Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism

Herbert Keuth, Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen, Germany

Abstract

Logical positivism and logical empiricism developed in the early twentieth century. The Vienna Circle, the Berlin Society for
Empirical Philosophy, and the Lvov-Warsaw School of Logic made important contributions to logic, mathematics, philos-
ophy of science, and language analysis. The Vienna Circle proposed a scientific world-conception. Its goal is unified science;
its method is logical analysis, which will unmask traditional philosophical problems as pseudoproblems or transform them
into empirical problems. Factual knowledge results only from experience (empiricist), which rests on what is immediately
given (positivist). In the 1930s, phenomenalist neopositivism was replaced by realist neoempiricism.

The terms ‘logical positivism’ and ‘logical empiricism’ – alter- by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are
natively ‘neopositivism’ and ‘neoempiricism’ – are mainly used followed by objects similar to the second” (Section VII).
synonymously. They refer to a modern version of empiricism, Auguste Comte (1798–1857) proposed the terms ‘posi-
the doctrine that all knowledge about matters of fact stems tivism’ and ‘sociology.’ In Cours de Philosophie Positive, he
from and relies on sensory experience and remains hypothet- maintained that human intellectual development had moved
ical. Like classical empiricism neoempiricism is ‘positive’ in from a theological stage through a metaphysical stage to the
a broad sense: it postulates scientific enquiry and rejects positive stage, which relies on scientific method and discovers
metaphysics. In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth laws on the basis of relations between phenomena. This holds
centuries, most of modern empiricism was ‘positive’ also in for natural and social sciences. John Stuart Mill (1806–73)
a narrower sense: all factual knowledge was considered proposed in A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive an
a construction from what is positively given, i.e., from imme- empiricist methodology regarding logic and mathematics as
diate impressions or elements. In the 1930s, this phenome- the most general empirical sciences, an idea found later in
nalist neopositivism has been replaced by a physicalist Quine’s pragmatism.
neoempiricism. Both are called ‘logical’ because they apply Hermann Helmholtz sketched in Treatise on Physiological
logic for analyzing scientific concepts and clarifying philo- Optics (Helmholtz [1867]1925, [x26, x33]) a realist empiricist
sophical problems. epistemology. According to his inference theory of perception
we explain our sensations by assuming that they are common
effects of external objects and of our nature, but we do not
immediately perceive the objects, or our nature, or the
Historical Background circumstance that the objects have an effect on our nature.
This realist theory involves the metaphysical assumption of
Central issues of neoempiricism have their roots in classical an external world acting on us, which Mach’s
empiricism. Empiricism rules out synthetic statements a priori, phenomenalism tries to avoid. All properties that we assign
i.e., necessarily true factual statements. David Hume to objects of the external world “may be said to be simply
(1711–76) divided the objects of human enquiry into relations effects exerted by them either on our senses or on other
of ideas and matters of fact. Geometry, algebra, and arithmetic natural objects” (1925, 20). As “we see invariably the
deal with relations of ideas. Their statements are intuitively or peculiar sort of interaction occurring, we attribute to the
demonstratively certain, hence a priori. They do not depend on objects a permanent capacity for such effects .. This
or tell about what exists anywhere in the universe. On the other permanent capacity is . called . property” (21). Accordingly,
hand, the contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, properties are dispositions to lawlike behavior. As we do not
because it can never imply a contradiction. As the testimony of perceive the dispositions but only what we take to be their
our senses is not absolutely reliable, statements about matters effects, statements that ascribe properties to objects transcend
of fact are fallible (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, experience. Hence they are fallible.
Section IV). Hume also proposed a meaning criterion. When The physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (1838–1916)
we suspect that a philosophical term is employed without any and the philosopher Richard Avenarius (1843–96) proposed
meaning or idea, we need only enquire, from what impression a phenomenalist positivism. Avenarius called it empiriocriticism.
