Comparing Objectivism and Logical Positivism

[William O]

I have read a couple of essays from A. J. Ayer's anthology Logical Positivism recently, and I would like to chew on the ideas presented in these essays in order to figure out exactly what points of similarity and difference there are between logical positivism and Objectivism. I think this will be useful for my understanding of the history of philosophy, partly because logical positivism was one of the worldviews that Ayn Rand was reacting to.

 

One of the essays I read was "Logical Atomism" by Bertrand Russell.

 

Russell makes a lot of references to advanced mathematics and science, including special relativity, which made his essay difficult to understand at points. However, his basic meaning is fairly clear. The fundamental discipline of philosophy is logic, and one of the reasons people arrive at erroneous metaphysical systems is that they make logical errors. One such error that Russell discusses is confusing logical constructions with inferred entities - for example, according to Russell, the self is a logical construction out of sensory data, not an actual entity whose existence we infer from sensory data. (Other examples he gives are "mind, matter, consciousness, knowledge, experience, causality, will, time.") What actually exists, according to Russell, is not any of these logical constructions but a series of entities he calls "events," each of which exists for a very short time in a very small area of space.

 

Russell's essay is a pretty clear example of what Peikoff calls "disintegration." Everything we know exists from common sense is disintegrated by Russell on the grounds that he regards all of these terms as scientifically unsatisfactory and imprecise. Russell seems to think that a satisfactory approach would be to derive the existence of all of these entities from a theory in theoretical physics like special relativity.

 

This contrasts sharply with Ayn Rand's approach, which is to start with observation. We know from observation that all of the things Russell describes exist, and it is completely backwards to try to derive the existence of these entities from the existence of "events" or the entities of theoretical physics, because our knowledge of theoretical physics depends logically and chronologically on our knowledge of these everyday, common sense entities.

 

There seems to be a difference between how Ayn Rand conceives of reduction and how the logical positivists conceive of reduction. For Ayn Rand, reduction is reduction to the given, i.e., to immediately perceivable entities. For a logical positivist, reduction is reduction to theoretical physics, which is essentially regarded as a revelation from God.

 

The other essay I read was "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language" by Rudolf Carnap, but I think I've written enough for a single thread already, so I'll leave it here.

[Plasmatic]

William said:

There seems to be a difference between how Ayn Rand conceives of reduction and how the logical positivists conceive of reduction. For Ayn Rand, reduction is reduction to the given, i.e., to immediately perceivable entities. For a logical positivist, reduction is reduction to theoretical physics, which is essentially regarded as a revelation from God.

I see a strong similarity between the reduction of the LP to "observation statements" and the Oist view of reduction to percepts. Have you read about this yet?

Edit: you probably are referring to the notion of "the contextual theory of meaning" as the second criteria for theoretical objects to be grounded.

Edited May 6, 2015 by Plasmatic

[William O]

William said:

I see a strong similarity between the reduction of the LP to "observation statements" and the Oist view of reduction to percepts. Have you read about this yet?

Yes, I also think that there is a similarity there. I think logical positivists have a different concept of observation than Objectivists do, though. It seems like they don't distinguish between claims that are supported by so many observations that there is no way to argue for them, like the axioms of metaphysics, and arbitrary assertions based on emotion.

 

I read that logical positivists didn't even accept the objectivity of sensory perception, in a sense - they regarded the structure of a perception as objective, but not the conscious content. So for example, if I see a chair, the fact that I am seeing a chair is objective, because a chair is a structure that can be conveyed to other people explicitly, but the conscious experience that I have of seeing a chair is not something that can be objectively discussed. This seems to be a classic case of form without content, sort of like the symbolic logic that logical positivists were so fond of, or the analytic - synthetic dichotomy.

[Eiuol]

There seems to be a difference between how Ayn Rand conceives of reduction and how the logical positivists conceive of reduction. For Ayn Rand, reduction is reduction to the given, i.e., to immediately perceivable entities. For a logical positivist, reduction is reduction to theoretical physics, which is essentially regarded as a revelation from God.

Isn't this slightly off? I read a book by Carnap once, and he seemed to be saying metaphysics/aesthetics/ethics are meaningless because they can't be logically reduced to an empirical starting point. He'd probably say "existence exists is a meaningless phrase, it is just an empty assertion". On top of that our statements need a logical form, which observation on its own doesn't provide. So to him, those fields are nothing more than intuitions of what is the case, and all statements about those fields are regarded as good as revelation. I know what you're suggesting, that their god is effectively logic, since everything to them reduces to logical form.

 

A better metaphor might be that a logical positivist wants to know the language of god. They care about observation, but don't think truth is more than true statements or propositions about observations. This is the sense I got from Carnap from an early book of his.

