Why did logical positivism fade away?
Facts describe the way things are.
With the above in mind, I am, and have been for a long time, quite fond of logical positivism. I never quite understood why logical positivism kinda faded out of existence and was taken over by a new methodology in science called fallibilism, so named after Popper established it as a better method than verification of conjectures or hypothesi.
In my opinion, it seems that when stating a hypothesis in science, we are guided by existing factual knowledge about the domain or field of study in question, and upon feeling quite confident that it is true with respect to existing knowledge, we attempt to design experiments that (and here I'm not sure) validate(?) or invalidate a hypothesis.
With respect to fallibilism, it seems to me that after conducting experiments that validate or invalidate a hypothesis we can begin to look for experiments that would disprove a hypothesis.
Does the above sound correct? In addition, I am quite interested to understand why logical positivism faded away and led to fallibilism?
With the above in mind, I am, and have been for a long time, quite fond of logical positivism. I never quite understood why logical positivism kinda faded out of existence and was taken over by a new methodology in science called fallibilism, so named after Popper established it as a better method than verification of conjectures or hypothesi.
In my opinion, it seems that when stating a hypothesis in science, we are guided by existing factual knowledge about the domain or field of study in question, and upon feeling quite confident that it is true with respect to existing knowledge, we attempt to design experiments that (and here I'm not sure) validate(?) or invalidate a hypothesis.
With respect to fallibilism, it seems to me that after conducting experiments that validate or invalidate a hypothesis we can begin to look for experiments that would disprove a hypothesis.
Does the above sound correct? In addition, I am quite interested to understand why logical positivism faded away and led to fallibilism?
Comments (93)
I see. But, what was the problem with the notion of analysis it employed?
The tl;dr is that asserting factual/empirical propositions is only a tiny subset of what humans do with language (we also: exchange greetings, make requests, make jokes, and all sorts of things that have nothing to do with any empirical truth-conditions), and so the verification criterion of meaning just falls woefully short in describing what we do with language.
Quine's Two Dogmas was pivotal here, but it also became apparent that logic was not going to play along, and that logical positivism was bereft of an ethical theory.
And its not nothing that you can trace a thread from LP to contemporary moral non-cognitivism/error theory/etc, so LP's contribution to moral philosophy wasn't entirely worthless. LP turned out to be completely wrong (and a bit wrong-headed), but it certainly did help get some more productive conversations moving along.
But, if you can't verify your posits then why posit.
Hume was the godfather of positivism. Consider the closing paragraph of his Treatise:
But the same criticism can be applied to his Treatise.
David Stove used to make this point. He used to say of all forms of positivism that they're like the Uroboros, the iconographic snake that consumes itself. 'The hardest thing', he would always say, 'is the last bite'.
As for logical positivism and its twilight, three historical remarks:
1) It's important to note that the movement was born in the very specific European context of the inter-war period, and that, in the hands of Carnap and Neurath, it had a very specific political dimension. Carnap's major work of the period was called Der logische Aufbau der Welt, which better translates to The Logical Reconstruction of the World. This is relevant, since this title alludes not only to Carnap's rational reconstruction procedure in the book (i.e. reconstructing the world of experience out of a slim conceptual basis), but also, and more importantly, to the rational reconstruction of a society that had fallen apart during the First World War. In other words, this title was carefully chosen by Carnap to signal also his alliance with a broader political movement that aimed at bringing about a more rational and just society (which for Carnap meant some form of socialism). As he himself puts it in the preface to the work:
Note the reference to an "intellectual attitude which presently manifests itself in entirely different walks of life", in particular the mention of architecture. Carnap is here referring, among other things, to the Bauhaus movement, which had close ties to the logical positivists (for more on this connection, cf. Peter Galison's work). This makes clear that Carnap and Neurath did not think of their work as just some narrowly technical philosophy of science, but rather as a contribution to a whole new way of life. This also makes clear, e.g., his opposition to Heidegger: more than a philosophical opposition, it was a political opposition. As he puts it at the beginning of the above quote paragraph:
