I'm listening to a podcast and a guy on the podcast says "positivism has been refuted, in so far as any philosophy can be refuted, and it's the analytic philosophers who did it."

I'm pretty ignorant on history of philosophy, can someone explain what he is talking about? What is the refutation of positivism and came up with it?

22 minutes ago, Alfred001 said:

I'm pretty ignorant on history of philosophy, can someone explain what he is talking about? What is the refutation of positivism and came up with it?

Did you read these links?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism

"Verified data (positive facts) received from the senses are known as empirical evidence; thus positivism is based on empiricism.[1]"

"Positivism asserts that all authentic knowledge allows verification and that all authentic knowledge assumes that the only valid knowledge is scientific "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

Maybe he meant that positivism has been upgraded to the new level, where observation of physical phenomena is finalized by creation of mathematical model of phenomena, thus being able to predict the next time something similar happens in advance.

Edited May 24, 20196 yr by Sensei

Pity enough I do not remember clearly, but I found a few things in the Internet Encyclopedia  of philosophy, under 'Analytic Philosophy', and there search for 'positivism'.

Quote

Ironically, the demise of logical positivism was caused mainly by a fatal flaw in its central view, the verification theory of meaning. According to the verification principle, a non-tautological statement has meaning if and only if it can be empirically verified. However, the verification principle itself is non-tautological but cannot be empirically verified. Consequently, it renders itself meaningless. Even apart from this devastating problem, there were difficulties in setting the scope of the principle so as to properly subserve the positivists’ scientistic aims. In its strong form (given above), the principle undermined not only itself, but also statements about theoretical entities, so necessary for science to do its work. On the other hand, weaker versions of the principle, such as that given in the second edition of Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic (1946), were incapable of eliminating the full range of metaphysical and other non-scientific statements that the positivists wanted to disqualify.

 

Quote

Ironically, the demise of logical positivism was caused mainly by a fatal flaw in its central view, the verification theory of meaning. According to the verification principle, a non-tautological statement has meaning if and only if it can be empirically verified. However, the verification principle itself is non-tautological but cannot be empirically verified. Consequently, it renders itself meaningless. Even apart from this devastating problem, there were difficulties in setting the scope of the principle so as to properly subserve the positivists’ scientistic aims. In its strong form (given above), the principle undermined not only itself, but also statements about theoretical entities, so necessary for science to do its work. On the other hand, weaker versions of the principle, such as that given in the second edition of Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic (1946), were incapable of eliminating the full range of metaphysical and other non-scientific statements that the positivists wanted to disqualify.

I believe this "problem" disappears when the existence of reality is axiomatic.