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The Large Scale Structure of Logical Empiricism: Unity of Science and the Elimination of Metaphysics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Greg Frost-Arnold
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Abstract

Two central and well-known philosophical goals of the logical empiricists are the unification of science and the elimination of metaphysics. Textual analysis shows, however, that these two apparently distinct planks of the logical empiricist party platform are actually intimately related. From the 1920s through 1950, one abiding criterion for judging whether an apparently declarative assertion or descriptive term is metaphysical is that that assertion or term cannot be incorporated into a language of unified science. I explore various versions of this criterion throughout the works of Carnap and Neurath.

Type
History of Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 72 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers , December 2005 , pp. 826 - 838
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I must thank Laura Ruetsche, Jon Tsou, and Karen Frost-Arnold for extremely helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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