That is, Carnap saw Heidegger as a reactionary, right-wing philosopher which still clung to the old world order, and saw his own participation in the Vienna Circle as heralding a new way of life. Of course, we all know how that turned out. Still, the important point is that logical positivism began as a vibrant movement that had many ties to the political and artistic context of Europe. In that context, it was revolutionary, and had revolutionary ambitions. Thus, after the rise of Nazism and the immigration of its leading exponents to the USA, the movement lost touch with its revolutionary roots (the Cold War context was also important: once they arrived in the USA, they were kept under surveillance by the FBI---cf. George Reisch's work). That is not to say that they lost all political touch. Carnap, for instance, continued to sponsor leftist causes, being apparently cited several times in the socialist newspaper The Daily Worker and being very explicit in his "Autobiography" for The Library of Living Philosopher's volume on him that even by 1963 he still considered himself a socialist of some form (cf. pp. 82-83, which I think are very enlightening in this regard). And scholars such as André Carus have been at pains to argue that Carnap's broad philosophical outlook, with its emphasis on conceptual engineering and explication, is best viewed as still part of a program for the rational reconstruction of our way of life (cf. his excellent Carnap and Twentieth Century Thought: Explication as Enlightenment). But it is to say that these political efforts were no longer part of a larger movement, with connections to all spheres of life, as they were in the European context.
Thus, once transplanted into the USA, logical positivism lost much of its vitality and eventually lost its character of a movement and became completely integrated into academic life (and even then they were still under scrutiny by the Hoover administration!).
2) Once they became a rather academic movement, however, they still retained much of their importance, only this importance was now relative to academic debates, and not to larger political movements. Thus, for instance, Hempel's deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation (cf., for instance, his "Studies in the Logic of Explanation", reprinted in Aspects of Scientific Explanation) is still considered a landmark in the field: most accounts of scientific explanation still begin by reference to this model (even if ultimately to reject it). Similarly, Carnap's Meaning and Necessity was extremely important for the development of formal semantics, especially after the overall framework was refined by Kaplan (who was a student of Carnap), Lewis, Montague, and integrated with linguistics by Barbara Partee. Carnap also had a hand in rational decision theory (especially through his studies in the logic of probability, for example in his partnership with Richard Jeffrey) and was an early scientific structuralist who resurrected the Ramsey sentence approach to scientific theories (cf. the work Stathis Psillos in this regard).
This is all to say that, once they became integrated into academic life, their impetus and technical innovations still animated much of the debate. Indeed, I would say that, in this sense, logical positivism is still alive, as their specific research programs (in the logic of explanation, in formal semantics, in rational decision theory) are still alive and well. Of course, their particular proposals have been superseded, but that was only to be expected, and, indeed, encouraged by the logical positivists themselves. Going back to the Preface to the Aufbau, Carnap there says:
This spirit certainly animates much of current philosophy and especially current philosophy which works in problems first set by the logical positivists. So, again, I think that in this sense logical positivism has not faded away, and is still with us.
3) Finally, a word about the so-called verifiability criterion. Carnap did not put forward this criterion as an empirical observation. Rather, he put it forward as a proposal about how to best conduct scientific investigations. It is in his sense analytic, and therefore it does not apply to itself, since it only mentions synthetic statements. Note that for a statement to be analytic for Carnap is not for it to capture some pre-existing meaning. Instead, a statement is analytic if it is part of the setup of a (formal or semi-formal) linguistic framework. Linguistic frameworks, and therefore analytic statements, in their turn, are not be judged by empirical adequacy criteria (indeed, for Carnap, linguistic frameworks are empirical adequacy criteria), but rather by their usefulness in the advancement of science (this is very clearly stated in "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology", but was already clear in the early 30s in his The Logical Syntax of Language, as encoded in his Principle of Tolerance, and also in "Testability and Meaning", which is very relevant for the discussion here).
So the idea that the whole movement foundered because of an obvious logical inconsistency is just bizarre (and even more bizarre when one considers that its members were all logical proficient).
Very true. That's the definition. But what and how or why is the way things are?
clarifications. :up:
Brilliant corrective, thank you. Still... if,
Quoting Nagase
... then how did the label become such a popular insult?