that supposed idea is derived, and if we cannot find any such Lenin criticized it in Materialism and Empirio-criticism. Mach
impression, we will conclude that this term is meaningless rejected Kant’s transcendental idealism, in particular the ideas of
(Section II). Hume’s discussion of causality showed how to things-in-themselves and of synthetic a priori knowledge. He
avoid metaphysical hypostatizations of concepts. Causes and considered the atom, which had never been observed, merely
effects can be discovered by experience, not by reason. a tool for representing phenomena, and he criticized Newton’s
However, no examination of a single object can show that it is idea of absolute space and time. Mach’s philosophy of science
a cause or an effect. Therefore, Hume proposed a regularity tries to avoid all metaphysical concepts and assumptions. Factual
theory of causation, defining a cause to be “an object, followed knowledge is considered a conceptual organization of the data of

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314 Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism

sensory experience. Hence statements on facts must be empiri- Wittgenstein philosophy is not a set of theories but an
cally verifiable. Mach’s phenomenalist construction of the world activity. Its task is to clear up confusions arising from
in The Analysis of Sensations ([1886]1897) starts from his misunderstandings of language (4.112). His logical atomism
contemplation of the spatial boundary of his body. His senses strongly influenced the Vienna Circle. Wittgenstein later
provide findings from outside and inside this boundary. The rejected logical atomism and argued that the meaning of
latter are psychical; the former are physical and can be dissolved words depends on their role in language games.
into elements like colors and tones. Elements that depend on
findings both from outside and from inside are sensations. The
complex of what is psychical to Mach is his ego. As the Neoempiricist Circles
elements of his neighbors are not given to Mach and vice versa,
there is no intersubjectively common boundary between the From 1907 to 1912, a group that is sometimes called the First
physical and the psychical, rather there are common elements Vienna Circle met informally to discuss epistemological and
of both districts. Taken by themselves the elements are neither methodological problems of modern physics. It had gathered
physical nor psychical. This neutral monism avoids the around the physicist Philipp Frank (1884–1966), the mathe-
body–mind problem. Obviously Mach is not an ontological matician Hans Hahn (1879–1934), and the economist and
but a ‘theoretical’ solipsist. The objects of the real world are sociologist Otto Neurath (1882–1945). The mathematician
complexes of sensations; hence, there is no need to postulate Richard von Mises (1883–1953) was a corresponding member.
metaphysical things-in-themselves. Science describes functional They tried to retain the most essential points of Mach’s philos-
interrelationships between complexes of sensations. By learning ophy of science and supplement it by Henri Poincaré’s
science we profit from the experience that others have made. conventionalism and Pierre Duhem’s holism. Other fields of
Science is a process of adaptation. The most exact and most their interest were the foundations of mathematics and logistic.
economical descriptions are most helpful in everyday life. Poincaré (1854–1912) had argued that, as we cannot tell
Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) laid in Conceptual Notation whether physical space is Euclidian or non-Euclidian, our choice
([1879]1972) the foundations of mathematical logic. He between geometries is a matter of convention. There is no true
introduced variables and functions into logic in an attempt scientific hypothesis, rather we choose the hypothesis that is
to show that arithmetic is a branch of logic. Concepts are most advantageous (Science and Hypothesis [1902]1905).
a special class of functions. His program of logicism is Duhem (1861–1916) had argued that it is impossible to test
worked out in Basic Laws of Arithmetic ([1893]1964) where he any physical theory separately. Rather in each case the whole of
tries to derive the laws of arithmetic from logical axioms. In physics is tested (The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory [1906]
1902, Russell informed Frege that his system implies the 1954). In 1912, Frank left Vienna to succeed Einstein in Prague.
antinomy of the set of all sets that do not contain
themselves. Frege’s work is the first complete example of the
The Vienna Circle
logical analytic method in philosophy.
In The Principles of Mathematics (1903), Bertrand Russell In 1922, the physicist and philosopher Moritz Schlick
(1872–1970) stated the philosophical case for logicism. To (1882–1936) obtained the chair for the philosophy of the
avoid the antinomy, he proposed the theory of types. In Principia inductive sciences at the University of Vienna previously held
Mathematica (1910–13), Russell and Whitehead tried to by Mach and Boltzmann. A discussion group gathered around
demonstrate that mathematics is a branch of logic. However, his seminar and met regularly since 1923. It was called the
Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem (1931) shows that this ‘Schlick Circle’ from within and soon the ‘Vienna Circle’ from
demonstration is impossible. In Our Knowledge of the External outside. Prominent members were Hans Hahn; Otto Neurath;
World (1914), Russell writes, “the study of logic becomes the the philosophers Herbert Feigl (1902–88) (who in 1931
central study in philosophy: it gives the method of research in proposed the label ‘logical positivism’), Friedrich Waismann
philosophy, just as mathematics gives the method in physics (1896–1959), Victor Kraft (1880–1975), Felix Kaufmann
. all this supposed knowledge in the traditional systems (1895–1949), and Béla Juhos (1901–71); and the mathema-
must be swept away, and a new beginning must be made” ticians Karl Menger (1902–85) and Kurt Gödel (1906–78).
