A critique of logical positivism

Front matter

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Chapter I. Logical Positivism. Its Methods and Purposes 21

II. Physical Things and Our Knowledge of

Them 32

III. The Principle of Verifiability 43

IV. Logical Positivism and Theory of Knowledge 63

V. Logical Constructions 79

VI. General Principles and Theory of Truth 87

VII. Analysis of the Self 101

VIII. Theory of Value 108

IX. The Effects of Logical Positivism 143

Index

“Although we must consider how we should express ourselves in each particular case, it is still more important to consider what the facts are.”

Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

Occasion of Book

In the summer of 1948 an article appeared in the New States¬ man under the signature of Oxonian on the condition of con¬ temporary Oxford. Among other matters it drew attention to the vogue of Logical Positivism and, in particular, to the influence of Professor Ayer’s book, Language , Truth and Logic , which, published in 1936, “has in Oxford since the end of the war acquired almost the status of a philosophic Bible”.

The effect of the book is, Oxonian maintained, to discourage any probing into “deeper meanings” by its exclusion of value judgments and its dismissal of metaphysics as nonsense. It has, therefore, he concluded, engendered a negative climate of opinion which is favourable to Fascism, “since Fascism steps into the vacuum left by an abeyance of concern with funda¬ mental human values”. The article attracted a considerable amount of attention and evoked a number of letters mainly from supporters of Logical Positivism disclaiming any political or social influence for logical positivist doctrines and, in par¬ ticular, repudiating the suggestion that they give indirect encouragement to Fascism by contributing to the formation of a climate of opinion favourable to its growth. For my part, I ventured to doubt whether these disclaimers were justified. I gave expression to this doubt in an article which was published in the New Statesman in which, without hazarding any opinion as to whether the doctrines of Logical Positivism were true—a word, by the way, which in any commonly accepted interpreta¬ tion logical positivists would promptly repudiate as meaning¬ less —1 p U t the question whether they were calculated to have the effect which Oxonian attributed to them, a question which I answered in the affirmative.

The number of letters which the article elicited was a surprise to the editor, no less than to the writer. I doubt, indeed, if any article on a purely academic topic had for years evoked so considerable a response. It was evident that the subject of Logical Positivism, though comparatively unknown to the intellectual public which at this time was interesting itself in Existentialism, was of immense interest to many professional and amateur philosophers, to students of philosophy and to those who dwell intellectually on what may be called the philosophic fringe.

Logical Positivism seemed to be at a stage of development analogous to that of Materialism in the 6o’s and 70’s of the last century and of Marxism in the first two decades of this century. It was, that is to say, a body of philosophic doctrine which, already fashionable among professional philosophers, was only awaiting the appropriate exponent or, it may be, the timely occasion to capture the intellectual public at large. For there were certain respects in which, it was obvious, the doctrine was highly congenial to the climate of the times.

A University teacher is in a good position to observe that climate and to note its changes. Year after year he sees each October a fresh relay of young men and women enrolling as his students. What, he wonders, will be their intellectual orientation; wherein will lie their instinctive sympathies; what will be the arguments which will seem to them immediately appealing; what the conclusions which they will naturally tend to draw; what the positions which they will regard as old-fashioned, reactionary or palpably nonsensical? What, in a word, will be their preconditioning intellectual framework, a framework into which some considerations and conclusions will fit ready-made, while others can find no accommodation? For that there are these changes and that young men and women grow up in an intellectual climate which predisposes their sympathies in advance there can, I think, be little doubt. In the ’20’s, scepticism and “debunking” were the intellectual order of the day; in the 5 30’s, the predominant sympathies were Marxist and the arguments of dialectical Materialism see^med to spring ready-made to the lips of the class-conscious young; in the ’40’s the background was, at any rate in England, predomi¬ nantly logical positivist. Under its influence young men and women confidently affirm that there are no absolutes, that meta¬ physics is nonsense, that the scientific is the only method which reaches valid results and that the order of reality which science studies is the only order that there is. Such time-honoured denizens of the philosopher’s world as the Forms of Plato, the traditional values, the True, the Beautiful and the Good, the

I I

demonstrated God of Leibnitz and Descartes, the Absolute of Hegel and the subsistent objects of the conceptual realists are contemptuously dismissed.