Largely, one suspects the (indirect) influence of Wittgenstein, through the crude narrative of his later abandoning an earlier crude theory of the relation of language to the world, in which the mistake had been (allegedly) to model language as logic.
You often hear it pointed out that the Tractatus wasn't positivism, but usually that's in order to defend the first at the expense of the second.
Why is that true if I may ask?
:100: This is so commonly used as a "got eem" in countless books on metaphysics today, particularly those of a religious bent.
Your commentary on the connection between LP and leftist/socialist movements was very intriguing.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that Popper is irrelevant or whatever. It's just that popular accounts of science tend to portray him as being the be-all-end-all of philosophy of science, and particularly his falsificationism as being almost consensual when that is far from the case in the philosophy of science. I mean, maybe it should be consensual, but as a sociological observation, I don't think it is.
That is a complex historical question, and one that I don't have a definite answer. Still, here are some pointers:
1) First, it is undeniable that the reception of logical positivism in the USA was largely colored by Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic (cf., for example, Scott Soames's very whiggish history of analytic philosophy, Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, devotes considerable space to Ayer in his narrative). Now, in that work, Ayer gives pride of place to the verification criterion of meaning, and his version of it does suffer from some problems (though he was aware of them and tried to successively refine it). Thus, if all one read was that work, it is easy to come away with the impression that the movement was largely concerned with the demarcation problem, that Ayer's version of the verificationist criterion was the one proposed by the movement, and that it failed. Since I think more people read Ayer than (say) Carnap or Hempel, it is no wonder this view is still widespread.
Notice that reading logical positivism through Ayer also has a further deleterious effect, namely of isolating logical positivism from its historical roots. Ayer presents the movement as being largely a better version of British empiricism, as if Carnap, Schlick, and Neurath were largely involved in a research program that went back to Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. But that is a serious distortion: they were much more engaged with the Neo-Kantians (in their various guises), for example, than with British empiricism. This is a problem because it makes one read, e.g., Carnap's Aufbau as being an exercise in a phenomenalistic reduction of science to sense data, when it's actually an exercise in the uncovering of the logical structure of science. That is, unlike the British empiricists, but similar to the Neo-Kantians, Carnap thought that what is important viz. science is that it leaves behind its sensory origins and attends to the structure of our experience (in fact, Carnap is clear that he thought that he objects of science can all be captured by purely structural descriptions).
More to the point, one consequence of this is that the verificationist criterion of meaning appears as if it was merely an empiricist weapon against traditional metaphysics, when in fact it was part of a larger program to rationally describe the logic of science (and thus that had one of its roots in Neo-Kantism), which in turn was just one branch of a larger political project to promote the unity of science, a goal that Carnap and Neurath in particular thought as advancing the cause of the rational reconstruction of society.
2) Relatedly, another major factor in the reception of logical empiricism was Quine. And, again, even though he was a close friend of Carnap's, it is undeniable that some of his remarks on Carnap's philosophy are highly misleading, to say the least. This is especially true of the highly cited "Epistemology Naturalized" (an otherwise brilliant essay, by the way), in which Quine also assimilates Carnap's Aufbau to the British empiricism program. Moreover, I think the early Quine simply misread Carnap, confusing his philosophy with that of C. I. Lewis. More specifically, Quine read Carnap as engaged in an epistemological project of explaining the truth of mathematics and logic, and of appealing either to truth by convention or to analyticity in order to explain this. This is true of Lewis, but it is importantly not true of Carnap, who had by then abandoned the old epistemological project and was more interested in a conceptual engineering project of devising new tools for the development of science. Unfortunately, Quine's conflation (particularly acute in "Two Dogmas") was widely circulated, and still today you see people complaining that Carnap's distinction cannot carry the "epistemological" burden he imposed on it, when the truth is that Carnap was simply not interested in epistemology anymore (part of the problem here was that Quine's German apparently wasn't all that good when he read Carnap; moreover, as he often said, he read the Logical Syntax as it "came out of Ina's [Carnap's wife] typewriter", which means that he most likely read the first version of LSL, one that did not contain Carnap's Principle of Tolerance).
