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Beyond Logical Empiricism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 1971

William R. Shea
William R. Shea
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
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Extract

The mainstream of the philosophy of science in the second quarter of this century—the so-called “logical empiricist” or “logical positivist” movement—assumed that theoretical language in science is parasitic upon observation language and can be eliminated from scientific discourse by disinterpretation and formalization, or by explicit definition in or reduction to observational language. But several fashionable views now place the onus on believers in an observation language to show how such a language is meaningful in the absence of a theory.

In the present paper, I propose to show why logical positivism failed to do justice to the basic empirical and logical problems of philosophy of science. I also wish to consider why the drastic reaction, typified by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, fails t o provide a suitable alternative, and to suggest that the radical approaches of recent writers such as Mary Hesse and Dudley Shapere hold out a genuine promise of dealing effectively with the central tasks that face the philosopher of science today.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , June 1971 , pp. 223 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1971

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References

1 “We assumed that there was a certain rock bottom of knowledge, the knowledge of the immediately given, which was indubitable. Every other kind of knowledge was supposed to be firmly supported by this basis and therefore likewise decidable with certainty” (Carnap, Rudolf, “Intellectual Autobiography” in Schilpp, P.A. (ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, Lasalle, Iii.: Open Court, 1963, p. 57).Google Scholar

2 Braithwaite, Richard C., Scientific Explanation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959, p. 8.Google Scholar

3 Hempel, Carl G., Aspects of Scientific Explanation, New York: The Free Press, 1965. PP. 102–103.Google Scholar

4 Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961, p. 83.Google Scholar

5 Carnap, Rudolf, “Testability and Meaning” in Feigl, Herbert and Brodbeck, May (eds.), Readings in the Philosophy of Science, New York: Appleton Century-Crofts, 1953, pp. 63–64.Google Scholar

6 For a critical examination of these two interpretations, see Hesse, Mary B., Models and Analogies, London: Sheed and Ward, 1963.Google Scholar

7 Carl G. Hempel, op. cit., p. 31.

8 Ibid., p. 32.

9 Ibid.

10 Carnap, Rudolf, Logical Foundations of Probability, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962, pp. 478–479.Google Scholar

11 Carl G. Hempel, op. cit., pp. 49–50.

12 Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962.Google Scholar

13 Feyerabend, Paul, “Problems of Empiricism (Part I) “ in Colodny, Robert G. (ed.), Beyond the Edge of Certainty, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965, p. 180.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 213.

15 Hesse, Mary B., “Consilience of Induction” in Lakatos, I. (ed.), The Problem of Inductive Logic, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1968, pp. 232–246, 254–257;CrossRefGoogle Scholar“Positivism and the Logic of Scientific Theories”, in Achinstein, P. and Barker, S. (eds.), The Legacy of Logical Positivism, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969, pp. 85–114;Google Scholar“Is there an Independent Observation Language?”, in Colodny, Robert G. (ed.), The Nature and Function of Scientific Theories, Pittsburgh, 1970.Google Scholar

16 Shapere, Dudley, “Meaning and Scientific Change” in Colodny, Robert G. (ed.), Mind and Cosmos, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966, p. 75. See also “Notes Toward a Post-Positivistic Interpretation of Science” in Achinstein and Barker, op. cit., pp. 115–160.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 78–79.