Logical positivism

Logical positivism, also known as logical empiricism or neo-positivism, was a philosophical movement, in the <a href="/facts/Empiricism/f68IpCeE">empiricist</a> tradition, that sought to formulate a <a href="/facts/Naturalized_epistemology/08LXsJsX">scientific philosophy</a> in which philosophical discourse would be, in the perception of its proponents, as authoritative and meaningful as <a href="/facts/Empirical_science/f68IpCeE">empirical science</a>.
Logical positivism's central thesis was the <a href="/facts/Verificationism/wGIeER70">verification principle</a>, also known as the "verifiability criterion of meaning", according to which a statement is cognitively meaningful only if it can be verified through <a href="/facts/Observation/NTodmzCo">empirical observation</a> or if it is a <a href="/facts/Tautology_(logic)/p82wWMaN">tautology</a> (true by virtue of its own <a href="/facts/Semantics/1L4WwLAP">meaning</a> or its own <a href="/facts/Syntax/6PxSV98p">logical form</a>). The verifiability criterion thus rejected statements of <a href="/facts/Metaphysics/fSFt6SHe">metaphysics</a>, <a href="/facts/Theology/N71Fyw2M">theology</a>, <a href="/facts/Ethics/wNVNgL5q">ethics</a> and <a href="/facts/Aesthetics/FSD8f7oF">aesthetics</a> as cognitively meaningless in terms of <a href="/facts/Truth_value/SY4e2w8l">truth value</a> or <a href="/facts/Fact/vNPzHxtf">factual</a> content. Despite its ambition to overhaul philosophy by mimicking the structure and process of empirical science, logical positivism became erroneously stereotyped as an agenda to regulate the scientific process and to place strict standards on it.
The movement emerged in the late 1920s among <a href="/facts/Philosopher/Hyvzc54m">philosophers</a>, <a href="/facts/Scientist/JDvthEFM">scientists</a> and <a href="/facts/Mathematician/eaFSR8Fx">mathematicians</a> congregated within the <a href="/facts/Vienna_Circle/RYyPfVAy">Vienna Circle</a> and <a href="/facts/Berlin_Circle_(philosophy)/dGndXRtt">Berlin Circle</a> and flourished in several European centres through the 1930s. By the end of <a href="/facts/World_War_II/2efV5L1U">World War II</a>, many of its members had settled in the <a href="/facts/Anglosphere/mRuTW7Y5">English-speaking world</a> and the project shifted to less radical goals within the <a href="/facts/Philosophy_of_science/aonsfhTY">philosophy of science</a>.
By the 1950s, problems identified within logical positivism's central tenets became seen as intractable, drawing escalating criticism among leading philosophers, notably from <a href="/facts/Willard_van_Orman_Quine/2RrhATxa">Willard van Orman Quine</a> and <a href="/facts/Karl_Popper/RpLqMrz5">Karl Popper</a>, and even from within the movement, from <a href="/facts/Carl_Hempel/6sWWobAl">Carl Hempel</a>. These problems would remain unresolved, precipitating the movement's eventual decline and abandonment by the 1960s. In 1967, philosopher <a href="/facts/John_Passmore/RmwlTzry">John Passmore</a> pronounced logical positivism "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".

Logical positivism open-in-new

Logical positivism