Anyway, the net result is that most people read Carnap as engaged first in a reductionist project in the line of British empiricism, and then as engaged in an epistemological project to certify the credentials of mathematics and logic. In both cases, we have a picture of Carnap as engaged in a broadly foundationalist project which tries, first, to draw a clear line between science and metaphysics, and, second, to show that this line does not exclude mathematics and logic. The verificationist criterion then emerges as a natural solution to both problems. Statements are divided into analytic and synthetic. The analytic ones are true by convention or definition, whereas the synthetic statements are those which have empirical consequences. This provides the demarcation line---metaphysical statements are neither true (or false) by convention, nor have empirical consequences, and are therefore meaningless)---and also solves the problem of mathematical knowledge (it is analytic). Again, this may be a fair depiction of Ayer's (and perhaps C. I. Lewis's) philosophy, but not of Carnap's.
In short, although much more needs to be said about this, I definitely think that the reception of logical positivism was influenced by Ayer and Quine, and that had as an effect to obscure the main contributions of the movement.
There are many reasons for that, but the main one seems to be that no criterion is forthcoming. Moreover, much of philosophy of science has turned to more concrete matters, being more interested in how science is actually developed and justified than in a priori pronouncements of what is legitimate or not. In other words, that particular line of research did not prove much fruitful, I think.
Yes, it is somewhat fashionable nowadays to associate scientism with (covertly) right-wing ideologies, but, historically at least, that was simply not the case. Carnap and Neurath were firmly leftists, and even the more conservative members of the Vienna Circle were mostly progressists (certainly by today's standards). In fact, one interesting line of research today is whether Horkheimer, and the early Frankfurt School more generally, could be considered as an ally of the logical positivists against, e.g., Heidegger.
But, as a neo-Kantian, isn't the limits of intelligibility or landmarks in thought itself of interest or serve as a method of ascertaining the complexity of a field? I mean this in the positive as to why it's worthwhile to learn about what one should focus on. Do you think that what Godel was to mathematics, that quantum mechanics is to the principle of sufficient reason?
I brings those two examples up because I believe that by demarcating one can better understand where one is in a level of understanding of a field. I might as well speak for myself as a holistic learner in such a broad field that is science.
A couple of remarks:
1) The logical positivists were influenced by the Neo-Kantians, but weren't themselves Neo-Kantians. So Neo-Kantian worries do not automatically carry over to them.
2) Logical positivism also wasn't a completely homogeneous movement, by the way. So whereas strictly epistemological projects may have driven them initially (especially Schlick), such projects were not pursued by all members of the group. In the specific case of Carnap, he later came to the view that foundational disputes about what is or is not intelligible as fruitless, since they depend on previous criteria that were not necessarily agreed by all parties. That is why he proposed his Principle of Tolerance, and suggested the replacement of traditional philosophy by the logic of science:
And a little later:
In other words, Carnap is essentially proposing: let a thousand flowers bloom! If you have a proposal for the logic of science or for a new scientific theory, then write it clearly, preferably in a formal or semi-formal system, and we can then assess its usefulness. But there is no sense in trying to decide a priori which forms are acceptable, since, again, such a decision would have to employ a logical framework, and then the question arises about the validity of this framework. Rather, people should be free to employ whatever framework they need, and the validity of the framework is decided not by a theoretical argument, but by pragmatic considerations. Does it achieve its goal? Does it promote human flourishing? And these pragmatic considerations are not guided by rules established once and for all, but by negotiation among the relevant parties.
3) This moves the debate in a rather different direction. Instead of asking whether something is science or pseudo-science, it asks whether a given theory is a fruitful research program or a degenerate one. This seems (to me) a much more interesting question, and much more amenable to debate.
:up:
Excellent post. :clap:
I'd suggest, again, that this was merely a symptom of the more fundamental failure: observational verification is not a descriptively adequate account of linguistic meaning (it simply doesn't capture how we actually use words), which had the result that the verification criteria could not satisfy itself, despite the fact that the criteria was clearly perfectly meaningful (albeit empirically/descriptively wrong).
