Philosophy of Being and Knowledge

Philosophy of Science

Neopositivism

The beginning of neopositivism, or logical positivism—a philosophical movement that combines positivist ideas with the philosophy of language—is typically dated to 1922. In that year, Friedrich Albert Moritz Schlick (1882—1936), a professor at the University of Vienna, initiated the tradition of meeting with his graduate students every Thursday evening to discuss important philosophical and scientific topics. These seminars became so popular that they attracted numerous scholars from the German-speaking world. The scientists who gathered around Schlick’s ideas formed one of the most influential philosophical schools of the 20th century—the Vienna Circle. Among its members were Otto Neurath (1882—1945), Rudolf Carnap (1891—1970), Hans Reichenbach (1891—1953), Alfred Ayer (1910—1989), and others. These scholars synthesized the philosophy of science with the philosophy of language.

Neopositivists argued that many of the problems philosophy and science cannot solve are not due to the complexity of reality, but rather to the imperfections of language. To eliminate these problems, it is necessary to purify language. If the path to freedom from unsolvable problems lies in removing linguistic imperfections, then the core of neopositivist philosophy became the philosophical analysis of language. All linguistic statements can be divided into those that have truth value and those that do not. In traditional logic, there are two possible truth values: truth and falsehood. For example, the truth value of the statement "The Moon is a satellite of the Earth" is truth, while the statement "Paris is the capital of Spain" is falsehood. Regardless of the truth value of these statements, it exists and can be determined. Statements whose truth can be empirically verified were called by neopositivists "protocol statements," as they record or "protocol" reality. In addition to protocol statements, which can be empirically verified, there are also statements that do not require empirical verification because their meaning is self-evident. These are tautologies (logical truths) and contradictions (logical falsehoods). For instance, the statement "The house is either white or not white" is true even without verification, as no other possibilities exist beyond those indicated in the statement. Neopositivists emphasized that there are statements whose truth cannot be empirically verified, such as all metaphysical statements. According to the neopositivists, if a statement's truth value can be empirically tested, then it exists; if it cannot be tested based on experience, it does not exist. Hence, all statements, in their view, can be divided into those that have truth value and those that do not, while those that do have truth value are further divided into those whose truth must be empirically verified (protocol statements) and those whose truth or falsehood follows from logical laws.

Philosophy has accumulated many statements lacking truth value, and these philosophical problems will never be solved because they are not real problems, but illusory ones. Rather than solving them, they must simply be discarded. Only then will philosophy and science become productive, and their results reliable. Science, according to neopositivism, should operate solely with statements whose truth value can be verified. The empirical verification of the truth value of protocol statements was called "verification" by neopositivists. Only sciences that employ the empirical method can verify statements, leading to the conclusion that science is the only source of true knowledge. The task of science is to purify language from statements that lack truth value. When only statements with determinable truth value remain in science and everyday life, science can then fulfill its primary mission: the accumulation of knowledge. If science is a collection of protocol statements, then a scientist is someone who merely records reality. Science continually accumulates facts, groups them, and inductively formulates scientific theories, general conclusions, and laws.

With this understanding of science’s mission, the question arose of what role philosophy should play. If science accumulates empirical knowledge and the statements traditionally dealt with by philosophy are to be discarded as lacking truth value, then the question of reevaluating philosophy’s role becomes inevitable. Neopositivists argued that philosophy should perform two tasks. First, it should become a platform where all sciences bring the results of their research. Philosophy should accumulate this knowledge and shape it into a scientific worldview. Second, philosophy should study the methodology of scientific research. In other words, philosophy should narrow itself exclusively to the philosophy of science, analyzing science itself, while the rest should be left to science.

Neopositivists sought to implement their philosophical program not only in the realm of science but in all aspects of human life. Statements that lack truth value should not only leave the scientific lexicon but everyday language as well. The scientific worldview should be popularized to the extent that metaphysical statements completely disappear from common language. The new language, operating exclusively with protocol statements, should not be a narrowly specialized, technical language of a particular science but should be suitable for general communication among all people. Physicists, chemists, sociologists, philosophers, and everyone should speak a common language, and what they write should be understandable to all, not just specialists in their fields.

In the neopositivist interpretation, science is the constant gathering of facts, their synthesis, and the derivation of inductive conclusions from them. The members of the Vienna Circle did not recognize the creative role of the scientist, subjective traits, or the preferences of the researcher, assigning them instead the role of a recorder who dispassionately describes reality.