Category: Logical Positivism
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Schlick’s Scientism: An Antilogism
Remember Moritz Schlick? He wrote, "All real problems are scientific questions; there are no others." ("The Future of Philosophy" in The Linguistic Turn, ed. R. Rorty). The Schlickian dictum sires an antilogism. 1) All real problems are scientific. 2) The problem whether all real problems are scientific is real. 3) The problem whether all real…
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Carnap and Clarity
This entry is installment #2 in a Carnap versus Heidegger series. Here is the first in the series. It couldn't hurt to at least skim through it. Part of what I am up to is an exploration of the origin and nature of the analytic-Continental split. To quote from the first installment: If I were…
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Heidegger, Carnap, Das Nichts, and the Analytic-Continental Schism
One of the reasons I gave this weblog the title Maverick Philosopher is because I align neither with the analytic nor with the Continental camp. Study everything, I say, and drink from every stream. Reverting to the camp metaphor, when did the camps become two? In dead earnest this occurred when Heidegger burst onto the…
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What Is the Appeal of Ordinary Language Philosophy?
One source of its appeal is that it reinstates much of what was ruled out as cognitively meaningless by logical positivism but without rehabilitating the commitments of old-time metaphysics. Permit me to explain. (My ruminations are in part inspired by Ernest Gellner, to give credit where credit is due.) Crudely put, as befits a crude…
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How Ordinary Language Philosophy Rests on Logical Positivism
A while back I came across Ernest Gellner's Words and Things (unrevised ed., 1963). It is jam-packed with insights. Here is an example: Linguistic Philosophy [O. L. philosophy] absolutely requires and presupposes [Logical] Positivism, for without it as a tacit premiss, there is nothing to exclude any metaphysical interpretation of the usages that are to…