If we can understand the verification criteria as a meaningful proposal (which we clearly can), but the criteria cannot satisfy itself as a meaningful proposal, then clearly this criteria is not a good one for linguistic meaning. Ayer might have had a case for verification as a principle for scientific theories or factual claims or something like this, but his aim drastically exceeded his reach.
Isn't it pretty widely agreed that falsificationism is, at best, far too simplistic if not outright wrong? Sort of ironic that many scientists and non-philosophers seem to regard falsificationism as definitive when the view among philosophers is... somewhat more complicated (at least, this was my impression of the scholarly consensus). Not that falsificationism was useless or anything (far from it- obviously a hugely influential and fruitful idea), but that it turned out to be, at best, not the whole story.
Great posts, btw. :strong:
One of the LP's weakness was refusing to talk about Metaphysics, which made themselves look embracing intolerance and dogmatism.
Okay. Let's analyse this with an actual case. Say I have a new theory about the state of affairs during and shortly before and Planck era. How must I proceed? Falsifying and criticising firstly?9
The analytic and logical methods which were their main tool, were good for checking out linguistic validities in texts, but were not up to the job for covering all the objects and their workings in the universe.
The reason why it took over is powerplay. Pure and simple. LP, of which Feyerabend once was a proponent, is in fact the same as falsificationism, but with a positive attitude instead of the negative one of Popper. Maybe he wanted to kill all physics theories.
What made them refuse?
Metaphysics was dismissed as non-sense, not worthy of serious philosophical debate, because all metaphysical topics are not able to engage in meaningful arguments therefore unable to come to conclusions via detailed analysis of logic or verification.
Then why is this a topic so "heavily" discussed in philosophy? When does physics stop to make sense and the meta show up? I like your new image, btw!
Obviously the LPs were wrong in that regard, but it is still a remarkably significant school of philosophy in other respect. Metaphysics will never die.
:100:
Excuse me?
Let it all flow!!!
:nerd: :cheer:
Since we can't zero in on one correct hypothesis, the next best option is to ensure that we're not incorrect (fallibilism).
The basic idea seems to be that since we can never know if we're right, at least make sure we aren't wrong.
Philosophy will never be the same again! :grin: :starstruck:
...when you go with the flow. Hasnt the singer stopped voluntary to go with flow?
Especially those headtailslets (or tailheadslets) flowing...
‘Philosophy buries its undertakers’ ~ Etienne Gilson.
That's deep. :nerd:
I think it's a definition rather than a claim. Help!
Seems had been a prolific writer too. A nobel prize for literature nominee. :up:
Please... Enlighten me! Im thinking about it but it doesnt click. :smile:
Who then are the undertakers? The ones who shout: "Philosophy is dead!", or philosophers of the non-metaphysical (is physical?) view?
The LP's of course.
Quoting Corvus
Ah! I get it! Philosophy, the very fact that it continues to use meta, buries the LP's. Yes. Its clear now! Thanks! ?
But cant there be philosophy without metaohysics?
Yes, that's a keeper.
Can we formulate an empirical version of logical positivism's thesis statement? If no, why?
Page redirect, huh?
Brazil's a covid hotspot. I hope Nagase's alive & well. He taught me a coupla things, one being, as I was just beginning my foray into logic, that what I was struggling with was only baby logic, his words. I instantly realized I had a long way to go, a long, long way to go. How deep is the rabbit hole? God knows, I'm still falling...
So, I was close to nailing it but missed by a mile. :grin:
A materialistic view on the universe?
I am not certain that 'what is mainstream today in philosophy of science' means anything, but the fact that the debate has moved on may simply indicate that Popper's falsifiability prevailed over the LPs' verification formulation. Popper (on science) is basically a pessimistic LP: he says scientific theories are never verified, but can be falsified by empirical data. This is not exactly the way it works 'in the lab', but as a logical framework for the relationship between theories and facts, it solves a lot of problems, eg it cuts through Hempel's ravens paradox like a hot knife in butter.
I much appreciate the rest of your post, the historical part.