Intolerance and Dogmatism

The doctrines of Logical Positivism are embraced with some of the fervour appropriate to a new religious creed. Two characteristics have traditionally been observed in the expo¬ nents of new revelations. First, intolerance and secondly, dogmatism. Something of both is observable in logical positiv¬ ist polemics.

Intolerance is chiefly shown in a simple refusal to discuss metaphysical questions. These are dismissed as not worthy of the attention of sensible men. When one remembers that these are precisely the questions which have, in fact, engaged the attention of philosophers from Plato to Aquinas, from Spinoza to Hegel, and from Bradley to Whitehead, it is difficult to resist the temptation of asking logical positivists with what authority they take it upon themselves so unceremoniously to dismiss the preoccupations of these great men.

As the exponents of the doctrine have grown older, the doc¬ trine itself has grown milder and Professor Ayer now tells us 1 that it is only to one proper sense of the word “meaning” that the verification principle applies. There may, it now appears, be other senses of the word “meaning”, and he allows the possi¬ bility that metaphysical statements may have meaning in one of these other senses. Indeed “for the effective elimination of metaphysics” the principle “needs”, we are now told, “to be supported by detailed analyses of particular metaphysical arguments”. (The detailed analysis by the way is far from being always forthcoming.)

But it is not the milder form of the doctrine, which allows that metaphysics may not be nonsense that interests students. What has struck their imagination is the grandeur of the original assertion that metaphysics is nonsense.

Many contemporary minds seem to have conceived a real distaste for metaphysics. Whether this distaste is a reflection of the acceptance of logical positivist doctrines, or whether it is the expression in philosophy of the spirit of the times and they are only the modes of its rationalization, it is difficult to say.

1 In the Introduction to the Revised (1948) Edition of Language, Truth and Logic.

The fact is, however, undeniable, and students of philosophy are heard to echo the traditional complaint that traditional logic is word-chopping and traditional metaphysics barren and empty speculation. Some go further and intimate that the classical preoccupations of philosophers are not only timewasting but deliberately obscurantist. Their suggestion is that philosophy, as ordinarily conceived, has turned men’s minds away from the only reality that matters, the reality of the scientist’s world, and entangled them in a web of word-spinning about questions that have no meaning. The time-honoured discussions of philosophy are, they intimate, eternal, precisely because they can never be settled. For the conclusions of the discussions are conclusions about nothing or, more precisely, they only report to us the ways in which philosophers have decided to use words. In dismissing these discussions and their conclusions, logical positivists speak of them with a real repug¬ nance. Traditional metaphysics is, for them, an incubus which philosophy has carried for too long and they see themselves in the light of liberators who have come to release philosophers from their burden. Or they speak of traditional philosophy as if it were no more than a mass of superstition, which it was their mission to dispel. . . .

Their general attitude is, then, that of philosophic radicals who, conscious of a mission, share to the full the confident aggressiveness of their political prototypes.

The second characteristic which logical positivists share with the exponents of religious revelation is dogmatism. It is impossible to read logical positivist literature without being struck by the recurrence of dogmatic statements. Doctrines such as the verification principle, the “emotive theory” of ethics, or the theory of logical constructions are simply an¬ nounced, as if they formed part of a revelation which, denied to all previous philosophers with the exception of Hume, in whom glimmerings of the light first appeared, has been suddenly vouchsafed to the third, fourth and fifth decades of the twentieth century. The Viennese circle were particularly given to the making of such announcements. . . .

Or there are the frequent assertions that some philosophical problem has been definitely settled. “We shall see”, writes Ayer, “when we come finally to settle the conflict between Idealism and Realism”, or, he speaks of, “the dispute between

INTRODUCTION 1 3

rationalists and empiricists of which we have now finally disposed”.

The claim to have settled once and for all a number of the disputes which for centuries have so bootlessly agitated the misguided intellects of mankind Logical Positivism shares with Marxism, as it shares its intolerance.

