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실증주의(實證主義)는 감각 경험과 실증적 검증에 기반을 둔 것만이 확실한 지식이라고 보는 인식론적 관점이자 과학 철학이다. 실증주의적 접근법은 '고대 그리스 시대부터 오늘날까지 서구 사상사에서 논의가 되풀이되던 주제'였고,[1] 11세기 이븐 알 하이탐의 《광학서》에서도 등장하며,[2] 19세기 초에 오귀스트 콩트에 이르러 이 개념이 발전하였다.[3] 콩트는 피에르-시몽 라플라스와 같은 계몽주의 사상가에게서 비롯된 과학 철학의 접근법을 취하여 과학적 방법이 사상사에서 형이상학을 대체한다고 보았으며, 과학의 이론과 관찰이 서로 의지한다고 보았다. 사회학의 실증주의는 나중에 에밀 뒤르켐이 사회 조사의 기초로 확대하였다. 20세기에 접어들어 막스 베버와 게오르크 짐멜을 비롯한 독일 사회학자들이 실증주의 독트린의 엄격한 요소를 거부하며 반실증주의 사회학을 제시하였다. 20세기 초 논리 실증주의(콩트의 기본 테제를 엄격하게 한 형태이지만 대체로 이와 별개의 사상 조류이다)가 빈에서 발흥하여 영미권 철학과 해석적 전통의 주류를 차지하였다. 논리 실증주의(혹은 '신실증주의')는 형이상학적 추론을 버리고, 진술과 명제를 순수한 논리로 환원하였다. 심리학에서는 프랜시스 베이컨와 에른스트 마흐에게서 비롯되어 여러 방식에서 논리 실증주의와 갈라진 실증주의적인 접근법을 B. F. 스키너가 《유기체의 행동》에서 제시하였다. 실증주의적 관점은 '과학주의'와 연관이 있는데, 과학주의란 자연 과학의 방법이 철학과 사회 과학과 같은 모든 탐구 영역에 적용될 수 있다는 관점이다. 대부분의 사회 과학자들과 역사가들은 논리 실증주의에 흥미를 잃은 지 오래다. 오늘날 사회 과학과 물리 과학의 연구자들은 관찰자의 편견과 구조적 제한의 왜곡 효과를 인식한다. 토마스 쿤과 같은 철학자들에 의해 연역적 방법이 약화되면서 이러한 비판이 가능해졌고, 비판적 사실주의나 신실용주의와 같은 철학 조류가 나타났다. 실증주의는 과학과 기술을 통한 [사회 진보]]가 필연적이라고 믿는 '기술 관료'의 지지를 받았다.[4] 위르겐 하버마스는 과학적 사고가 이념 자체와 유사해졌다는 점에서 순수한 도구적 이성을 비판하였다.[5]
논리실증주의 [논리경험주의]
1920년대 빈에서 처음으로 형성된 철학 학설.
논리실증주의 학파는 지식의 궁극적 기초가
개인의 경험이 아닌 공적인 실험적 검증에 의거한다고 주장하는 점에서
데이비드 흄, 에른스트 마흐 같은 이전의 경험론자나 실증주의자와 다르다.
또 형이상학 학설이 그릇된 것이 아니라 무의미한 것이라고 주장하는 점에서
오귀스트 콩트나 J. S. 밀과도 다르다.
이 학파에 따르면 실체·인과성·
자유·신(神) 등에 관한 '대답할 수 없는 심오한 물음'은
그 물음이 결코 진짜 물음이 아니기 때문에 대답할 수 없는 것이다.
이러한 주장은 자연에 관한 테제가 아니라 언어에 관한 테제이며,
의미와 무의미에 관한 일반적 설명에 바탕을 두고 있다.
뒷날 빈 학파라고 불린 집단에 따르면
진정한 철학은 모두 언어 비판이다.
그리고 빈 학파의 몇몇 대표자에 따르면
이 비판의 결과는 자연에 관한 참된 지식을
모든 과학에 공통된 하나의 언어로 표현할 수 있다는
과학의 통일성을 보여주는 것이었다.