I encountered that expression in this article, although I had previously read about Gilson here and tracked down the book it refers to, The Unity of Philosophical Experience.
An excellent post.
If logical positivism had been able to mount a better defence against its critics, the outcome would presumably have been quite different. Perhaps one would not need to dig so deep to find evidence of its impact on our present thinking, for one thing.
So we might take care not to suppose that the reasons for its fading were independent of its inconsistencies.
Fortunately, though, metaphysicians always will.
Why is it fortunate?
The comment was more a riposte to the claim that "Metaphysics will never die" than anything else. I'm one who questions the value of metaphysics generally. It isn't clear to me that it consists of anything but speculation, and it seems speculation to no effect. There's nothing wrong with speculation to no effect in itself, of course, but the fact that it may always take place and thereby never "die" doesn't strike me as something of note, or something to be celebrated or to take pride in. And the fact metaphysicians will, like all of us, die at least provides a certainty and reliability otherwise lacking in metaphysics.
I agree it is speculative but do think that metaphysics affect us. I think of it as the axiomatics of our thoughts: the core, fundamental principles allowing for various types of thoughts to unfold from their combination. Philosophers have called them a priori, fundamental intuitions, or absolute presuppositions... Ideas like: there is a me, and a space around me, other people in it, a time that flows only one way, various objects, causality, meaning, etc.
Some of these axiomatics are better than other in that they solve problems. Science, as posted by @180 Proof, is metaphysics that works (generally). I agree with that, while of course others may disagree. Religion is another form of metaphysics, and some think it works and others disagree.
What seems certain to me is that those metaphysics that succeed value life, people, other species, and knowledge, and freedom, while those who fail value war, or obscurantism, or hatred, for instance. So there are differences between different metaphysical speculations, and there are consequences.
When Ryle was made Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy, he commented that a chair in metaphysics is like a chair in infectious diseases: your remit is to fight it not promote it.
I am not a metaphysician, but I feel it is a good subject. Of course there are different definitions of Metaphysics. Some people seem to equate Metaphysics with some religious or esoteric topics, which I think is wrong.
Metaphysics is a frame of critique to view all existence in the universe for its essence aided by logic and reasoning. It could be looked as speculative, but not always. With the clearer conclusions obtained from the Metaphysical analysis, one can make decisions, take actions, or move on to further investigations and studies. That is a very active and practical subject, nothing like speculative. For instance, I wouldn't take any scientific or any non scientific claims seriously unless it had been through metaphysical analysis and investigations.
As long as human cultures exist, there will always be metaphysics. That is what I meant by "Metaphysics will never die."
Logical Positivism is important too. I don't believe that they have faded away. I feel it is still a very significant, practical, useful and interesting school of thoughts albeit of some minor criticisms from some people. It is just a usual course for all philosophical branches and schools going through sometime in their existence.
I don't get it, because I'd have thought that metaphysics starts from the assumption that all the physics is settled, so there are no speculations to deal with.
Perhaps I'm confusing 'speculation' with 'empirical conjecture'? How should I not?
This is to be added to the list of things I wish I had said.
Quoting Olivier5
It strikes me that metaphysics, though it may purport to explain (or question) why science or other things "work", doesn't "work" itself. Merely to claim that other things like science or religion "work" provides no support for metaphysics, though.
Metaphysics is really no more than one pole of an abstract-concrete continuum that runs through all modes of thought and culture. Within science intself there is more and less applied thinking , more and less
theoretical and meta-theoretical. Metaphysics as it is practiced in particular by continental philosophers is just their attempt to achieve an ‘ultra-meta’ perspective. If you think getting too theoretical muddies the waters you can always climb down from the perch and immerse yourself in the details.
The ‘ meta’ is the formal synthetic framework which organizes the understanding of ‘physis’( nature ).
It need make no claims for a particular content of science being settled or unsettled.
As far as it’s speculative role, this term began fashionable after Hegel. His dialectic was interpreted as explaining the movement of natural
and cultural history without recourse to empirical evidence. Thus it was speculative rather than empirical.
It seems to me that everyone operates or rather thinks based on certain assumptions, whether they are conscious about it or not, and that being conscious of one's basic credo is better than not being so.