Heat. Intolerance and dogmatism combine to engender heat. A discussion with logical positivists offers a curious con¬ trast between the matter and the manner—the matter so abstract and mild, the manner so eager and hot. Logical Positivism holds that most ethical judgments are “emotive”; they are not judgments to the effect that so and so is right or wrong, good or bad, they are ejaculations of the emotions of approval and disapproval. The attitude adopted in discussion to dissenters would seem to bear out at any rate the emotional part of this doctrine. Disagreement is equated with sin and is heatedly brushed aside, while failure to understand some ab¬ struse trend of reasoning is ascribed less to the thickheadedness that cannot, than to the wilful prejudice that will not see. To venture a doubt in regard to conclusions, to point out incon¬ sistencies in the methods of reaching them, is to assist the forces of obscurantism and to do a disservice to the cause of enlightenment.

The bewildered participant finds himself reminded of the atmosphere which pervaded the discussion of the early Christian heresies. Looking back after 1500 years, we marvel that Arian should have controverted so fiercely with Athanasian and Nestorian should have waxed so hot with Monophysite about points of doctrine whose moment is to us so small, whose content is so obscure and in regard to which the truth is, one would have thought, incapable of determination.

So, I think, in some future time philosophers may look back on our contemporary discussions of the correct analysis of sentences and the various meanings of meaning and wonder that men should have contrived to feel so strongly about matters whose theoretical import is obscure and whose practical relevance is non-existent. And then he may find significance in the resemblance of circumstances. The civilization of St. Augustine and St. Athanasius, which had continued compara¬ tively unchanged for the best part of a thousand years, was about to collapse. In this prospect St. Augustine and those who controverted with him betrayed in their discussions no interest whatever, nor did the matters which concerned them have any relevance to the forces of change which were about to engulf the ancient world. A similar indifference, a similar remoteness characterizes the discussions of contemporary Logical Positivism.

New Revelations

Nor is this the only point of similarity. In the early develop¬ ment of religious movements, history attests the frequent appearance of new revelations. Each fresh revelation claims, as it appears, to supersede its predecessors. Their inspiration is imper¬ fect, suspect or out of date; their interpretation is mistaken; it and it alone conveys the pure milk of the true doctrine. When such claims are made, we are, it is obvious, witnessing the birth of a heresy, for, whichever of the competing claimants to be the repository of the true doctrine ultimately establishes itself as the current orthodoxy, by the very fact of its success it convicts its rivals of being heresies. It was so with the heresy of Arianism which was made heretical by reason of the victory of Trinitarianism as expounded in the Athanasian creed. It is so in con¬ temporary Russia where interpretations of Marxist doctrine such as those of Trotsky or Bukharin were convicted of deviationism by the establishment of Leninism, subsequently transformed into Stalinism, as the correct interpretation of the Marxist Bible.

The condition of Christianity presents an analogous pheno¬ menon. A number of different sects put forward competing claims to embody the true doctrine of Jesus Christ. All alike are denounced as heretical with comprehensive impartiality by the Catholic Church. This is extremely embarrassing for the critic of Christianity, since, whatever doctrine he selects for examina¬ tion and criticism, a host of demurrers will always be found to insist that this is not the true Christian doctrine, that no respon¬ sible or authoritative body of Christians has ever held it—or has held it for at least a hundred years—and that he would be well advised to get up his subject to the extent of finding out what Christians do, in fact, believe before he ventures to criticize their beliefs. A reaction on these lines may be expected, whatever version of Christianity is selected for examination.

Allowing for the reduction in scale the situation which con¬ fronts the critic of Logical Positivism is not dissimilar. Having regard to the widespread and growing influence of Logical Positivism, a critical examination of its main doctrines would, I thought, be not untimely. I wanted to find out on what precisely this widespread influence was based and to form a judgment as to whether it was merited, hoping that, if my examination showed that the influence was excessive, something might perhaps be effected in the way of diminishing it.