[William O]

Isn't this slightly off? I read a book by Carnap once, and he seemed to be saying metaphysics/aesthetics/ethics are meaningless because they can't be logically reduced to an empirical starting point. He'd probably say "existence exists is a meaningless phrase, it is just an empty assertion". On top of that our statements need a logical form, which observation on its own doesn't provide. So to him, those fields are nothing more than intuitions of what is the case, and all statements about those fields are regarded as good as revelation. I know what you're suggesting, that their god is effectively logic, since everything to them reduces to logical form.

 

A better metaphor might be that a logical positivist wants to know the language of god. They care about observation, but don't think truth is more than true statements or propositions about observations. This is the sense I got from Carnap from an early book of his.

What I was suggesting with the claim that they take theoretical physics as a revelation from God was that they take advanced claims in physics out of context and then demand that obvious everyday facts be derived from them in order to be legitimate. I wasn't referring to logic, although that would also be a fair comparison to make.

 

I haven't read anything by Carnap apart from the essay I mentioned in the OP, but the impression I got was that he has a different take on reducing things to observation than Objectivists do. It seems like he thinks that the meaning of a word is identical to the sentences it is deducible from and the sentences that are deducible from it, and these deductive relationships can be stipulated however we want depending on what is convenient. Carnap's position is similar to Rand's insofar as they agree that a term that can't be reduced to observation is meaningless, but for Carnap reduction seems to be less a matter of relating a concept to empirical evidence and more a matter of language.

 

For example, if you asked Rand and Carnap whether it is meaningful to say that gravity exists, Rand would go about the matter by asking for the experiments that support the existence of gravity and prove that it is a valid concept, whereas Carnap would just ask whether you have stipulated a set of observation statements that can be deduced from the claim that gravity exists. The two positions represent a pretty big difference in attitude even if they have some of the same consequences.

Edited May 6, 2015 by William O

[Eiuol]

What I was suggesting with the claim that they take theoretical physics as a revelation from God was that they take advanced claims in physics out of context and then demand that obvious everyday facts be derived from them in order to be legitimate. I wasn't referring to logic, although that would also be a fair comparison to make.

Sure, but it can't be compared to revelation, as we still know theoretical physics has a scientific and empirical basis, so it's not like a priori knowledge that only comes from "within" us or justified without reference to reality. As you're saying, the real notable difference is about how to treat observation. I agree that Carnap makes reduction into a matter of language, particularly focusing on things like logical form or logical structural. "God's language" I think best captures what logical positivists seek.

A logical positivist cares about things like observation statements as Plasmatic said, which is distinct from the experience we have of observation as you further added. Objectivism has no problem or gap between what we say about our perception and perception itself, based on methods like differentiation. A logical positivist would probably say a perceptual method can't be objectively discussed, not for arriving at truth at least. They'd want some linguistic or mathematical "language" for all knowledge to reduce to, lest we just say whatever happens to strike us as true is true.

This is Carnap, though, so there are probably some common ideas I'm missing, but I know Russel/Wittgenstein/Vienna schoolers all have close relations. They're all also really obsessed with language, math, or both, and try to put all things into strictly logic or propositions. I think they're the best example of empiricists that Peikoff talked about in Understanding Objectivism, in the sense they're skeptical of concepts and that our perception makes for too many contingencies. So they resort to heavy insistence on logic and language. As a result, their concepts all look like floating abstractions, since they're skeptical that going straight from perception to concept formation is possible.

Huge difference of attitude for sure.

Edited May 8, 2015 by Eiuol

[William O]

I like the idea that logical positivists insert language between perception and concept formation, Eiuol.

 

Several of the logical positivists in this anthology have made a point of saying that there is no way to affirm the existence of an entity in modern symbolic logic. You can affirm the existence of an entity with a certain property in modern symbolic logic: (∃x)Fx affirms the existence of at least one x with the property F. But you can't affirm the existence of x by itself, because modern symbolic logic can't handle proper names.

 

The logical positivists take this to be a reason to reject claims like "the external world exists" and "I think, therefore I am." Both of these affirm the existence of a proper name, i.e., the external world or you. Affirmations of the existence of entities should allegedly be rejected in favor of descriptions of regularities in one's sensory data, because those regularities can be described qualitatively and translated into modern symbolic logic.

 

So, first comes the perception of the entity, then symbolic logic steps in and requires you to deny the entity in favor of a regularity in your sensory data, and finally you form the concept or draw whatever conclusions you were going to draw from the perception.

[Plasmatic]

One can sum up the gap for LP between empirical experience and logical reasoning in this quote:

The fundamental thesis of modern empiricism [i.e. logical positivism] consists in denying the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge.

(H. Hahn, O. Neurath, R. Carnap, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis, 1929).

[William O]

Carnap explains his view about the relationship between language and observation statements very clearly in this paragraph. He explicitly says that the deductive relationships are arbitrary.

