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Verificationism. PHIL 2610 Philosophy of Language 1 st Term 2016. Science & Philosophy. Pope’s Epitaph. N ATURE and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night: God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light. Isaac Newton.
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Verificationism PHIL 2610 Philosophy of Language 1st Term 2016
Pope’s Epitaph NATURE and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night: God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.
Isaac Newton • “Completed” the scientific revolution with his Principia, where he specifies the laws of physics. • Also known for his development of the integral calculus and his work in optics. • Friend of Locke.
Robert Boyle • Founder of modern chemistry. • Pioneer of experimental scientific methodology. • Known for “Boyle’s Law” • Locke worked in his lab.
Locke on His Essay “The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity: but every one must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some others of that strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge;”
Locke on His Essay “This, therefore, being my purpose — to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent;”
Albert Einstein • Developed the Theory of Relativity, which would replace Newton’s Laws of Motion. • Also very influential in the development of Quantum Mechanics.
The Curvature of Spacetime Kant influentially held that Euclidean geometry was synthetic a priori, and that our experience must be as of a Euclidean spacetime. But the Minkowskispacetime in relativity is non-Euclidean.
Einstein How do you respond to opponents (classical physics) that think their theory is knowable in advance of any argument or evidence?
Einstein Einstein responded by operationalizing: imagining rigid rods extending in all directions, and clocks at various points. That is, his arguments were couched in terms of what you could measure or experience (rather than straightforwardly in terms of what was true).
Einstein’s Operationalism “The destiny of General Relativity as a physical theory depends entirely upon the interpretation of the ds [distance between two points in a reference frame] as result of measurement, which can be obtained in a very quite definite way through measuring-rods and clocks” -- Einstein, Letter to Cassirer, June 1920
Quantum Mechanics Quantum mechanics also had metaphysical problems of its own. Several counterintuitive experiments seemed to suggest that the basic laws of the universe were not quite consistent with the laws of logic.
Quantum Mechanics This led some physicists to simply deny that there were questions to be answered beyond “what do we observe/ experience?”– no questions like “what is the reality causing the appearances?”
Wilhelm Wundt • “Father of experimental psychology” • Founded first lab to study psychological phenomenon • Was an “introspectionist,” focused on individuals reporting details of their conscious experience.
Wilhelm Wundt Wundt required his subjects to perform 10,000 introspective observations before they were considered sufficiently trained. His student, Titchener wrote 1000 page training manual for experimental introspection.
Introspectionism Training was supposed to provide subjects with: • An increased capacity for attention • An ability to properly distinguish such facets of experience as ‘tonal intensity’ and ‘tonal clearness’ • An ability to avoid confusions such as ‘stimulus error’ – the description of the object experienced as opposed to the experience itself.
Famously, however, none of the psychological labs got the same results! For example, they couldn’t agree whether one could introspect imageless thoughts.
John B. Watson • American psychologist • 1878-1958 • Progenitor of methodological behaviorism
Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It In “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,” Watson characterizes psychology as: • ‘purely objective’ • ‘a branch of natural science’ • Concerned with ‘prediction and control of behavior’ • NOT concerned with conscious states • Opposed to introspection • Recognizing no difference between human and animal
Watson vs. Introspectionism “If you fail to reproduce my findings, it is not due to some fault in your apparatus or in the control of your stimulus, but it is due to the fact that your introspection is untrained… If you can't observe 3-9 states of clearness in attention, your introspection is poor.” (pg. 6).
Behaviorism The conclusion Watson draws is: we must get rid of all references to consciousness. We shouldn’t use terms like ‘mental state’, ‘consciousness’, ‘mental image’, or even ‘mind’. These aren’t scientific terms. The vocabulary of psychology should only involve terms for behavior, stimulus, and so on.
Behaviorism “[P]sychology as a behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is … prediction and control”
Classical Empiricism Last time we learned about the idea theory. Although it wasn’t confined to the empiricists, most of the important ones– Locke, Berkeley, and Hume– believed in it.
Classical Empiricism “All ideas come from experience.” “All knowledge comes from experience.” “All ideas and all knowledge come from experience.”
Classical Empricism Empiricism had its problems, in addition to those that the idea theory suffered from: Modal Knowledge: Experience tells you what is, not what must be/ should be/ will be. Yet we can know some of these things. Poverty of the Stimulus: We figure out things like language use faster than experience is capable of teaching us. This suggests innateness.
Positivism The French philosopher/ first Western sociologist Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte (1798-1857) theorized that society progressed in three stages: • Theological • Metaphysical • Positive
Theological Stage In the theological stage, people believe any silly or magical thing their ancestors attributed to the gods.
Metaphysical Stage Next, in the metaphysical stage gods go out of the picture, but are replaced with unjustified “metaphysical” assumptions. Example: universal human rights.
Positivism Finally, in the positive stage, the truth of our beliefs is “positively” determined. For Compte, science was the only source of positive determination.
Logical Positivism Around the 1920’s in Vienna and Berlin certain philosophical doctrines became popular, and their adherents were variously known as Logical Empiricists or Logical Positivists or sometimes neo-Positivists.
Empiricist Criterion of Cognitive Significance According to the logical positivists, in order for a sentence to have cognitive significance (to be meaningful), it had to have verification conditions.
Empiricist Criterion of Cognitive Significance ‘Verification’ is a Latinate English word < ‘veri-’ true + ‘facere’ to make. Verification conditions are conditions under which the truth of a statement can be conclusively established.
Empiricist Criterion of Cognitive Significance In fact, the positivists maintained that the meaning of a sentence was its verification conditions. So a sentence with no verification conditions– where no experience can establish its truth– is meaningless.
Truth vs. Verification Many philosophers (even today) have identified the meaning of a sentence with its truth conditions. These are the circumstances in which the sentence would be true. But the positivists went farther– they held that the meaning of a sentence was its verification conditions– the circumstances in which we would know the sentence was true.
The Elimination of Metaphysics This was part of a radical philosophical agenda, which included “the elimination of metaphysics.” The idea was to view many philosophical problems of the past (and also many religious claims) as meaningless disputes that could simply be ignored.
Anti-Religion Example: In a religion where God is beyond human experience, the positivists would say that “God exists” is neither true nor false but meaningless, since no experience could verify it.
Anti-Metaphysics Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger were also big targets for the positivists. Example Hegel quote: “But the other side of its Becoming, History, is a conscious, self-meditating process — Spirit emptied out into Time.”
The Elimination of Metaphysics The positivists even wanted to eliminate a lot of more down-to-Earth metaphysics: Modality: We can only experience what is, not what could possibly be. So statements about what is (merely) possible are meaningless. Normativity: We can only experience what is, not what should morally be. So statements about what is good or bad are meaningless.
Empiricist Semantics According to the positivists, the elimination of metaphysics followed from the correct account of meaning. When we understood that meaning = verification conditions, then we would see that ‘the Absolute is perfect’ or ‘God exists’ can’t possibly have meanings. Then we would be free to look into more promising, resolvable philosophical questions.
Observation Sentences We single out a certain, small set of sentences to be the “protocol” or “observation” sentences. These sentences are all very simple syntactically, along the lines of: ‘that is red.’
Immediate Experience RED LOUD PAIN THREE
TABLE DOG CHAIR MOUNTAIN