Where, then, was I to look for an authoritative exposition of logical positivist doctrine? The answer that immediately sug¬ gested itself was that such an exposition was to be found in Professor Ayer’s book Language , Truth and Logic. This book had been described in the article in the New Statesman to which I have already referred as possessing “almost the status of a philosophic Bible” and I could myself testify to the considerable influence which it had exerted on the minds of students with whom, in the last few years, I had been in contact. I accord¬ ingly decided to take this book as my text. When, however, I came to act .upon this decision, I found myself faced with a number of difficulties.

To the first of these I have already alluded. It is the difficulty which the critics of Logical Positivism share with the critics of contemporary Christianity. So soon as I mentioned a particular doctrine of Ayer’s and indicated objections to which, as it seemed to me, it was exposed, voices were raised to assure me that I was wasting my powder and shot since, either the doc¬ trine in question was not a part of Logical Positivism proper or, though it had once been held by logical positivists, it was now generally abandoned. The name of some other exponent of Logical Positivism would then be mentioned as more authorita¬ tive or more up to date. No longer Ayer’s but-’s work was,

it would be intimated, now the repository of the true doctrine. In this connexion the names of Professors Ryle or Wisdom would frequently be mentioned, or philosophers in America would be invoked, or the remnant of the Viennese circle. . . . More recently my attention has been drawn to the doctrines of an Oxford teacher, whose contribution to a certain Symposium embodied a variation of logical positivist doctrine which put all the others out of court. This, I was assured, was the very latest thing. The only drawback to taking this latest version as my text, was that apart from the contribution in question, this par¬ ticular teacher did not appear to have committed his views to paper. The truth is that whatever statement of Logical Positiv¬ ism one takes, one runs the risk of being told that it is out of date, or that it represents a deviationist view. Other critics have, I know, found themselves equally at a loss to discover what the doctrine is with which at any given moment what may be called the authoritative and orthodox version of Logical Positivism is to be identified.

A not dissimilar difficulty arises in regard to name. A number of allied doctrines which during the last twenty years have been fashionable in philosophy have been referred to under titles of which Logical Positivism, Logical Analysis, Metaphysical Analysis and Philosophical Analysis are the best known. What¬ ever doctrine a critic may single out for treatment as forming an integral part of logical positivist theory, he runs the risk of being told that whatever else Logical Positivism may maintain, this particular doctrine is not part of Logical Positivism, though it may, of course, be maintained by some other school as, for example, that of Philosophical Analysis.

Many of its adherents have always shown a certain dissatis¬ faction with the denomination of their school of thought as Logical Positivism and displayed such impatience and, as the years have passed, such increasing impatience, when the title of “logical positivist” has been applied to their doctrines as to justify the allusion of a well-known Oxford historian to “the subject. . . which now spends its time debating whether it was once correct to describe it as Logical Positivism”.

Yet a further difficulty was constituted by the fact that Ayer himself had recently brought out a revised edition of his book in the Introduction to which some of the most characteristic doctrines enunciated in the first edition had been so modified that they had, as it seemed to me, lost most of what might be called their striking force. Some had even been retracted.

Finally, many of the doctrines of Logical Positivism cut at the root of traditional philosophical procedures and have therefore been subjected to extensive criticism. Hence, whatever criti¬ cisms I might myself suggest would be to a certain extent a re-statement of objections that had already been ventilated.

In spite of these disabilities I decided to go on with my original plan of subjecting to a fairly detailed examination the doctrines contained in the first edition of Language , Truth and Logic. My reasons were two. First, I was chiefly interested in the effects of Logical Positivism upon contemporary thought. In particular, I wanted to satisfy myself as to whether it was, indeed, calculated to produce the effects which Oxonian had attributed to it. Now, it was Ayer’s statement of Logical Positivism which, it was generally agreed, had been influential and it was the original statement contained in the first edition, not the modi¬ fications and retractions of the Introduction to the second that had attracted the attention of young philosophers or of non¬ philosophers. The doctrine as modified was not calculated to have the striking impact of the original statement, apart from the fact that there had not been time for the revised version to influence the thinking of non-specialists.

