) in 1917 and Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre ( General Theory of Knowledge ) in 1918. Immediately after Schlick's arrival in Vienna, he organized discussions with
27693-517: The temporal relation of coming before . In the metaphysics of time, an important contrast is between the A-series and the B-series . According to the A-series theory, the flow of time is real, meaning that events are categorized into the past, present, and future. The present continually moves forward in time and events that are in the present now will eventually change their status and lie in
27874-684: The terms of another, putatively more fundamental. Sometimes these reductions consisted of set-theoretic manipulations of a few logically primitive concepts (as in Carnap's Logical Structure of the World , 1928). Sometimes, these reductions consisted of allegedly analytic or a priori deductive relationships (as in Carnap's "Testability and meaning"). A number of publications over a period of thirty years would attempt to elucidate this concept. As in Comtean positivism 's envisioned unity of science , neopositivists aimed to network all special sciences through
28055-433: The theory or the recourse to increasingly speculative hypotheses shielding the theory. Explicitly denying the positivist view of meaning and verification, Popper developed the epistemology of critical rationalism , which considers that human knowledge evolves by conjectures and refutations, and that no number, degree, and variety of empirical successes can either verify or confirm scientific theory. For Popper, science's aim
28236-651: The two collections edited by the Vienna Circle. Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung ( Monographs on the Scientific World-Conception ), edited by Schlick and Frank: Einheitswissenschaft ( Unified Science ), edited by Carnap, Frank, Hahn, Neurath, Jørgensen (after Hahn's death), Morris (from 1938): These works are translated in Unified Science: The Vienna Circle Monograph Series Originally Edited by Otto Neurath , Kluwer, 1987. Monographs, arranged in chronological order, published in
28417-408: The underlying faculties responsible for these phenomena. The mind–body problem is the challenge of clarifying the relation between physical and mental phenomena. According to Cartesian dualism , minds and bodies are distinct substances. They causally interact with each other in various ways but can, at least in principle, exist on their own. This view is rejected by monists , who argue that reality
28598-475: The universal red would continue to exist even if there were no red things. A more moderate form of realism , inspired by Aristotle, states that universals depend on particulars, meaning that they are only real if they are instantiated. Nominalists reject the idea that universals exist in either form. For them, the world is composed exclusively of particulars. Conceptualists offer an intermediate position, stating that universals exist, but only as concepts in
28779-637: The victory of Austrofascism in the Austrian Civil War following which the Ernst Mach Society was dissolved for political reasons by the Schuschnigg regime. The murder of Moritz Schlick by the former student Hans Nelböck for political and personal reasons in 1936 set an end to the meetings of the Schlick Circle. Some members of the circle such as Kraft, Waismann, Zilsel, Menger and Gomperz continued to meet occasionally. But
28960-413: The vocabulary and symbols of logic's formal language , was written in natural language open to the layperson. Kuhn's book was first published in a volume of International Encyclopedia of Unified Science —a project begun by logical positivists but co-edited by Neurath whose view of science was already nonfoundationalist as mentioned above—and some sense unified science, indeed, but by bringing it into
29141-424: The world beyond human experience (scientific realism) versus whether it is but a human tool to predict human experience (instrumentalism). Philosophers increasingly critiqued logical positivism, often misrepresenting it without thorough examination. It was generally reduced to oversimplifications and stereotypes, particularly associating it with foundationalism . The movement helped anchor analytic philosophy in
29322-419: The world. According to this view, the disagreement in the metaphysics of composition about whether there are tables or only particles arranged table-wise is a trivial debate about linguistic preferences without any substantive consequences for the nature of reality. The position that metaphysical disputes have no meaning or no significant point is called metaphysical or ontological deflationism . This view
29503-667: The youngest of the group (1884–1966), studied physics at Göttingen and Vienna with Ludwig Boltzmann, David Hilbert and Felix Klein. From 1912, he held the chair of theoretical physics in the German University in Prague . Their meetings were held in Viennese coffeehouses from 1907 onward. Frank remembered: After 1910 there began in Vienna a movement which regarded Mach's positivist philosophy of science as having great importance for general intellectual life [...] An attempt
29684-444: Was a dominant movement, and Hegelian successors such as F H Bradley explained reality by postulating metaphysical entities lacking empirical basis, drawing reaction in the form of positivism . Starting in the late 19th century, there was a "back to Kant " movement( Neo-Kantianism ). Ernst Mach 's positivism and phenomenalism were a major influence. The Vienna Circle , gathering around University of Vienna and Café Central ,
29865-409: Was actually a form of metaphysical idealism by its rejecting scientific theory's ability to garner knowledge about nature's unobservable aspects. With his "no miracles" argument, posed in 1974, Putnam asserted scientific realism , the stance that science achieves true—or approximately true—knowledge of the world as it exists independently of humans' sensory experience. In this, Putnam opposed not only
30046-444: Was led principally by Moritz Schlick . Schlick had held a neo-Kantian position, but later converted, via Carnap's 1928 book Der logische Aufbau der Welt , that is, The Logical Structure of the World . A 1929 pamphlet written by Otto Neurath , Hans Hahn , and Rudolf Carnap summarized the Vienna Circle's positions. Another member of Vienna Circle to later prove very influential was Carl Hempel. A friendly but tenacious critic of
30227-611: Was logically possible to conceive of a procedure of verification; concerned with constructed languages only, Carnap (1936–37) deemed meaningful only statements for whom it was nomologically possible to conceive of a procedure of confirmation or disconfirmation. Many of these issues were openly discussed at the Paris congress in 1935. Already in 1932 Carnap had sought to sharpen his previous criterion by stipulating that those statements were meaningful that were syntactically well-formed and whose non-logical terms were reducible to terms occurring in
