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wow-signal t1_itvqqua wrote

within professional philosophy logical positivism has been discredited since at latest the 60s

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MochiLazar t1_itwjvqo wrote

appeal to authority perhaps in the one place among human beings you would hope not to find it

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Isra443 t1_itxedxj wrote

Yeah I concur with this. There are no more logical positivists anymore, at least not in a renowned and/or academic setting.

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Daotar t1_itzxwkp wrote

I can speak from experience that there very much are prominent philosophers who take the idea seriously. Ideas come in and out of fashion. Positivism has been very out of fashion, now it’s less so.

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wow-signal t1_iu0ga14 wrote

could you name a prominent philosopher who endorses the verification criterion of meaning?

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Daotar t1_iu0i2mg wrote

Taking the idea seriously doesn't mean adopting it exclusively and in its entirety. I'm talking about a reevaluation of the merits of the position and the work done in support of it.

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mirh t1_iu228t5 wrote

The original proponents literally did that, and they decided the original core belief was misplaced.

Hence such label is not used anymore because they found a wholly superior position.

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timothyjwood t1_itz5yw3 wrote

Not at all. With the notable exception of post-modernism, which amounts to competitive obscurantism, positivism mostly just became social science and the humanities generally. With, again, the exception of the mental nonsense special Olympics over there, probably most people don't even consider something like the wholesale rejection of metaphysical explanations. It's presumed. That goes back straight to Comte.

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Interesting_Mood_124 t1_itwkep0 wrote

Really?

At my university we literally had a speaker who was an expert on the history of philosophy and he explained why logical positivism exists and is important

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wow-signal t1_itwlutv wrote

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

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mirh t1_itx03zs wrote

It's not just that "somebody" demonstrated it false.

The very same authors and original proponents agreed that it was surpassed and wrong.

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Interesting_Mood_124 t1_itwm5w1 wrote

Well actually no.

The guy who came to speak at my university seminary specifically explained that it’s not dead and ultimately SHOULD replace metaphysics.

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wow-signal t1_itwnt01 wrote

it'd probably be worth learning about this yourself. here's a great place to start: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/

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Interesting_Mood_124 t1_itxfrr1 wrote

Do you think I don’t know the SEP exists?

At the end of the day, I’m just citing the opinion of an expert in the history of philosophy

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WildIsland-S-E t1_itxnz8u wrote

Without logical analysis what do we use?

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wow-signal t1_itxqszb wrote

logical positivism != logical analysis (fortunately!)

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

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WildIsland-S-E t1_itzwiky wrote

"Just a theory!" Really? A theory isn't the same as a hunch. It's when something has been rigorously tested by the scientific community, and is the highest level of scientific achievement an idea can gain. One might be luck to have the word used on their idea.

Even if the data we get seems to say something, and becomes accepted as a theory. It may still need refinement. So, a theoretical temperament is a good thing to use for fine tuning our understanding.

Please don't dismiss such discipline for the likes of Metaphysics my friend.

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Daotar t1_itzxlp8 wrote

“Discredited” is a bit harsh. It’s certainly not the dominant position anymore, but I personally know of professional philosophers in my department who still more or less accept it.

Philosophers always like to talk about how they’ve disproven this or that idea. Generally speaking, it’s all a load of bull and the ideas will come back given enough time. Like, right now, I would say we’re going through a period where the sort of analytic philosophy of language that replaced positivism is itself being “discredited”, which is leading some to question whether we were too hasty with ditching the logical positivism thing.

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wow-signal t1_iu0gl49 wrote

i'm not aware of any contemporary philosophers who accept the verification criterion of meaning, though i'm sure there are a curmudgeon or two out there

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Daotar t1_iu0hgf0 wrote

The issue is how specifically you want to talk about logical positivism in the modern context. When I talk about it in the modern context, I don't mean a group of philosophers who hew to the precise line sketched out by the Vienna Circle and their supporters. I refer instead to a strain of thought that views logical positivism sympathetically. The idea isn't that they think the verification criterion of meaning is the end of the story and bulletproof, but rather that the critiques of it and the systems offered in place of them are not as convincing as was once thought. So the idea isn't so much that they're logical positivists through and through, but rather that they have sympathies towards the logical positivists and their project and have doubts about the critiques of their opponents. It's about a sort of reevaluation of the work of the logical positivists rather than a wholesale adoption of their ideas.

This is why I say "discredited" is a bit harsh, because while the view was once seen as entirely discredited, people have been reevaluating just how discredited it was. I'd also point out that this is a trend among younger philosophers (where younger means younger than 50, which, wow, weird to say).

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