Abstract
Logical empiricism is an outgrowth of logical positivism, in which the verifiability principle was put forward as a criterion for distinguishing meaningful statements from meaningless pseudo-statements. For logical positivism, if any proposition or statement were not in principle conclusively verifiable by experience, it was to be considered meaningless, or, at best, tautological. Along this line then it was intended that meaningful statements include the pronouncements of science, while excluding those of metaphysics, ethics, and theology.
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References
For a discussion of this problem see Ch. 4 of Hempel (1965). For a presentation of the view being reconstructed in the present chapter, see e.g. Ayer (1936).
It is perhaps worth mentioning that it is not the intention of the present study to suggest that Empiricists are unaware of such facts as these. But the development of the Empiricist philosophy of science in the earlier works of such authors as Carnap, Hempel, and Ayer does not give such facts a place. And to the extent that the Empiricists have provided an account or explanation of science, it is here intended that the essence of that account, i.e. its formal basis, be captured in the present reconstruction. These same remarks apply, mutatis mutandis, to Popper and Lakatos.
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© 1986 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Dilworth, G. (1986). Chapter 2 The Basis of the Logical Empiricist Conception of Science. In: Scientific Progress. Synthese Library, vol 153. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2966-6_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2966-6_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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