Seminar Paper - Logical Positivism, Wittgenstein and Karl Popper

In the early 20^th century Wittgenstein and Schlick met weekly, and were soon joined by other philosophers such as Carnap and Waismann, they were referred to as the “Vienna Circle”. After Wittgenstein left to work on another philosophical manuscript, the others developed into a self-conscious philosophical movement (logical positivists) and issued a manifesto against metaphysics, regarding it as an outdated system that must give way to science.

 They created the “verification principle” to show the difference between statements that mean something and those which don not. To verify something there must be facts, and statements which cannot be verified are just metaphysical nonsense. For example Descartes “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) is rejected because it can’t be verified, so it’s just empty words. However the verification principle came under scrutiny as it itself could not be verified.

Logical Positivists thought that the true task of philosophy was to clarify non philosophical statements. Their method of clarification was to show how empirical statements are brought up from “protocol” statements (direct records of experience). The meaning of the words used in protocol statements are derived directly from a feature of the experience that the word stands for.  This came under the criticism that protocol statements appear to be private to the individual, so if meaning depends on verification and everyone is carrying out their own method of verification, how can you understand what anyone else means? Schlick responded to this problem by showing the distinction between form and content. Content of experience is what I feel or live through when I see something, and is completely private and incommunicable. Form of experience may be common to many. For example when I see a tree I cannot be certain if anyone else has the same feelings as I do when they see the tree, but as long as we can all agree that the tree is green then we are able to communicate with each other.

Wittgenstein was dissatisfied with this response and he then strove to find a solution that didn’t pose the threat of solipsism. In the 1930’s Wittgenstein showed that private experience presupposes a public world. Even the words we use to describe our most private thoughts derive their meaning from the way we use them in public and open conversations. Wittgenstein later abandoned his previous thesis he had put forward in his “Tractatus” about the relationship between language and the world saying he over simplified it. He previously held that the connection between the two only had two features; the linking of names to objects, and the matching of propositions to facts. He now saw this as a big mistake, words might look like each other but their function differs. Language is interwoven with the world in many different ways which he referred to as “language games”. Wittgenstein referred to it as a “game” not because language is trivial, but because games have a similar variety to language. Like the logical positivists Wittgenstein was hostile to metaphysics, but instead of taking a blunt attack against it like they did with the verification principle, Wittgenstein carefully made distinctions between the mix of truth and nonsense within metaphysical theories.

Karl Popper didn’t see himself as a logical positivist and was referred to as the “official opposition”. Popper thought all scientific theories couldn’t be proved because of Humes problem of induction. He thought that we needed to progress by falsifying statements instead. For example the inductive statement “all men are mortal” cannot be falsified because it is at least possible that at some point at least one person will be born and be immortal. The problem of induction is that it is unreliable. For example a turkey a Christmas – every day of the turkeys life it wakes up, eats, then goes to sleep. Therefore the turkey presumes this will go on forever. Then at Christmas the Turkey wakes up and is killed. There is no previous empirical evidence to suggest that this would happen to the turkey. This example illustrates the point that no matter how much evidence we may have, we cannot predict the future.

Popper responded to the problem of induction by saying that everything has the potential to be untrue. For example Newton’s “Principa” gave an overarching theory of how the universe worked and was believed to be an undeniable truth. But then Einstein came along and proved that Newton’s theory was wrong. We constantly strive to get as close to the exact truth as possible, but Popper argued that we have to appreciate the fact that whatever we know now has the potential to be proved wrong at some point in the future.

Popper is also well known for his political philosophy with his publication “The Open Society and its Enemies”. Popper maintained that if a political organisation is going to flourish then it must leave room for self-correction. His political philosophy can be related to his philosophy on knowledge in that, just like science is constantly progressing through the correction of flawed hypothesis, society will only progress if policies are able to be evaluated and changed.  Therefore are two things required for an open society to work;
1. The ruled have freedom to discuss and criticise the policies proposed by their rulers.
2. It should be possible to change the ruler without violence or bloodshed if the ruler fails to promote their citizens welfare.
These are the two central features of an open society and are more important to democracy than just the election of government by a majority.

Popper didn’t rule out all forms of government intervention, for example incitement of intolerance should be classed as a criminal act and they state must protect the poor from the wealthy. Therefore we cannot have a completely non-intervention state and instead Popper argued that we should have planned economic intervention of the state. Unrestrained capitalism must be replaced by economic interventionism. Popper agreed to some extent with utilitarianism that the state must minimize avoidable suffering. Instead of building a utopia the government should act as problem solvers.

In the two volumes of his publication Popper attacked two philosophers; Plato and Marx. Poppers attack on Plato was against his “Republic” where Plato stated that the experts should be in charge and knowledge meant power. Whereas in the open society those who were being ruled would also have knowledge, not just the elite and those with power.  Poppers main attack focused on Marx and his claims that he had discovered scientific laws that determined the future of the human race, working towards an inevitable result. Popper showed how the course of history had in fact falsified Marx’s predictions. Popper was very anti-teleological, he didn’t believe that we could predict the future.

Popper thought that the human race is very vulnerable when it comes to conspiracy theories. This is because we like the idea of being to explain away everything, which most conspiracy theories appear to do. An example of this is David Ickes theory that a secret group of elites rule the world. This is not an unusual claim for conspiracy theorists to make, however Icke took this one step further by claiming that those within the elite group were in fact blood drinking lizards that morphed into people. However, despite how unusual Ickes claims seemed, he still managed to create a mass following preaching to large groups across the globe.