30408-411: Was made by a group of young men to retain the most essential points of Mach's positivism, especially his stand against the misuse of metaphysics in science. [...] To this group belonged the mathematician H. Hahn, the political economist Otto Neurath, and the author of this book [i.e. Frank], at the time an instructor in theoretical physics in Vienna. [...] We tried to supplement Mach's ideas by those of
30589-1019: Was murdered in 1936 at the University by a former student, Johann Nelböck , who was reportedly deranged. That year, a British attendee at some Vienna Circle meetings since 1933, A. J. Ayer saw his Language, Truth and Logic , written in English, import logical positivism to the English-speaking world . By then, the Nazi Party 's 1933 rise to power in Germany had triggered flight of intellectuals. In exile in England, Otto Neurath died in 1945. Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel—Carnap's protégé who had studied in Berlin with Reichenbach—settled permanently in America. Upon Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938, remaining logical positivists, many of whom were also Jewish , were targeted and continued flight. Logical positivism thus became dominant in
30770-437: Was never able to formulate a model. In Carnap's inductive logic, every universal law's degree of confirmation is always zero. In any event, the precise formulation of what came to be called the "criterion of cognitive significance" took three decades (Hempel 1950, Carnap 1956, Carnap 1961). Carl Hempel became a major critic within the logical positivism movement. Hempel criticized the positivist thesis that empirical knowledge
30951-704: Was presented at the Tagung für Erkenntnislehre der exakten Wissenschaften ( Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences ) in autumn 1929, organized by the Vienna Circle together with the Berlin Circle . This conference was the first international appearance of logical empiricism and the first of a number of conferences: Königsberg ( 1930 ), Prague (1934), Paris (1935), Copenhague (1936), Cambridge , UK (1938), Cambridge, Mass. (1939), and Chicago (1941). While primarily known for its views on
31132-452: Was proposed by Aristotle, who outlined a system of 10 categories . He argued that substances (e.g. man and horse), are the most important category since all other categories like quantity (e.g. four), quality (e.g. white), and place (e.g. in Athens) are said of substances and depend on them. Kant understood categories as fundamental principles underlying human understanding and developed
31313-497: Was provided by the Ernst Mach Society (German: Verein Ernst Mach ) through which members of the Vienna Circle sought to popularize their ideas in the context of programmes for popular education in Vienna. During the era of Austrofascism and after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany most members of the Vienna Circle were forced to emigrate. The murder of Schlick in 1936 by former student Johann Nelböck put an end to
31494-400: Was published in this collection. Seven works were published in another collection, called Einheitswissenschaft ( Unified Science ). In 1930 Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach undertook the editorship of the journal Erkenntnis , which was published between 1930 and 1940 (from 1939 the editors were Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap and Charles Morris). The following is the list of works published in
31675-420: Was quite diverse and included not only recognized scientists such as Schlick, Hahn, Kraft, Philipp Frank, Neurath, Olga Hahn-Neurath , and Heinrich Gomperz , but also younger students and doctoral candidates. In addition, the group invited foreign visitors. In 1926 Schlick and Hahn arranged to bring Rudolf Carnap to the University of Vienna as a Privatdozent (private lecturer). Carnap's Logical Structure of
31856-529: Was scientific, and thus meaningful (or cognitively meaningful ), whereas the unverifiable, being unscientific, were meaningless "pseudostatements" (just emotively meaningful ). Unscientific discourse, as in ethics and metaphysics , would be unfit for discourse by philosophers, newly tasked to organize knowledge , not develop new knowledge. Logical positivism is sometimes stereotyped as forbidding talk of unobservables , such as microscopic entities or such notions as causality and general principles, but that
32037-469: Was taken to pose significant problems for the philosophy of science. These problems were recognized within the movement, which hosted attempted solutions—Carnap's move to confirmation , Ayer's acceptance of weak verification —but the program drew sustained criticism from a number of directions by the 1950s. Even philosophers disagreeing among themselves on which direction general epistemology ought to take, as well as on philosophy of science , agreed that
32218-575: Was that a statement is "cognitively meaningful" in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content only if some finite procedure conclusively determines its truth. By this verifiability principle , only statements verifiable either by their analyticity or by empiricism were cognitively meaningful . Metaphysics , ontology , as well as much of ethics failed this criterion, and so were found cognitively meaningless . Moritz Schlick, however, did not view ethical or aesthetic statements as cognitively meaningless . Cognitive meaningfulness
32399-472: Was that differences emerged as to whether the criterion of significance was to apply to all languages or whether it was to apply primarily to constructed, formal languages. Schlick retained the focus on logical possibility and natural languages throughout, but Carnap had firmly settled his focus on nomological possibility and constructed languages by the mid-thirties. Concerned with natural language, Schlick (1932, 1936a) deemed all statements meaningful for which it
32580-448: Was the deductive-nomological model (DN model). Yet DN model received its greatest explication by Carl Hempel, first in his 1942 article "The function of general laws in history", and more explicitly with Paul Oppenheim in their 1948 article "Studies in the logic of explanation". In the DN model, the stated phenomenon to be explained is the explanandum —which can be an event, law , or theory —whereas premises stated to explain it are
32761-551: Was variously defined: having a truth value ; corresponding to a possible state of affairs; intelligible or understandable as are scientific statements. Ethics and aesthetics were subjective preferences, while theology and other metaphysics contained "pseudostatements", neither true nor false. This meaningfulness was cognitive, although other types of meaningfulness—for instance, emotive, expressive, or figurative—occurred in metaphysical discourse, dismissed from further review. Thus, logical positivism indirectly asserted Hume's law ,
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