Secondly, although the criticisms of Logical Positivism had been numerous they had been scattered over a wide field, appearing in a number of periodicals, papers read to Societies and contributions to symposia. Most of them were, moreover, directed against some particular point of logical positivist theory. It would, I thought, be valuable to gather these various criticisms together and to present them within the confines of a single volume, so that they constituted what might fairly be called a critical examination of the doctrine as a whole. Only in this way, I thought, would it be possible to obtain a general view of Logical Positivism, of its claims and of their validity, and so to form a judgment as to whether the important influence it had undoubtedly exerted were such as it was justly entitled to exert.

That it Makes No Difference

As I indicated at the beginning, the immediate intention of this book is practical. I am concerned to enquire what effects are liable to be produced by Logical Positivism upon the minds of those who are brought into contact with it and to consider whether these are such as are desirable. The answer to these questions may most appropriately be given after I have reviewed the main doctrines of Logical Positivism more particularly as they touch upon ethics and aesthetics, and have discussed the emotive theory of value. I shall, therefore, return to the question in the final chapter of this book. Here I confine myself to one specific point. Prima facie, the practical effects of the wholesale repudiation of the traditional claims of philosophy might, if it could be sustained, be expected to be considerable. The dismissal of God, freedom and immortality as the appropriate subjects of mature consideration and discussion, the abandonment of metaphysics in favour of the analysis of the meaning of words are no small matters; the change involved in substituting for the understanding of the universe the better understanding of certain sentences is no minor change. Hence, one might expect those who at an early stage of their philosophical thinking have been exposed to the impact of these modes of thought to exhibit a noticeably different cast of mind from that of most of their predecessors. I believe the expectation to be justified.

Logical positivists, however, repudiate the suggestion that their doctrines have any extra philosophical effect. How, they ask, can the adoption of logical positivist methods affect a man’s attitude to ethics, aesthetics, politics or theology, seeing that these are expressly excluded from the scope of logical positivist discussion on the ground that no fruitful philosophical state¬ ments can be made about them? In this connexion the Berkeleyan analysis of the physical world in terms of ideas and sensa¬ tions is sometimes cited as an analogy. Philosophers are agreed that Dr. Johnson’s alleged refutation of Berkeley by kicking a stone is no refutation at all, because the analysis of a physical thing as a congeries of ideas does not imply that we do not experience the qualities that we believe ourselves to experience, or enjoy and suffer the sensations which we believe ourselves to enjoy and suffer. To analyse a table as a collection of ideas instead of as a collection of molecules and atoms makes no difference to our view of the table as the object at which we dine, or to our confidence in its trustworthiness as a foundation for plates, knives and forks. All that Berkeley has done is, it is said, to give to the table an analysis other than that which common sense unreflectingly accepts. This, I think, is true. But the postu¬ lated analogy between the logical positivist and the Berkeleyan analysis is misleading for two reasons.

First, as regards metaphysics, Berkeley’s ideas continue to exist when the mind of the perceiver ceases to experience them; they exist in the mind of God. Now, Berkeley’s God is a meta¬ physical entity according to the usage of the word, “meta¬ physical”, adopted by logical positivists, that is to say, his exis¬ tence is not verifiable by sense-experience; therefore, the ideas as they exist in God’s mind are also metaphysical entities. Berkeley, then, did not deny metaphysics; on the contrary, a metaphysical system formed the basis—as he believed, the necessary basis—of the empirical world. Berkeley was, then, I think, justified in claiming that the analysis of the familiar world in terms of mental ideas makes no difference to a man’s practice and no relevant difference to his theological and philosophical beliefs. By “no relevant difference” I mean that men’s beliefs (i) in an objective world existing independently of the perceiver’s experi¬ ence; and (ii) in an order of reality which exists independently of, is not verifiable by and is not, therefore, capable of being an object of any sense-experience remains unaffected.

Neither of these beliefs can, I submit, be validly entertained by those who take the logical positivist view. Nor is it the case that the abandonment of either of them does not, or at least ought not to make any difference to a man’s outlook. On the important issue as to whether there is an order of reality other than the natural order which gives meaning to and supplies a purpose for the life of man as a member of the natural order, the difference must, I submit, if these beliefs really are abandoned, be crucial.

