The tenets of Logical Positivism
From Ladyman:
1) Science is the only intellectually respectable form of inquiry.
2) All truths are either: (a) analytic, a priori and necessary (tautological) or (b) synthetic, a posteriori and contingent.*
3) So far as knowledge goes, it is either purely formal and analytic, such as math and logic, or it is a kind of empirical science.*
4) The purpose of philosophy is to explicate the structure or logic of science. Philosophy is really the epistemology of science and analyzing concepts.**
5) Logic is to be used to express precisely the relationships between concepts.
6) The verifiability criterion of meaning: a statement is literally meaningful if and only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable.
7) The Verification Principle: the meaning of a non-tautological statement is its method of verification; that is, the way in which it can be shown to be true by experience.
* - Godel's Incompleteness Proof seems to undo these two tenets, or at least to obfuscate the analytic/synthetic distinction (in Mathematical Logic)
** - This seems to have failed.
1) Science is the only intellectually respectable form of inquiry.
2) All truths are either: (a) analytic, a priori and necessary (tautological) or (b) synthetic, a posteriori and contingent.*
3) So far as knowledge goes, it is either purely formal and analytic, such as math and logic, or it is a kind of empirical science.*
4) The purpose of philosophy is to explicate the structure or logic of science. Philosophy is really the epistemology of science and analyzing concepts.**
5) Logic is to be used to express precisely the relationships between concepts.
6) The verifiability criterion of meaning: a statement is literally meaningful if and only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable.
7) The Verification Principle: the meaning of a non-tautological statement is its method of verification; that is, the way in which it can be shown to be true by experience.
* - Godel's Incompleteness Proof seems to undo these two tenets, or at least to obfuscate the analytic/synthetic distinction (in Mathematical Logic)
** - This seems to have failed.
Written on January 15, 2008