Logical positivism

Part of a series on
Philosophy
Philosophy portal Contents Outline Lists Glossary History Categories
Philosophies By period Ancient Ancient Egyptian Ancient Greek Medieval Renaissance Modern Contemporary Analytic Continental By region African Egypt Ethiopia South Africa Eastern philosophy Chinese Indian Indonesia Japan Korea Vietnam Indigenous American Aztec philosophy Middle Eastern philosophy Iranian Western American British French German Italian Russian By religion Buddhist Confucian Christian Hindu Islamic Jain Jewish Taoist
Branches Epistemology Ethics Logic Metaphysics Aesthetics Education History Language Law Meta Mind Ontology Phenomenology Political Religion Science
Philosophers Aesthetic philosophers Epistemologists Ethicists Logicians Metaphysicians Philosophers of mind Social and political philosophers Women in philosophy
v t e

Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement whose central thesis is the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning).^[1] This theory of knowledge asserts that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. Starting in the late 1920s, groups of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians formed the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle, which, in these two cities, would propound the ideas of logical positivism.

Flourishing in several European centres through the 1930s, the movement sought to prevent confusion rooted in unclear language and unverifiable claims by converting philosophy into "scientific philosophy", which, according to the logical positivists, ought to share the bases and structures of empirical sciences' best examples, such as Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.^[2] Despite its ambition to overhaul philosophy by studying and mimicking the extant conduct of empirical science, logical positivism became erroneously stereotyped as a movement to regulate the scientific process and to place strict standards on it.^[2]

After World War II, the movement shifted to a milder variant, logical empiricism, led mainly by Carl Hempel, who, during the rise of Nazism, had emigrated to the United States. In the ensuing years, the movement's central premises, still unresolved, were heavily criticised by leading philosophers, particularly Willard van Orman Quine and Karl Popper, and even, within the movement itself, by Hempel. The 1962 publication of Thomas Kuhn's landmark book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions dramatically shifted academic philosophy's focus. In 1967 philosopher John Passmore pronounced logical positivism "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".^[3]