 

 

In the case of many words, specifically in the case of the overwhelming majority of scientific words, it is possible to specify their meaning by reduction to other words ("constitution," definition) E.g. "'arthropodes' are animals with segmented bodies and jointed legs." Thereby the above-mentioned question for the elementary sentence form of the word "arthropode," that is for the sentence form "the thing x is an arthropode," is answered: it has been stipulated that a sentence of this form is deducible from premises of the form "x is an animal," "x has a segmented body," "x has jointed legs," and that conversely each of these sentences is deducible from the former sentence. By means of these stipulations about deducibility (in other words: about the truth-condition, about the method of verification, about the meaning) of the elementary sentence about "arthropode" the meaning of the word "arthropode" is fixed. In this way every word of the language is reduced to other words and finally to the words which occur in the so-called "observation sentences" or "protocol sentences." It is through this reduction that the word acquires its meaning.

This is from Carnap's essay "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language," from A. J. Ayer's anthology Logical Positivism, on page 63.

[Plasmatic]

William, I see the deduction part in what you are quoting but not how you see this as arbitrary. Carnap says "reduction to other words" on down to "observation sentences".

This paper has some clear discussion on the verifiability theory of meaning and how "correspondence rules" involve reduction to statements about the empirical conditions whereby a statement can be shown true or false.

http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/logpos.htm

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 [aka the "verifiability criterion of meanng"]. 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.

When are we sure that the meaning of a question is clear? Obviously if and only if we are able to exactly describe the conditions in which it is possible to answer yes, or, respectively, the conditions in which it is necessary to answer with a no. The meaning of a question is thus defined only through the specification of those conditions...

The definition of the circumstances under which a statement is true is perfectly equivalent to the definition of its meaning.

... a statement has a meaning if and only if the fact that it is true makes a verifiable difference.

(M. Schlick, 'Positivismus und Realismus' in Erkenntnis, 3, 1932).

Metaphysical statements are not empirically verifiable and are thus forbidden: they are meaningless. The only role of philosophy is the clarification of the meaning of statements and their logical interrelationships. There is no distinct "philosophical knowledge" over and above the analytic knowledge provided by the formal disciplines of logic and mathematics and the empirical knowledge provided by the sciences.

Philosophy is the activity by means of which the meaning of statements is clarified and defined.

(M. Schlick, 'Die Wende der Philosophie' in Erkenntnis, 1, 1930).

A scientific theory is an axiomatic system that obtains an empirical interpretation through appropriate statements called rules of correspondence, which establish a correlation between real objects (or real processes) and the abstract concepts of the theory. The language of a theory includes two kinds of terms: observational and theoretical. The statements of a theory are divided in two groups: analytic and synthetic. Observational terms denote objects or properties that can be directly observed or measured, while theoretical terms denote objects or properties we cannot observe or measure but we can only infer from direct observations. Analytic statements are a priori and their truth is based on the rules of the language; on the contrary, synthetic statements depend on experience, and their truth can be acknowledged only by means of the experience. This conception about the structure of scientific theories is perhaps the most durable philosophical principle of the logical positivism.

Its main points are:

the distinction between observational and theoretical terms

the distinction between synthetic and analytic statements

the distinction between theoretical axioms and rules of correspondence

the deductive nature of scientific theories

These four points are linked together. Rules of correspondence give an empirical meaning to theoretical terms and are analytic, while theoretical axioms express the observational portion of the theory and are synthetic. A theory must be a deductive system; otherwise, a formal distinction between the various kinds of sentences and terms is impossible.

The distinction between observational and theoretical terms depends on the verifiability criterion of meaning. A statement is meaningful only if it is verifiable; but, in scientific theories, there are many statements which are not verifiable -- for example, assertions dealing with quantum particles or relativistic gravitational fields. These statements are too "theoretical" for a direct test; strictly speaking, they are meaningless.

I should mention that my earlier comment about "the contextual theory of meaning" is not a positivist tenet per se. I mentioned it because It relates to responses to Positivism's skepticism of theoretical objects and I thought you were perhaps mixing the two.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/theoretical-terms-science/#3

Edited May 9, 2015 by Plasmatic

[William O]

William, I see the deduction part in what you are quoting but not how you see this as arbitrary. Carnap says "reduction to other words" on down to "observation sentences".

I took the conclusion that it was arbitrary from the fact that Carnap uses the word "stipulation" and my background knowledge about logical positivism.

 

 

This paper has some clear discussion on the verifiability theory of meaning and how "correspondence rules" involve reduction to statements about the empirical conditions whereby a statement can be shown true or false. 

 

http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/logpos.htm

Thanks.

 

 

I should mention that my earlier comment about "the contextual theory of meaning" is not a positivist tenet per se. I mentioned it because It relates to responses to Positivism's skepticism of theoretical objects and I thought you were perhaps mixing the two.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/theoretical-terms-science/#3

I haven't brought up logical positivism's view of theoretical entities yet, although that's worth discussing. I have been reading an essay by Moritz Schlick that affirms the existence of atoms, which I was under the impression most logical positivists regarded as meaningless. Maybe the issue had been resolved by 1932, when the essay was written.

Edited May 9, 2015 by William O