logical positivism

[Leah]

I need help from some philosophically inclined individuals. My brother says that logical positivism illustrates that all religious language is meaningless. Does anyone know how can I argue against this position?

[StColette]

Um anyone?

I know what logical positivism is, but I don't know it well enough to really refute it.

Where are our philosophy majors ?

[peach_cube]

It's nice and all that they deny the metaphysical, but to base philosophy off of science leads only to atheisim. Denial of the metaphysical does not refute the metaphysical, it just ignores it. Therefore, in ignoring the metaphysical they also must ignore what science cannot explain.



Not that I'm a philosphy major...

[Cure of Ars]

[quote]According to logical positivism, there are only two sources of knowledge: logical reasoning and empirical experience. The former is analytic a priori, while the latter is synthetic a posteriori; hence synthetic a priori does not exist. [/quote]
and
[quote]A statement is meaningful if and only if it can be proved true or false, at least in principle, by means of the experience -- this assertion is called the verifiability principle. The meaning of a statement is its method of verification; that is we know the meaning of a statement if we know the conditions under which the statement is true or false.[/quote]
[url="http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/logpos.htm"]http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/logpos.htm[/url]


Can it be proven that logical reasoning and empirical experience is the only two sources of knowledge? I would ask them to prove it to be "true or false". If they are not able to do it then according to their own standards logical positivism is meaningless just like they accuse religion of being. Logical positivism begs the question when it comes to metaphysics and religion.

The scientific method itself cannot be proven to be "true or false" therefore it is meaningless. All knowledge must be meaningless because it rests on premises that can not be proven.

Also check out this post from my blog.

[url="http://cureofars.blogspot.com/2005/06/alphabet-of-thinking.html"]http://cureofars.blogspot.com/2005/06/alph...f-thinking.html[/url]

Edited August 3, 2005 by Cure of Ars