Page 50 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Language, Metaphysics, and Ontology
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Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Reidel, Dordrecht
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Waismann F 1965 The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy. Macmillan, London
Wittgenstein L 1922 Tractalus Logico-Philosophicus. Kegan Paul, London
Wittgenstein L 1953 Philosophical Investigations. Basil Blackwell, Oxford
Wright H G von 1951 Deontic logic. Mind 60: 1-15
physics. Methuen, London
Logical positivism—known also as scientific or logical empiricism—was a movement that flourished in Vienna during the early decades of the twentieth century. The overall aim of its members was to make philosophy 'scientific.' They took this to mean, in general terms, that the concepts, the methods, and the language used by philosophers should be made more rigorous and exact, and that philosophers should be induced to eschew all forms of vague, untestable, or transcendental speculation. More specifically, a cen- tral tenet of logical positivism was the thesis that any significant discourse must comprise either substantive, empirically testable claims about the world, or merely formal, analytical propositions that do no more than record the adoption of certain conventions governing the use of signs. Logical positivism thus attempted to combine the radical empiricism of Hume and Mach with the conventionalism of Poincare and the new logic of Frege and Russell. The claims made by tra- ditional metaphysicians were stigmatized by the Vienna positivists as 'unscientific,' that is, as incom- prehensible 'pseudo-claims' lacking all cognitive content.
1. Historical Origins
As early as 1907 a group of Viennese scientists had begun meeting regularly to discuss the philosophical problems which arose in the foundations of their vari- ous disciplines. They included Philipp Frank, a physi- cist, Hans Hahn, a mathematician, and Otto Neurath, a sociologist, economist, and polymath. The domi- nant influence on this group was Ernst Mach, who had held the newly created Chair of History and Phil- osophy of the Inductive Sciences in the University of Vienna, 1895-1901. It was not, however, until 1922, when Moritz Schlick came to Vienna to occupy that chair, that the ViennaCircle was properly constituted.
To begin with, the Circle was merely an informal 28
group of like-minded thinkers who met in Schlick's house on Thursday evenings to discuss philosophical problems. By 1928, however, they had founded the Ernst Mach Society, and their manifesto, aptly titled Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung: Der Wiener Kreis (The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle), was published a year later. From 1928 to 1938 the Circle published a substantial number of monographs on logic, language, mathematics, science, and theory of knowledge.
The list of philosophers and scientists who were members of the Circle is distinguished. In addition to Schlick and the others already mentioned, it includes Gustav Bergmann, Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Felix Kaufmann, Kurt G6del, Victor Kraft, Karl Menger, Bela von Juhos, and Friedrich Waismann. Other philosophers and scientists, although not stric- tly a part of the Circle, were in close and sympathetic contact with its members for some or all of this period. They include, amongst others, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, A. J. Ayer, Kurt Grelling, Albert Einstein, Carl Hempel, Stanislaw Lesniewski, Jan Lukasiewicz, Arne Naess, Karl Popper, W. V. O. Quine, Hans Reichenbach, Alfred Tarski, Richard von Mises, and LudwigWittgenstein.
The Circle continued, under Schlick's leadership, as a coherent group for nearly 15 years, until the rise of National Socialism and the Anschluss forced its members to disperse.
2. EmpiricismandSemantics
Central to logical positivism is the goal of establishing the limits and structure of meaningful discourse; and central to the achievement of this goal is the for- mulation of a criterion of factual meaningfulness or cognitive significance. 'The purpose of this criterion is to delimit the type of expression which has possible reference to fact, from the other types which do not
Logical Positivism D. Bell