(Section 6). Carnap felt as if this appeal had been directed to Philipp Frank cooperated while in Prague. In 1926, Rudolf
him personally. Carnap (1891–1970), who had studied mathematics with
After reading Frege and Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein Frege, joined the circle.
(1889–1951) turned from engineering to logic and mathe- Among the subjects discussed were Einstein’s theories of
matics. In Tractatus Logico-philosophicus ([1921]1922), he relativity; Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, which suggests a verifi-
proposed a picture theory of language, according to which ability criterion of meaning (4.063) and the idea that the
a proposition can picture a fact because fact and proposition sentences of logic and mathematics do not express thoughts;
share a common structure. For each atomic fact there is Mach’s phenomenalism, which inspired Carnap’s Aufbau;
a corresponding atomic proposition. More complex the character of observation or protocol sentences; and the
molecular propositions are constructed from atomic construction of a metalanguage for the syntactic analysis of
propositions by means of logical connectives. What cannot scientific languages.
be pictured cannot be said. The sentences of logic and In 1928, the Ernst Mach Society (Verein Ernst Mach) was
mathematics do not make statements on the world or on founded. The choice of its name shows its basic orientation:
numbers. They do not have linguistic meaning (6.21). They science free of metaphysics. Originally initiated by the Austrian
all say the same, i.e., nothing (5.43). According to Freethinker Alliance (Freidenkerbund Österreichs) it became
 Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism 315

the platform from which the Vienna Circle addressed a wider defined the concept of truth in formalized languages. To avoid
public in order to disseminate the findings of the exact sciences antinomies like that of the liar he separated object- and
and to further modern empiricism and a new organization of metalanguage. In Vienna, Tarski met Gödel and worked with
economic and social relations. Several members, in particular Menger. Tarski’s metalogic influenced Carnap. Ajdukiewicz and
Neurath, Carnap, and Edgar Zilsel (1891–1944), supported Kotarbi
nski also cooperated with the Vienna Circle.
anticlerical and socialist positions. In 1929, the Ernst Mach
Society published the booklet The Scientific Conception of the
World: The Vienna Circle ([1929]1973), which contains The Scientific Conception of the World
a summary of positions common to the members of the
Vienna Circle and was dedicated to Schlick. It is the first The scientific conception of the world is not a collection of
volume of a series of publications of the Ernst Mach Society. theses; rather it consists of a basic attitude, common points of
In 1931, Carnap went to Prague, where he and Frank formed view, and a direction of research. The task of philosophical
a branch of the Vienna Circle, and Feigl emigrated to the work is the clarification of problems, concepts, and assertions,
United States. In 1934, the Ernst Mach Society was dissolved not the production of specifically philosophical theses or even
by the Dollfuss government, Neurath emigrated, and Hahn dogmas. The scientific world-conception can best be charac-
died. In 1936, Schlick was assassinated and Carnap left terized by two main features. First, it is empiricist and (in 1929)
Prague for Chicago. The circle continued in a small private positivist; it expects factual knowledge only from experience
discussion group led by Waismann until he emigrated to (empiricist), which rests on what is immediately given (posi-
England in 1938. tivist). Therefore, it rejects all metaphysical philosophy.
