A fresh start.
Well Doc, I think we have been doing some useful work together. Though it is an absolute banality, it still amazes me how dialogue can be an efficient tool for clarifying ideas.
If I read your last comment well (correct me if I am mistaken), you seem to agree that Logical Positivism, as originaly formulated by Ayer and others, has failed in the sense that it did not reach its original objective of providing an undisputable procedure to seperate the meaningful statements from the meaningless ones; the latter category being identified with the "metaphysical" statements. As said towards the end of my last post, A.J. Ayer himself seems to agree as well.
Now, we are still left with a question : Why did this failure took place ? Was it because :
- (A) The objective itself was mistaken in the first place, or
- (B) The objective was worthwhile, and still is. Only the method, the vocabulary, &c. employed by the "first generation" Logical Positivists was inadequate.
If I understand correctly the second part of your last comment it seems that your position is (B) or something similar. As a result, you think it is worth trying another approach in the pursuit of the same objective, and, in this spirit, you propose using 'complete' instead of 'meaningful' together with a new method (should I call it 'completion' ?) to classify statements.
Based on this, making an assessment of the positions as they stand right now might yield something like this. A.J. Ayer and you are basically agreed on position (B). A large portion of the educated public, particularly those with a science background, and a minority of the philosophers agree as well. I must confess that my own position is (A), for various reasons; some of which I have already alluded to by speaking about a connection with ethical concerns.
From this point, this debate may take one of several possible routes; and, again, this mirrors the paths already taken by our intellectual predecessors. We can remain on the "technical" ground; for example by examinig your 'completion' theory. In that case, I would probably draw on one of the philosophers most commonly (and famously) associated with position (A) : L. Wittgenstein. For example :
It seems to me that Wittgenstein's assault on the presumed purity, sublimity, or, as I have called it, perfection of logic [is interesting]. While holding that language use is a rule-governed activity, he further holds that these rules need not be clear, need not be complete, and, perhaps, need not even be consistent.
R. Foeglin "Wittgenstein's critique of philosophy", in Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, 1996
Alternately, we might take the more "emotional" route and try to express why we chose the position we currently hold. You mentioned emotions in one of your comments and express concerns that they might be used as weapons. Well maybe. But there are emotional motivations behind everything we do. So I believe it is worthwhile to try and understand them better, in order to be able to decipher their all-pervading influence. In the case of LP, I am convinced it has a negative influence on our emotional balance, hence the "accidents" I alluded to in my "Is LP ethical ?" post. At some point my might choose to discuss this as well.
Anyway, both routes probably lead to the the same place, which is the heart of the matter : (A) or (B) ? Was Logical Positivism's initial objective worthwhile or not ? Time (and maybe this blog, with your help) will tell.
2 Comments:
Nicolas,
You have me at a disadvantage with your knowledge of history and philosophy. However, from what I have read, I can tell you that my impression is that the Logical Positivists were largely successful in their arguments, but were unable to score the political points necessary to control the landscape of philosophy.
If I have to choose between your choices (A) and (B), I definitely choose (B).
I will post a complete reply on Monday. Until then, I will make just two points:
(1) I once tried to read the Tractatus, but my head hurt too much. Your quote from R. Foeglin is actually reinforcing my view of the relation between LP and natural language. I want to think about this further before I make any attempt to elucidate Wittgenstein's mistake.
(2) I think that it is ironic that you plan to attack LP on the basis of ethics. My view is that LP makes ethics lucid, and provides a much better foundation for ethical reasoning than the alternatives. Maybe the question should be "Is anything but LP ethical?"
doctor(logic)
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