1929년 첫 선언문을 발표한 빈 학파의 기원은
제1차 세계대전 전에 물리학자와 수학자 사이에서 벌어진 토론으로 거슬러올라간다.
이 토론에서 대체로 합의한 결론은
밀과 마흐의 경험론은
수학적 진리와 논리학적 진리를 설명할 수 없으므로
또는 자연과학 속에 있는 명백히 선험적인 요소를 만족스럽게 설명할 수 없으므로
적절하지 않다는 것이었다.
1922년 빈대학교의 한스 한은
학생들에게 소개했다.
이 저서는 주세페 페아노, 고틀로프 프레게, 버트런드 러셀, A. N. 화이트헤드 등의 논리학 연구에서부터 어느 정도 유래한 새로운 일반의이론을 소개했으며, 빈 학파에 논리학적 기초를 제공했다.
이 학파의 구성원 대부분은 제2차 세계대전이 일어나자 미국으로 이주했고
그사이 다른 여러 나라에서 이 이론을 따르는 사람들이 늘어났다.
폴란드에서는 수리논리학자들 가운데 추종자가 생겨났고,
영국에서는 A. J. 에어가 이 학파의 견해에 관한 뛰어난 소개서인 〈언어·진리·논리 Language, Truth and Logic〉(1936, 개정판 1946)를 썼다.
영국에서는 비트겐슈타인이 직접 미친 영향력이 매우 컸다.
그는 제1차 세계대전 전에 오스트리아를 떠나
영국 케임브리지에서 얼마 동안 머물면서
버트런드 러셀과 함께 논리학에 관해 토론한 적이 있었다.
〈논리철학 논고〉는 그가 철학문제에 관해 얻은 결론을 일반화하여 표현한 것이다.
비트겐슈타인은 1929년 케임브리지로 돌아왔고,
몇 번의 휴식기간을 제외하고는 1947년 퇴임할 때까지 그곳에서 가르치고 연구했다.
이 후반기에 비트겐슈타인은 스스로 〈논리철학 논고〉의 학설을 근본적으로 비판했고
철학에 관한 새로운 설명을 제시했다.
그의 〈철학연구 Philosophical Investigations〉(영역본이 함께 실린 독일어판, 1953)는 사후에 출판되었다.
Positivism is a philosophy that states that the only authentic knowledge is knowledge that is based on actual sense experience. Such knowledge can only come from affirmation of theories through strict scientific method. Metaphysical speculation is avoided. It was developed by Auguste Comte (widely regarded as the first sociologist [1]) in the middle of the 19th century. In the early 20th century, logical positivism ? a stricter and more logical version of Comte's basic thesis ? sprang up in Vienna and grew to become one of the dominant movements in American and British philosophy. The positivist view is sometimes referred to as a scientist ideology, and is often shared by technocrats[citation needed] who believe in the necessity of progress through scientific progress, and by naturalists, who argue that any method for gaining knowledge should be limited to natural, physical, and material approaches. As an approach to the philosophy of science deriving from Enlightenment thinkers like Pierre-Simon Laplace (and many others), positivism was first systematically theorized by Comte, who saw the scientific method as replacing metaphysics in the history of thought, and who observed the circular dependence of theory and observation in science. Comte was thus one of the leading thinkers of the social evolutionism thought. Comte was heavily influential to Brazilian thinkers. They turned to his ideas about training a scientific elite in order to flourish in the industrialization process. Some Brazilians were intrigued by this model that was present in the French revolution and Enlightenment ideas. However, this created issues with the church because these positivist ideas were secular and encouraged the separation of Church and state. Brazil's national motto, “Ordem e Progresso” (“Order and Progress”) was taken from Comte's positivism, also influential in Poland. Positivism is the most evolved stage of society in anthropological evolutionism, the point where science and rational explanation for scientific phenomena develops. Comte's positivism
According to Auguste Comte, society undergoes three different phases in its quest for the truth according to the aptly named Law of three stages. These three phases are the theological, the metaphysical and the positive phases.[1] The theological phase of man is based on whole-hearted belief in all things with reference to God. God, he says, had reigned supreme over human existence pre-Enlightenment. Humanity's place in society was governed by his association with the divine presences and with the church. The theological phase deals with humankind accepting the doctrines of the church (or place of worship) and not questioning the world. It dealt with the restrictions put in place by the religious organization at the time and the total acceptance of any “fact” placed forth for society to believe.[2] Comte describes the metaphysical phase of humanity as the time since the Enlightenment, a time steeped in logical rationalism, to the time right after the French Revolution. This second phase states that the universal rights of humanity are most important. The central idea is that humanity is born with certain rights, that should not and cannot be taken away, which must be respected. With this in mind democracies and dictators rose and fell in attempt to maintain the innate rights of humanity.[3] The final stage of the trilogy of Comte’s universal law is the scientific, or positive stage. The central idea of this phase is the idea that individual rights are more important than the rule of any one person. Comte stated the idea that humanity is able to govern itself is what makes this stage innately different from the rest. There is no higher power governing the masses and the intrigue of any one person than the idea that one can achieve anything based on one's individual free will and authority. The third principle is most important in the positive stage.[4] These three phases are what Comte calls the universal rule ? in relation to society and its development. Neither the second nor the third phase can be reached without the completion and understanding of the preceding stage. All stages must be completed in progress.