Second, its method is logical analysis of concepts and state-
ments both of natural and formal languages. This method
The Berlin Society for Empirical Philosophy
essentially distinguishes modern empiricism from classical
In 1928, the physicist Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953), the empiricism. Applied to traditional philosophical problems it
mathematician Kurt Grelling (1886–1942), and the logician will either unmask them as pseudoproblems or transform them
Walter Dubislav (1895–1937) founded in Berlin the Society into empirical problems.
for Empirical Philosophy (Gesellschaft für empirische Philoso-
phie). Other members were the philosophers Carl Gustav Hem-
Unified Science
pel (1905–97) and Joseph Petzoldt (1862–1929) and the
mathematicians David Hilbert (1862–1943) and Richard von The goal of the scientific world-conception is unified science. In
Mises. In 1930, Carnap and Reichenbach took over the journal 1938, a series of publications started, the International Encyclo-
Annalen der Philosophie and renamed it Erkenntnis. Its new pedia of Unified Science, which was never completed. Nineteen
program was to pursue philosophy not as an isolated discipline monographs appeared from 1938 to 1969 and were finally
but in closest connection with the sciences. Reichenbach called collected in two volumes. Unified science may be characterized
this project ‘logical empiricism.’ On the proposal of Hilbert the by two requirements. The weaker one is all sciences apply
Berlin Society was in 1931 renamed ‘Society for Scientific empirical methods and use the physicalist language or thing
Philosophy.’ language (which is not identical with the language of physics).
Together the Vienna Circle and the Berlin Circle organized The stronger requirement is the laws of all sciences are deriv-
congresses on epistemology and philosophy of science, some able from physical laws. This program is called reductionism.
of them preparatory: in Prague 1929; in Königsberg 1930, Since 1930, parts of medicine have been reduced to biology,
where Gödel announced his proofs of the completeness of first parts of biology to chemistry, and parts of chemistry to physics.
order logic (his doctoral dissertation of 1929) and of the As long as sciences produce new theories, the reduction of all
incompleteness of arithmetic (published in 1931); in Prague sciences to physics will never be complete, and neoempiricists
1934; then the international congress for scientific philosophy cannot want that science should ever come to a standstill just to
in Paris 1935; and the international congresses for the unity of complete unified science. Therefore, they will have to be
science in Copenhagen 1936, in Paris 1937, in Cambridge, UK, content with sporadic partial reductions. However, most criti-
1938, and in Cambridge, USA, in 1939. cism of the idea of unified science is directed against the weaker
requirement, because it rules out scientific statements on
specifically mental entities (as e.g., minds that are independent
The Lvov-Warsaw School
of brains) and specific nonempirical methods postulated in the
Kazimierz Twardowski (1866–1938) established the Lvov- humanities (as e.g., Verstehen [understanding], introspection,
Warsaw School of logic, which studied the foundations of or intuition).
mathematical logic and analyzed the relationship of language
and knowledge. Among its members were his doctoral students The Kernel of Neopositivism
Jan qukasiewicz (1878–1956) who developed the Polonian Carnap’s Der logische Aufbau der Welt ([1928]2003, The Logical
notation and formalized a system of three valued logic, Sta- Structure of the World) is a crystallization of logical positivism,
nis1aw Lesniewski (1886–1939), Tadeusz Kotarbi nski its most influential book. It is empiricist, phenomenalist
(1886–1981), and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963) who (positivist), and antimetaphysical. Frege and Russell had
in 1920 developed a deductive theory for the study of logic attempted to reduce all logical and mathematical concepts to
based on syntax. Alfred Tarski (1901–83), doctoral student of a few fundamental concepts. In the Aufbau Carnap tries to
Lesniewski, established scientific semantics. In 1933, he sketch how the same can be done for empirical concepts.
316 Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism

A system of concepts could be built on a physicalist basis, but Now phenomenalist neopositivism has come to an end, but
he chooses a phenomenalist basis, because it represents not physicalist neoempiricism lives on.
only logical but also epistemological relations among the
concepts. The choice of a language is a matter of The Basic Thesis of Empiricism
convenience. This ‘principle of tolerance’ is stated in Carnap’s In General Theory of Knowledge ([1918]1985), Schlick rejects
second important book The Logical Syntax of Language ([1934] both Kant’s thing-in-itself and Mach’s phenomenalism. Instead
1937). By the logical syntax of a language he means the he proposes a critical realism. He also gives a thorough critique
systematic statement of the formal rules that govern it of Kant’s synthetic a priori. While Kant believes “When . strict
together with the development of the consequences that universality belongs to a judgment essentially; this points to
follow from the rules. a special source of cognition for it, namely a faculty of a priori
In the Aufbau Carnap defends, like Mach and Russell, the cognition” (Critique of Pure Reason, B4), empiricists take the
positivist thesis that – in principle – it is possible to reduce all notion that thinking can lead to factual knowledge out of its
scientific concepts stepwise to (concepts referring to) the own resources without using any empirical material to be
immediately given. While Mach lacked the logical theory of a basic error of metaphysics. Only the formal (analytic) truths
relations developed in Principia Mathematica and Russell left it of logic and mathematics can be known a priori, all factual
in Our Knowledge of the External World (1914) at a very readable (synthetic) knowledge is a posteriori. This is the basic thesis of
informal sketch, Carnap uses logic to design a ‘constitutive empiricism. In Einstein’s words: “As far as the laws of geometry
theory’ and work it out in some detail. Its main thesis says refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain,
that it is possible to deduce all scientific concepts by means they do not refer to reality.”