Except that science doesn’t have a single definition , it is a historical development with a changing understanding of itself, undergirded by a changing metaphysical outlook.
So the question isn’t whether science works , but how the way it purportedly works changes along with changing metaphysical frameworks. The notion that science simply ‘works’ itself presupposes a particular metaphysics of science, one that is now undergoing transformation.
Correct, although the changes were not that significant in my view, mere adaptations of the same basic empirico-rationalist framework. It's not a 'transformation' by any stretch, rather it's a slow and gradual evolution. In any case, the point was that a certain type of metaphysics underwrite science, which you seem to agree with.
But sometimes the claims by Science could be muddled with jargons, contradictions and illusory hypotheses, and the only way to find them out is Metaphysical investigation and analysis.
Quoting Joshs
If that's an is, and not an ought to be, then... is, since when?
Quoting Joshs
True, I was ruminating on an arguable ought. A normative gloss. To maximise charity to the most uses.
Quoting Joshs
Ah! Interesting, thanks. Any examples?
Quoting Joshs
Don't understand.
There is room for more than one understanding of science, but even a sociological account would be grounded in some sort of metaphysics or another. One might ignore metaphysics but not dispense of it.
Since the Greeks?
Quoting bongo fury
Speculative dialectics deservedly got a bad rep when philosophers decided they no longer needed to bother studying actual contingent circumstances of human life in its sociological, political and anthropological aspects. Instead, they could apply a one- size -fits -all Hegelian scheme of dialectical stages onto whatever aspect of human history they wanted to focus on, revealing its supposed necessity and inevitability. This is why it was important for Marx to ground the dialectic in material circumstances.
Galilean and Newtonian physics can be argued to be consistent with the rationalist metaphysics of Descartes and Spinoza. The hypothetico-deductive method proposed by Bacon in this period was a philosophy a scientific method that arose out of rationalism.
The idealistic metaphysics ushered in by Kant and Hegel
has been suggested as a grounding for Relativity and quantum physics. The philosophy of science that is embraced by modern physics is typically that of Popper, who was an adherent of Kantian idealism. Postmodern metaphysics ( or anti-metaphysics) has its parallel in the philosophy of science of Kuhn and Feyerabend, which critiques the Kantian and Popperian model.
So you see we have at least three distinct metaphysical eras ( and we could divide them up into many more) that accompanies the history of science from the 1600’s to today.
Yes well, one could argue endlessly with the details of the story but the broad outline isn't too far off. To me the main actual changes in the credo inherited from the humanists, Descartes, Spinoza and co were the introduction of the numena/phenomena distingo by Kant, and of inderterminism by Popper (belatedly, as a patch for QM). And yet, many rejected and still reject those innovations and remain "crudely Spinozean" (e.g. determinist) to this day.
I doubt it. Any examples of Greeks using 'meta' that way? I keep hearing that for a long time it only connected to 'physical' with reference to cataloguing of Aristotle's books?
Quoting Joshs
That wasn't the question. The question was how, why or when did 'speculative' enter the lexicon. Interesting though to see it joined to 'dialectics'. Is/was that common? Examples please. If so then perhaps your theory, that 'speculative' meant 'fanciful' in relation to Hegel's historicising, gets some traction. In that case it never
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting bongo fury
“The term was invented by the 1st-century BCE head of Aristotle‘s Peripatetic school, Andronicus of Rhodes. Andronicus edited and arranged Aristotle’s works, giving the name Metaphysics (?? ???? ?? ?????? ??????), literally “the books beyond the physics,” perhaps the books to be read after reading Aristotle’s books on nature, which he called the Physics. The Greek for nature is physis, so metaphysical is also “beyond the natural.”
Aristotle never used the term metaphysics. For Plato, Aristotle’s master, the realm of abstract ideas was more “real” than that of physical. i.e., material or concrete, objects, because ideas can be more permanent (the Being of Parmenides), whereas material objects are constantly changing (the Becoming of Heraclitus).“
Quoting bongo fury
Hegel regarded his dialectical method or “speculative mode of cognition” (PR §10) as the hallmark of his philosophy.
