Science & Logical Positivism

New Scientist once published a ½ page letter in which a working scientist ranted that philosophy was all meaningless and that the Only Worthwhile, And Obviously True, philosophy is Logical Positivism.

But logical positivism is distinguished amongst all philosophies as the one which disproves itself in a 2-line proof.

Logical Positivism Premise #1 : All meaningful statements are either analytic (that is to say, statements of mathematics or logic or some other tautology) or else statements of empirical fact, and any sentence that is not in one of these two categories is strictly and literally meaningless.

2. If premise #1 —which is not a tautology, nor a statement of mathematics or logic, nor a statement of empirical fact—is true, then by premise #1, premise #1 is itself strictly and literally meaningless, so cannot be true.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Science & Logical Positivism

by Chris F Carroll read it in 1 min
0