of ‘constitutional definitions’ from a few fundamental
concepts. When this logical analysis is completed for all The Verifiability Criterion of Meaning
concepts, they can be ordered into a ‘constitutive system.’ At The best known proposal of logical positivism is the verifi-
its basis, concepts refer directly to the given; in the next layer ability criterion of meaning (or meaningfulness). Only if we
they refer to physical objects, then follow other minds and know what a statement means, can we assess whether it is true.
finally the objects of social science. Instead of saying that However, the verifiability criterion implies that we can only
concepts are constituted he could as well say that objects are know what it means, if we can assess whether it is true. Its best
constituted. This is merely another mode of speaking. known wording by Waismann (1930, 229, my translation)
The Gestalt psychology of Wertheimer, Köhler, and Koffka reads as follows: “If it can in no way be indicated when
had shown that simple sense data result from a process of a statement is true, then this statement does not have any
abstraction, while instantaneous visual fields may be given as meaning at all; for the meaning of a statement is the method
units. Therefore, Carnap chooses total instantaneous experi- of its verification. . A statement which cannot be definitely
ences (Elementarerlebnisse) as fundamental elements. They verified is not verifiable at all; it just lacks any meaning.”
are momentary cross sections of the total stream of experi- Waismann’s wording presupposes that statements about the
ence. At this level the ego has not yet been constituted. Still empirically given can be definitely verified or are for some
subjectless fundamental elements are individual (eigen- reason certain and therefore do not need verification. This
psychisch). Hence the basis of the system is solipsistic, but presupposition is subject of the debate on protocol sentences.
this is a methodic, not an ontological solipsism. Carnap’s Serious problems of the verifiability criterion of meaning
sole fundamental relation is a similarity relation between were evident. First, we could not answer questions, if they had
fundamental elements. In his exposition, a process of defi- no linguistic meaning. As they are neither true nor false, they
nitions starting from recollections of similarities (Ähnlich- cannot be verified. If, however, questions can be meaningful
keitserinnerungen) between pairs of visual fundamental without being verifiable, why can statements not be meaning-
elements leads first to the visual domain, then to positions in ful without being verifiable? Second, universal statements like
the visual field, to colors, the temporal order, etc. Carnap ‘All ravens are black’ cannot be definitely verified because of the
calls this process ‘quasi-analysis.’ Next, things in the percep- problem of induction. Accordingly they are considered mean-
tual space are constructed, among them the observer’s body ingless. However, we use them in everyday life, and classical
and other persons’ bodies. The class of all individual expe- physics is deterministic.
riences of the observer is his ‘ego.’ Then follow other minds To solve the problem of universal statements, various
and finally cultural products. Thus any scientific statement proposals have been made. They all have their specific defects,
could – in principle – be transformed into a statement on and they all have a common defect: not even singular obser-
similarity relations between total instantaneous experiences. vation statements can be definitely verified, for the properties
This construction avoids metaphysical hypostatizations of that they attribute to objects are dispositions to lawlike
physical or mental entities. Although statements on bodies behavior, but we observe only instances of this behavior. Hence
and minds remain possible, the body–mind problem has according to the verifiability criterion of meaning there are no
been dissolved. meaningful statements at all. Karl Popper (1902–94) thor-
Later Carnap admitted that a definitional reduction of oughly criticized these proposals in a manuscript that was in
concepts is not possible and that the extensional language that 1933 accepted for publication by Schlick and Frank but was
he proposed is not sufficient. In his article ‘Die physikalische rejected by the publisher Springer because of its length. An
Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft’ ([1932a], incomplete edition appeared only in 1979. What Helmholtz
1934a, literally: The physicalist language as a universal had said about dispositions Popper said about disposition
language of science) Carnap prefers the physicalist language. predicates: the statement “Here is a glass of water” cannot be
 Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism 317

verified, because the universals “. is glass” and “. is water” Quine calls a statement ‘analytic’ if it is true by virtue of
express lawlike behavior ([1935]1959a, 95), dispositions, meaning alone. Now there is no precise meaning of ‘meaning.’
