@jeeprs,
jeeprs;147467 wrote:I think among the best-known expressions of positivism is A J Ayer's 'Language Truth and Logic'. It argued that only propositions or statements corresponding to actual states of affairs (I think that is the expression) are meaningful. A lot of what previously took place in philosophy, he said, is more or less the expression of an emotional stance, kind of a very elaborate way of saying 'oh, ahh'. The problem with positivism was that it ate itself. It was realised that a lot that goes on in science would actually be ruled out by a strictly positivistic outlook. But it still provides a lot of stock arguments that are used to this day. Technically, positivism is not materialism, as materialism is actually a metaphysical argument, as I think Ken pointed out above. I think modern materialism started with Baron D'Holbach, who famously said 'I see nothing but bodies in motion', a sentiment which was enthusiastically embraced by many in the Enlightenment. Hobbes, though nominally Christian, advanced a materialist outlook, but some say that was merely because he was nasty, brutish and short :bigsmile:. I myself regard materialism as a kind of ideal 'philosophy for dummies'.
LTL is a very good expression of
logical positivism, one of the last stages of an older theory.
But you are mistaken in how you describe what Ayer writes. If your description were right ("It argued that only propositions or statements corresponding to actual states of affairs (I think that is the expression) are meaningful.") then that would mean that Ayer says that only true sentences are meaningful, and that is obviously preposterous. For that would mean that false sentences were meaningless, and that is absurd. The sentence that Quito is not the capital of Ecuador is false, but it is not meaningless. It is just the negation of a true sentence. What Ayer actually presents is a version of what is called the verifiability theory of meaning which is that a sentence is not meaningful unless it is "verifiable in principle" where that means that it is possible to think of what we would have to sense (what would have to happen) in order for it to be determined that it is true. For example, that Quito is not the capital of Ecuador is false, of course, but it is meaningful because we know what is would be like for it to be true. But, to take another example, according to this theory, the sentence "God exists" would be meaningless because we do not know, even in principle, how we could determine whether it is true. It is not verifiable, not even in principle.
I should add that later logical positivists (and logical empiricists) refined this principle of meaningfulness. For example, they (Rudolf Carnap) said that by "meaningful" they did not mean significant (for it is a fact that people find the issue of whether God exists is very significant) but they meant "cognitively meaningful", and what that meant was the the sentence in question was either true or false. Had a truth value. Thus, for example, a question like, "what time is it" would be meaningful, but since questions have no truth value, they would not be cognitively meaningful.
B
---------- Post added 04-02-2010 at 09:00 AM ----------
jeeprs;147467 wrote:I think among the best-known expressions of positivism is A J Ayer's 'Language Truth and Logic'. It argued that only propositions or statements corresponding to actual states of affairs (I think that is the expression) are meaningful. A lot of what previously took place in philosophy, he said, is more or less the expression of an emotional stance, kind of a very elaborate way of saying 'oh, ahh'. The problem with positivism was that it ate itself. It was realised that a lot that goes on in science would actually be ruled out by a strictly positivistic outlook. But it still provides a lot of stock arguments that are used to this day. Technically, positivism is not materialism, as materialism is actually a metaphysical argument, as I think Ken pointed out above. I think modern materialism started with Baron D'Holbach, who famously said 'I see nothing but bodies in motion', a sentiment which was enthusiastically embraced by many in the Enlightenment. Hobbes, though nominally Christian, advanced a materialist outlook, but some say that was merely because he was nasty, brutish and short :bigsmile:. I myself regard materialism as a kind of ideal 'philosophy for dummies'.
Hobbes held that God was a material object (a rather large one). So, at least, he believed in God.
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