[5] The irony of this series of phases is that though Comte attempted to prove that human development has to go through these three stages it seems that the positivist stage is far from becoming a realization. This is due to two truths. The positivist phase requires having complete understanding of the universe and world around us and requires that society should never know if it is in this positivist phase. One may argue that the positivist phase could not be reached unless one were God thus reverting to the first and initial phase; or that humanity is constantly using science to discover and research new things leading one back to the second metaphysical phase. Thus, some believe Comte’s positivism to be circular.[6] Comte believed that the appreciation of the past and the ability to build on it towards the future was key in transitioning from the theological and metaphysical phases. The idea of progress was central to Comte's new science, sociology. Sociology would "lead to the historical consideration of every science" because "the history of one science, including pure political history, would make no sense unless it were attached to the study of the general progress of all of humanity".[7] As Comte would say, "from science comes prediction; from prediction comes action".[8] It is a philosophy of human intellectual development that culminated in science. Other positivist thinkers
Comte's ideas of positivism have intrigued many. Within years of his book A General View Of Positivism (1856) other scientific and philosophical thinkers began creating their own definitions for Positivism. They included Emile Hennequin, Wilhelm Scherer, and Dimitri Pisarev. Stephen Hawking is a more recent advocate of a positivist approach. ?mile Zola was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France. Emile Hennequin was a Parisian publisher and writer, who wrote on theoretical and critical pieces. He "exemplified the tension between the positivist drive to systemize literary criticism and the unfettered imagination inherent in literature". He is one of the few thinkers that disagrees with the notion that subjectivity invalidates observation, judgments and predictions. Unlike many positivist thinkers before him he cannot agree that subjectivity does not play a role in science or any other form in society. His contribution to positivism is not one of science and its objectivity but rather the subjectivity of art and the way the artist, work, and audience view each other. Hennequin tried to analyze positivism strictly on the predictions, and the mechanical processes, but was perplexed due to the contradictions of the reactions of patrons to artwork that showed no scientific inclinations. Wilhelm Scherer, was a German philologist, a university professor, and a popular literary historian. He was known as a positivist because he based much of his work on "hypotheses on detailed historical research, and rooted every literary phenomenon in 'objective' historical or philological facts". His positivism is different due to his involvement with his nationalist goals. His major contribution to the movement was his speculation that culture cycled in a six-hundred-year period. Dimitri Pisarev was a Russian publiste, who showed the greatest contradictions with his belief in positivism. His ideas focused around an imagination and style though he did not believe in romantic ideas because it reminded him of the tsarist oppressive government he lived in. His basic beliefs were "an extreme anti-aesthetic scientistic position". His efforts were focused on defining the relation between literature and the environment. Stephen Hawking said: “Any sound scientific theory, whether of time or of any other concept, should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science: the positivist approach put forward by Karl Popper and others. According to this way of thinking, a scientific theory is a mathematical model that describes and codifies the observations we make. A good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested… If one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is. All one can do is describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time and say what predictions it makes.” (The Universe In a Nutshell , p31) (However, the claim that Popper was a positivist is a common misunderstanding which Popper himself termed the 'Popper legend'. Popper in fact developed his views in stark opposition to and as a criticism of positivism and held that scientific theories talk about how the world really is, not, as positivists claim, about phenomena or observations experienced by scientists.) Modern positivism
The key features of positivism as of the 1950s, as defined in the "received view"[9], are:
Positivism is also depicted as "the view that all true knowledge is scientific,"[10] and that all things are ultimately measurable. Positivism is closely related to reductionism, in that both involve the view that "entities of one kind... are reducible to entities of another,"[10] such as societies to numbers, or mental events to chemical events. It also involves the contention that "processes are reducible to physiological, physical or chemical events,"[10] and even that "social processes are reducible to relationships between and actions of individuals,"[10] or that "biological organisms are reducible to physical systems."[10] Philosophical issuesCertain problems arise with the positivist belief system once it is accepted:
Logical positivism (later and more accurately called logical empiricism) is a school of philosophy that combines empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism, the idea that our knowledge includes a component that is not derived from observation. It grew from the discussions of the so-called "First Vienna Circle" that gathered at the Caf? Central before World War I. After the war Hans Hahn, a member of that early group, helped bring Moritz Schlick to Vienna. Schlick's Vienna Circle, along with Hans Reichenbach's Berlin Circle, propagated the new doctrines more widely in the 1920s and early 1930s. It was Otto Neurath's propaganda that made the movement self-conscious and more widely known. A 1929 pamphlet written by Neurath, Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap summarized the doctrines of the Vienna Circle at that time. These included especially: the opposition to all metaphysics, especially ontology and synthetic a priori propositions; the rejection of metaphysics not as wrong but as having no meaning; a criterion of meaning based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's early work; the idea that all knowledge should be codifiable in a single standard language of science; and above all the project of "rational reconstruction", in which ordinary-language concepts were gradually to be replaced by more precise equivalents in that standard language. In the early 1930s, the movement dispersed, mainly because of political upheaval and the untimely deaths of Hahn and Schlick. During this period of upheaval, Carnap proposed a replacement for the earlier doctrines in his "Logical Syntax of Language". This change of direction and the somewhat differing views of Reichenbach and others led to a consensus that the English name for the shared doctrinal platform, in its American exile from the late 1930s, should be "logical empiricism". OriginsThe chief influences on the early logical positivists were the positivist Ernst Mach and the young Ludwig Wittgenstein. Mach's influence is most apparent in the logical positivists' persistent concern with metaphysics, the unity of science, and the interpretation of the theoretical terms of science, as well as the doctrines of reductionism and phenomenalism, later abandoned by many positivists. Wittgenstein's Tractatus was a text of great importance for the positivists. The use of the tools of modern logic for linguistic reform, the conception of philosophy as a "critique of language," and the possibility of drawing a theoretically principled distinction between intelligible and nonsensical discourse were all appealing to the logical positivists. Many positivists adopted a correspondence theory of truth similar to that of the Tractatus, although some, like Otto Neurath, preferred a form of coherentism. Wittgenstein's influence is further evident in certain formulations of the verification principle. Compare, for example, Proposition 4.024 of the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein asserts that we understand a proposition when we know what happens if it is true, with Schlick's assertion that "To state the circumstances under which a proposition is true is the same as stating its meaning".[1] The tractarian doctrine that the truths of logic are tautologies was widely held among the logical positivists. Wittgenstein also influenced the logical positivists' interpretation of probability. According to Neurath, not all the logical positivists liked the Tractatus; it was full of metaphysics.[2] Contemporary developments in logic and the foundations of mathematics, especially Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead's monumental Principia Mathematica, impressed the more mathematically minded logical positivists such as Hans Hahn and Rudolf Carnap. "Language-planning" and syntactical techniques derived from these developments were used to defend logicism in the philosophy of mathematics and various reductionist theses. Russell's theory of types was employed to explosive effect in Carnap's early anti-metaphysical polemics.[3] Immanuel Kant was something of a punching bag in many of the logical positivists' early debates, but his influence shows through. His doctrine of synthetic a priori truths was the view to overthrow, and his notion of the thing in itself commanded its fair share of attention. More positively, Kantian views about the nature of physical objects pervade the "protocol sentence" debate[4], and the positivists all shared somewhat Kantian views about the relationship between philosophy and science.