and each of these laws transcends experience (424). The Moreover, we cannot in all languages give the word
verifiability criterion of meaning was soon given up when ‘analytic’ a precise meaning. Therefore, he concludes, the ana-
Popper proposed in his Logic of Scientific Discovery lytic/synthetic distinction is not tenable. However, Quine’s
a falsifiability (later testability) criterion of demarcation argument is not conclusive. Tautologies have no meaning; they
between empirical science and metaphysics, according to are analytic because of their form alone, explicit definitions
which those, and only those, synthetic statements are create new synonymies, any author can state which of his
considered to be empirically scientific that are empirically sentences are meant to be linguistic conventions, and it would
falsifiable ([1933]1959b, sect. 6). Metaphysical statements be sufficient to give the word ‘analytic’ a precise meaning only
may be meaningful but are not scientific. for that language whose statements we are actually examining.
According to Quine the reductionism of Carnap’s Aufbau
The Debate on Protocol Sentences survives in the idea that statements can be tested separately.
The debate on protocol sentences brought another radical While Duhem had argued that we never test a single physical
change. Its most important arguments were exchanged in three theory but always test the whole of physics, Quine argues that
articles. According to Carnap’s ‘Die physikalische Sprache als we always test the whole of our knowledge including pure
Universalsprache der Wissenschaft’ ([1932]1934), protocol mathematics and logic. We can hold true any statement come
sentences like ‘here, now, blue; there, red’ refer to the given, what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in
need no justification, and serve as foundation for all other the system of our knowledge, even among logical laws. This
statements of science. Neurath objects in ‘Protocol Sentences’ argument is even less conclusive. Laws of logic and mathe-
([1932]1959) that there are no conclusively established matics are true or false according to their form, while laws of
protocol sentences. His protocol sentences refer to physical physics fit or do not fit reality. Only if we had reasons to accept
objects and contain the name of a person drafting the protocol, Quine’s (and Mill’s) pragmatist or instrumentalist interpreta-
an indication of place and time, and a perception term. They tion of both kinds of laws, could it seem reasonable to reject the
are subject to verification and may be changed or even analytic/synthetic distinction. Even though not conclusive the
discarded. In his rejoinder ‘On Protocol Sentences’ ([1932] holism of the Duhem-Quine thesis is the best known trigger of
1987) Carnap argues that both phenomenalist and physicalist the pragmatist turn in analytic philosophy.
protocol sentences are possible, but he now prefers an
intersubjective, physicalist language. He rejects Neurath’s Prospects
proposal to admit only protocol sentences of a certain form in
favor of Popper’s proposal that every concrete sentence of the Phenomenalist neopositivism ended in the 1930s. Neo-
physicalist language of science can – under certain circum- empiricists have not only given up the idea that metaphysical
stances – serve as a protocol sentence. All sentences are fallible statements are literally meaningless but also admit that there is
and must be empirically tested. As there are no absolute initial no sharp boundary between science and metaphysics. They
sentences of science left, Popper’s testing procedure (in [1933] recognize that most scientific theories are not from the begin-
1959b) involves, according to Carnap, the most radical ning empirically testable but start as metaphysical hypotheses
elimination of the absolutism of the given. This ends the in the sense of Popper’s criterion of demarcation and become
debate on protocol sentences, while the rise of Popper’s critical scientific, i.e., empirically testable, only after some develop-
rationalism, an advanced version of neoempiricism, begins. ment of the theories themselves or of the means of testing
The quest for certainty is not yet over. Schlick never was them. Before the thesis of the Higgs-boson’s existence –
a phenomenalist, but he still clings to the absolutism of the possibly – became testable, scientists had to specify which
given. According to him, understanding and verifying coincide traces it would leave and the Large Hadron Collider had to be
in the case of ‘confirmations’ (Konstatierungen) like ‘Here now built.