From Brittanica:
The Hegelian system, in which German idealism reached its fulfillment, claimed to provide a unitary solution to all of the problems of philosophy. It held that the speculative point of view, which transcends all particular and separate perspectives, must grasp the one truth, bringing back to its proper centre all of the problems of logic, of metaphysics (or the nature of Being), and of the philosophies of nature, law, history, and culture (artistic, religious, and philosophical). According to Hegel, this attitude is more than a formal method that remains extraneous to its own content; rather, it represents the actual development of the Absolute—of the all-embracing totality of reality—considered “as Subject and not merely as Substance” (i.e., as a conscious agent or Spirit and not merely as a real being). This Absolute, Hegel held, first puts forth (or posits) itself in the immediacy of its own inner consciousness and then negates this positing—expressing itself now in the particularity and determinateness of the factual elements of life and culture—and finally regains itself, through the negation of the former negation that had constituted the finite world.
Such a dialectical scheme (immediateness–alienation–negation of the negation) accomplished the self-resolution of the aforementioned problem areas—of logic, of metaphysics, and so on. This panoramic system thus had the merit of engaging philosophy in the consideration of all of the problems of history and culture, none of which could any longer be deemed foreign to its competence. At the same time, however, the system deprived all of the implicated elements and problems of their autonomy and particular authenticity, reducing them to symbolic manifestations of the one process, that of the Absolute Spirit’s quest for and conquest of its own self. Moreover, such a speculative mediation between opposites, when directed to the more impending problems of the time, such as those of religion and politics, led ultimately to the evasion of the most urgent and imperious ideological demands and was hardly able to escape the charge of ambiguity and opportunism.”
Exactly. It was only a cataloguing thing. And our different preferred readings,
Quoting bongo fury
and
Quoting Joshs
must, both, depend on more recent precedent, if any.
As to my main question re 'speculative' we continue to make progress, and thanks again.
Quoting Joshs
So to this,
Quoting bongo fury
... the answer is Hegel (himself, not his detractors) and it seems he used 'speculative' (or a German word) in the sense of 'theoretical' that predated its (either word's) association with 'testing'. Leaving it prone to later criticism, which you alluded to.
The next question might be, who joined it explicitly to 'metaphysics' and did they mean to contrast it with 'practical metaphysics', with or without implying an insult?
Sticking with Hegel's "speculative mode of cognition", though, and wondering about the context, in English and possibly German (I'd need help again), I couldn't locate it here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/printrod.htm#PR10
Was that the place?
I don't have the knowledge to talk much about science, but my reading of logical positivism comes down to the Tractatus and A.J. Ayer's book on language and logic, and J.L. Austin's essays in response and Wittgenstein's response to himself (and the Vienna Circle).
My understanding is that a referential or correspondence picture of language is not refuted by the later Witt nor Austin. The problem they both saw was that it is only a part of language and meaning. Austin will say there are more ways to be "true" than just a statement being true or false; Wittgenstein will discovery that there is a sense of logic (grammar) to every different part of our lives, not just one all-encompassing theory of meaning (as I believe @Seppo already pointed out).
However, even if we simply keep reference to a particular narrow area, there is still the motivation which drove LP, which I believe is alive and well (though in various forms). The certainty and universality; predictability and predetermination that we desire (to refute skepticism) is the criteria that drove LP. That ultimately limited it, but the desire remains as a constant temptation for philosophy (and humans). Wittgenstein attempts to tease out why we want this, but it still infects our understanding of communication, our politics, our vision of knowledge, and, I would think, our science (though, again, fuzzy there). All I can add to the science is something I read by Cavell in The Claim of Reason; he claims that the "factness" of a fact does not come from its correspondence with the "world". Its "sciencey-ness" of completeness, certainty, predictability, etc., comes from the method of science, how well it is done. Thus, we can have the solidity we imagine "the world" gives us, but still incorporate mistakes, changes in course, and even the kind of paradigm shifts which Kuhn discusses; "being wrong" does not crumble everything to the ground because the method of science is the constant thread.