[5] Rise of Logical Positivism in GermanyPositivism in Germany is thought to have risen in response to Hegelian and neo-Hegelian metaphysics which was the dominant philosophical view in Germany.[6] Hegelian successors such as A.C. Bradley attempted to explain reality by postulating metaphysical entities that did not have any empirical basis.[7] Logical positivists in response wanted to remove such metaphysical entities being used as an explanation. Another less well-known factor that has triggered logical positivism was the urgency to give solution to new philosophical issues raised by new scientific developments. Vienna Circle and Reichenbach's Berlin Circle consisted of scientists, mathematicians, and scientists turned philosophers; and they shared common goal to mend newly raised problems in philosophy of science. Basic tenetsAlthough the logical positivists held a wide range of beliefs on many matters, they were all interested in science and skeptical of theology and metaphysics. Early on, most logical positivists believed that all knowledge is based on logical inference from simple "protocol sentences" grounded in observable facts. Many logical positivists supported forms of materialism, philosophical naturalism, and empiricism. Perhaps the view for which the logical positivists are best known is the verifiability criterion of meaning, or verificationism. In one of its earlier and stronger formulations, this is the doctrine that a proposition is "cognitively meaningful" only if there is a finite procedure for conclusively determining whether it is true or false.[8] An intended consequence of this view, for most logical positivists, is that metaphysical, theological, and ethical statements fall short of this criterion, and so are not cognitively meaningful.[9] They distinguished cognitive from other varieties of meaningfulness (e.g. emotive, expressive, figurative), and most authors concede that the non-cognitive statements of the history of philosophy possess some other kind of meaningfulness. The positive characterization of cognitive meaningfulness varies from author to author. It has been described as the property of having a truth value, corresponding to a possible state of affairs, naming a proposition, or being intelligible or understandable in the sense in which scientific statements are intelligible or understandable.[10] Another characteristic feature of logical positivism is the commitment to "Unified Science"; that is, the development of a common language or, in Neurath's phrase, a "universal slang" in which all scientific propositions can be expressed.[11] The adequacy of proposals or fragments of proposals for such a language was often asserted on the basis of various "reductions" or "explications" of the terms of one special science to the terms of another, putatively more fundamental one. Sometimes these reductions took the form of set-theoretic manipulations of a handful of logically primitive concepts;[12] sometimes these reductions took the form of allegedly analytic or a priori deductive relationships.[13]. A number of publications over a period of thirty years would attempt to elucidate this concept. Criticism and influencesEarly critics of logical positivism said that its fundamental tenets could not themselves be formulated in a way that was clearly consistent. The verifiability criterion of meaning did not seem verifiable; but neither was it simply a logical tautology, since it had implications for the practice of science and the empirical truth of other statements. This presented severe problems for the logical consistency of the theory.[citation needed] Another problem was that, while positive existential claims ("there is at least one human being") and negative universals ("not all ravens are black") allow for clear methods of verification (find a human or a non-black raven), negative existential claims and positive universal claims do not allow for verification. Universal claims could apparently never be verified: How can you tell that all ravens are black, unless you've hunted down every raven ever, including those in the past and future? This led to a great deal of work on induction, probability, and "confirmation", which combined verification and falsification. Karl Popper's ObjectionKarl Popper, a well-known critic of logical positivism, published the book Logik der Forschung in 1934 (translated by himself as The Logic of Scientific Discovery published 1959). In it he presented an influential alternative to the verifiability criterion of meaning, defining scientific statements in terms of falsifiability. First, though, Popper's concern was not with distinguishing meaningful from meaningless statements, but distinguishing "scientific" from "metaphysical" statements. He did not hold that metaphysical