In support of this contention I call in witness the case of Hume. Pushing Berkeley’s empiricist premises to their logical conclusion, he left no rational ground for believing either in an objective world existing independently of the perceiver, or in an order of reality inaccessible to sense-experience. His position is, in fact, reducible to Solipsism. Now, if one really believed that Solipsism was true, the fact would, I think, make a con¬ siderable difference to one’s outlook. Hume did not believe this and was careful to guard himself against any such suggestion by affirming not that there was no independent world and no objective order of reality, but that he could find no rational grounds for believing in them. His conclusion was, in effect, “so much the worse for reason”. The effect of his philosophy is, then, to belittle reason in order to exalt feeling, his contention being that our fundamental philosophical beliefs are the pro¬ ducts of our passional rather than of our intellectual natures. This is an arguable position, but it is not the position of Logical Positivism.

The bearing of the implications of the logical positivist posi¬ tion upon the traditional beliefs of mankind are, therefore, more radical than the implications of Hume’s. Logical positivist con¬ clusions really do eviscerate the universe.

Secondly, as regards ethics, theology and aesthetics, Berke¬ ley’s analysis leaves traditional philosophy untouched. He does not believe and nowhere suggests that “right”, “good” and “God” are meaningless terms, or that ethical judgments and theological statements are only emotive. Hence, so far as axiology is concerned, Berkeley’s empiricism is compatible with a straightforward objectivism which accepts the presence in the universe both of ethical and of aesthetic values.

Berkeley also, especially in his later writings, postulated the existence of a priori knowledge and conceded most of what the rationalists had claimed. God, the self and ethical values were all, for him, included in that “knowledge of spirits” which he called “notional”. For these reasons, I think that the analogy referred to above is misleading.

The effects of Logical Positivism will be considered in more detail in Chapter IX.

CHAPTER I

LOGICAL POSITIVISM. ITS METHODS AND PURPOSES

The Method of Analysis

What is the aim of the body of doctrine known as Logical Positivism?

The aim is analytic; it is so to analyse sentences and to examine the usage of words that thought is clarified and a new approach is rendered possible to the traditional problems of philosophical discussion. As a result of this approach many are found to disappear, not so much because they have been solved as because they are seen to be false problems which should never have been raised. That they have in fact arisen is due to muddled thinking, but the muddled thinking is itself largely the product of the inaccurate use of language.

More explicitly, it is the purpose of philosophy to provide definitions: “It is the purpose of a philosophical definition”, Ayer writes, “to dispel those confusions which arise from our imperfect understanding of certain types of sentence in our language.” It is pointed out that while words are symbols, many of the words used in the English language are ambiguous symbols. Take the word “is”, for example. “If”, says Ayer, “we were guided merely by the form of the sign, we should assume that the word ‘is’, which occurs in the sentence ‘He is the author of that book 5 was the same symbol as the ‘is 5 which occurs in the sentence ‘A cat is a mammal 5 .” But when we have analysed the two sentences in such a way as to reveal their logical structure, we find that “is” means something different in each case. Thus, the first sentence “is equivalent to ‘He and no one else wrote that book 5 , and the second to ‘The class of mammals contains the class of cats 5 ”.

Again, we normally suppose that the word “exists 55 is a symbol which has a distinctive meaning. But logical positivists claim to be able to show that existence is not an attribute, that its presence in a sentence adds nothing to the meaning of the sentence, and that we have only been led into thinking that it does so by reason of the fact that “sentences which express existential propositions and sentences which express attributive propositions may be of the same grammatical form”. To point out the various meanings of the word “is” is to throw an im¬ portant light on the problem of universal, which the abandon¬ ment of the notion that existence is an attribute enables logical positivists to eliminate such concepts as those of Being and Reality and contributes therefore to their repudiation of meta¬ physics.

Similarly with regard to things: material things are repre¬ sented as logical constructions out of sense-contents, in the sense that sentences which contain words which stand for material things can (and apparently should) be translated into sentences which contain words which are symbols for sense-contents.