For every problem, there is a simple solution: neat, plausible and wrong.
The philosophers such as Rudolf Carnap (1891 – 1970) and the Vienna Circle considered logical positivism the received view of the scientific method. In the early to mid twentieth century, it dominated the philosophy of science discussions but is now widely viewed as seriously flawed—or as A. J. Ayer (1910 – 1989), a former advocate, put it: “I suppose the most important [defect]…was that nearly all of it was false.” Pity. But it was good while it lasted. So, what is logical positivism? It is sometimes defined by the statement: Only verifiable statements have meaning—note verifiable not falsifiable. The doctrine included opposition to all metaphysics, especially ontology and synthetic a priori propositions. Metaphysics is rejected not as wrong but as having no meaning.
Logical positivism is very nice idea: we work only with observations and what can be deduced directly from them. No need for theories, models or metaphysics. I can hear the cheering now, especially from my experimental colleagues. It was partially in response to the revolutions in physics in the early twentieth century. Quantum mechanics and relativity completely upended the metaphysics and philosophy built around classical mechanics, so the logical positivist wanted to eliminate the metaphysics to prevent this from happening again; a very laudable goal.
So what went wrong? As Ayer noted, almost everything. First, metaphysics tends to be like accents—something only the other person has. The very claim that metaphysics is not needed is itself a metaphysical claim. Second, observations are not simple. As demonstrated by optical illusions, what we see is not necessarily what is there. The perceptual apparatus does a lot of processing before the results are presented to the conscious mind. The model of the universe presented to the conscious mind probably has more uncontrolled assumptions than any accepted scientific model. But that is what the logical positivists took as the gospel truth. In addition there is Thomas Kuhn’s (1922 – 1996) claim that observations are model dependent. While that claim is disputable, it is clear that the interpretation of observations depend on the model, the paradigm or if you prefer the metaphysics; something beyond the observations themselves.
Third as Sir Karl Popper (1902 – 1994) argued, in general, scientific models cannot be verified only falsified (and one can argue that even that is impossible, see the first post in this series). Thus, Only verifiable statements have meaning would exclude all of science from having meaning. Indeed, it would exclude even the statement itself since the statement Only verifiable statements have meaning cannot be verified.
Logical positivism: neat, plausible and wrong. Well can anything be salvaged? Perhaps a little. Consider the statement: In science, only models that can be empirically tested are worth discussing. Not to be overly broad, I restrict the statement to science. The criteria in mathematics are rather different and I do not wish to make a general statement about knowledge, at least not here. Second, I have replaced statement with model since by the Duhem-Quine thesis individual statements cannot be tested since one can make almost any statement true by varying the supporting assumptions. In the end it is global models that are tested. Science is observationally based, so the adjective empirical. I use tested to avoid complaints about the validity of verification or falsification. Tested is neutral in that regard. Finally, meaningful has been replaced by worth discussing. To see why consider the composition of the sun. In the late nineteenth century, it was regarded as something that would never be known. At that point the statement “The sun is composed mainly of hydrogen” would have been considered meaningless by the logical positivists and certainly, at that time, discussion of the issue would have been futile. But with the discovery of spectroscopic lines, models for the composition of the sun became very testable and the composition of sun is now considered well understood. It went from not worth discussing to well understood but the composition of the sun did not change. I would consider the statement “The sun is composed mainly of hydrogen” to be meaningful even before it could be tested; meaningful but not worth discussing.
My restatement above does, however, eliminate a lot of nonsense; like the omphalos hypothesis, the flying spaghetti monster, and a lot of metaphysics, from discussion. But its implications are more wide ranging. During my chequered career as a scientist, I have seen many pointless discussions of things that could not be tested: d-state of the deuteron, off-shell properties, nuclear spectroscopic factors and various other technical quantities that appear in the equations used by physicists. There was much heat but little light. It is important to keep track of what aspects of the models we produce are constrained by observation and which are not. Follow the logical positivists, not the yellow brick road, and keep careful track of what can actually be determined by measurements. What is behind the curtain is only interesting if the curtain can be pulled aside.
To conclude: Don’t waste your time discussing what can’t be empirically tested. That is all that’s left of logical positivism once the chaff has been blown away. And good advice it is—except for mathematicians. Either that or I have been lured to the rocks by the siren call of logical positivism and have another statement that is neat, plausible and wrong!
Additional posts in this series will appear most Friday afternoons at 3:30 pm Vancouver time. To receive a reminder follow me on Twitter: @musquod
Tags: Philosophy of science