statements must be meaningless; neither did he hold that a statement that in one century was "metaphysical" and unfalsifiable (like the ancient Greek philosophy about atoms), could not in another century become "falsifiable" and thus "scientific". About psychoanalysis he thought something similar: in his day it offered no method for falsification, and thus was not falsifiable and not scientific. However, he did not exclude it from being meaningful, nor did he say psychoanalysts were necessarily "wrong" (it only couldn't be proven either way: that would have meant it was falsifiable), nor did he exclude that one day psychoanalysis could evolve into something falsifiable, and thus "scientific". He was, in general, more concerned with scientific practice than with the logical issues that troubled the positivists. Second, although Popper's philosophy of science enjoyed great popularity for some years, if his criterion is construed as an answer to the question the positivists were asking, it turns out to fail in exactly parallel ways. Negative existential claims ("there are no unicorns") and positive universals ("all ravens are black") can be falsified, but positive existential and negative universal claims cannot, although Popper thought himself these could be deemed as verifiable[14]. Logical positivists' response to the first criticism was that logical positivism is a philosophy of science, not an axiomatic system that can prove its own consistency (see G?del's incompleteness theorem). Secondly, a theory of language and mathematical logic were created to answer what it really means to make statements like "all ravens are black". A.J. Ayer's ObjectionA response to the second criticism was provided by A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic, in which he sets out the distinction between "strong" and "weak" verification. "A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established by experience." (Ayer 1946:50) It is this sense of verifiable that causes the problem of verification with negative existential claims and positive universal claims. However, the weak sense of verification states that a proposition is "verifiable... if it is possible for experience to render it probable" (ibid.). After establishing this distinction, Ayer goes on to claim that "no proposition, other than a tautology, can possibly be anything more than a probable hypothesis" (Ayer 1946:51), and therefore can only be subject to weak verification. This defense was controversial among logical positivists, some of whom stuck to strong verification, and claimed that general propositions were indeed nonsense. Hilary Putnam's ObjectionAccording to Hilary Putnam, a former student of Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap, making observational/theoretical distinction is meaningless. The "received view" operates on correspondence rule that states "The observational terms are taken as referring to specified phenomena or phenomenal properties, and the only interpretation given to the theoretical terms is their explicit definition provided by the correspondence rules".[15] Putnam argues that introducing this dichotomy of observational terms and theoretical terms is the problem to start from.[16] Putnam demonstrates this with four objections.[17] 1. Something is referred to as "observational", if it is observable directly with our senses. Then an observation term cannot be applied to something unobservable. If this is the case, there are no observation terms. Subsequent Objections from Quine and KuhnSubsequent philosophy of science tends to make use of certain aspects of both of these approaches. W. V. O. Quine criticized the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements and the reduction of meaningful statements to immediate experience. Work by Thomas Kuhn has convinced many that it is not possible to provide truth conditions for science independent of its historical paradigm. But even this criticism was not unknown to the logical positivists: Otto Neurath compared science to a boat which we must rebuild on the open sea. Influence of Logical PositivismLogical positivism was essential to the development of early analytic philosophy. It was disseminated throughout the European continent and, later, in American universities by the members of the Vienna Circle. A.J. Ayer is considered responsible for the spread of logical positivism to Britain. The term subsequently came to be almost interchangeable with "analytic philosophy" in the first half of the twentieth century. Logical positivism was immensely influential in the philosophy of language and represented the dominant philosophy of science between World War I and the Cold War. Many subsequent commentators on "logical positivism" have attributed to its proponents a greater unity of purpose and creed than they actually shared, overlooking the complex disagreements among the logical positivists themselves. |
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