so and so’ ([1933]1959, 221, 224). ‘Confirmations’ are There is still a difference between scientific speculation,
absolutely true and certain. On the other hand, they are only which aims at testable hypotheses, and philosophical specu-
subjective, and their function lies only in the immediate lation, whose results never become intersubjectively testable,
present. Accordingly, they play only a pragmatic part in the and there are differences between philosophical speculations.
evaluation of scientific hypotheses. In his 1929 lecture ‘Was ist Metaphysik?’ Martin Heidegger
pronounced that the nothing (or nothingness) nothings and
that this activity is the origin of negation. Carnap diagnosed
The Duhem-Quine Thesis
that Heidegger had turned the negation ‘nicht’ (not) both into
The Duhem-Quine thesis is the most serious attack on neo- a substantive ‘das Nichts’ (the nothing or nothingness) and
empiricism. According to Willard Van Orman Quine into a verb ‘nichten’ (to nothing) and that his pronouncement
(1908–2000), modern empiricism has been conditioned in was therefore nonsensical. Immanuel Kant asserted in Critique
large part by two dogmas (1951). One is the analytic/synthetic of Pure Reason that (Euclidian) space is an a priori intuition,
distinction; the other is reductionism, the belief that each a necessary presupposition of empirical knowledge. However,
meaningful statement is translatable into a statement about according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity physical
immediate experience. Both are ill-founded. If they are given space is elliptic and visual space is taken to be by and large
up, the border between science and metaphysics falls and the hyperbolic. Does this mean that what Kant considered a priori
philosophy of science shifts toward pragmatism. necessarily true has turned out a posteriori to be factually false?
318 Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism

Did Kant mean a third kind of space, and what can be said Carnap, R., 1932b. 1987. Über Protokollsätze. Erkenntnis 3, 215–228. Trans. On
about it other than that it is Euclidian? Kant’s theses on the protocol sentences. Noûs XXI, 457–470.
Carnap, R., 1934b. 1937. Logische Syntax der Sprache. Julius Springer, Wien. Trans.
contribution of categories and of the a priori intuitions of space
The Logical Syntax of Language. Kegan Paul, London.
and time to our knowledge filled a gap that phenomenalist Duhem, P., 1906. 1954. La théorie physique, son objet et sa structure. Chevalier &
empiricism had left. Insofar they furthered the evolution of Rivière, Paris. Transl. by P. Wiener from the Second French Edition 1914. The Aim
epistemology, even though they turned out to be untenable. and Structure of Physical Theory. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Neoempiricists will rather trust in Helmholtz’s critical realism Frege, G., 1879. 1972. Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete For-
melsprache des reinen Denkens. Halle: Louis Nebert; Bynum, T. W. (trans. and
than in Kant’s transcendental idealism and learn from psychology ed.), Conceptual notation and related articles. Oxford UP, Oxford.
of perception, neurophysiology, and – possibly – electronic Frege, G., 1893. 1964. Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, begriffsschriftlich abgeleitet.
modeling of brain processes. As these disciplines develop, so will Jena, vol. 1 1893, vol.2 1903. In: Hermann, Pohle, partial translation by
empiricism. Again and again new aspects of modern empiricism Furth, M. (Eds.), The basic laws of arithmetic. University of California Press,
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See also: Critical Rationalism; Knowledge (Explicit, Implicit and London.
Tacit): Philosophical Aspects; Methodological Individualism:
Philosophical Aspects; Objectivity: Philosophical Aspects;
Physicalism and Alternatives; Pragmatism: Philosophical Relevant Websites
Aspects; Relativism: Philosophical Aspects; Scientific
Explanation; Social Science, The Idea of. http://www.univie.ac.at/ivc/ and http://wienerkreis.univie.ac.at/ – Institute Vienna
Circle; Institut Wiener Kreis. Verein zur Förderung wissenschaftlicher Weltauffas-
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http://viennacirclefoundation.nl/ – Vienna Circle Foundation, Amsterdam.
http://www.austrian-philosophy.at – Forschungsstelle und Dokumentationszentrum für
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