Ideas that Self-Destruct when You Think Them Through. (Logical Positivism)
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Question everything! All truth is relative. Nothing is true. All statements are either meaningless or verifiable through empirical measurement. Logical Positivism generally.
Some ideas have self destruct buttons built into them because they can't apply to themselves. These paradoxical ideas are wrong, inherently, but they often live on longer than they should if people don't think them through.
Most channels' early days are unpolished. Either this channel is an impressive exception or the future of this channel will be even better.
he criticized some caricature of the logical positivism. neither he nor his supporter can produce any self-destructive ideas except of his. there is yet future for the logical positivism.
The model philosopher for the logical positivists is David Hume. That about says it all.
Goedel's incompleteness deduction relates to mathematics and logic, but is likely to be applicable more widely. If so it would mean that all systems of thought depend upon an an exterior reference or exterior assumptions. Logical positivism rests on an assumption of an external, objective, physical reality; in Kant's terms a noumenon that is causally related to the phenomenon or empirical experience.
What logical positivism says is that it is possible to explain why statements derived from empirical references are meaningful, whereas those that lack empirical reference cannot. Actually I am sure that most logical positivists (following Hume) would accept that statements of logic have meaning that does not require empirical data. Logical positivism is really an extension of Hume's fork.
No. Gödels incompleteness theorem only applies to theories with arithmetic. Stop misapplying it.
@@HaqiqaSeeker which is what I wrote, before speculating a more general application, that I think depends on how far mathematics and logic can extend into systematic and analytical thinking. Certainly there were some around Gödel who did think that way.
If you take logical positivism as a methodology rather than a truth claim, this isn't really a problem
I don't think that was ever in question.
@@Hakajin The video didn’t bother to make the distinction. It just dismissed logical positivism.
It's a categorical error. It's epistemic criteria, not a statement of fact. If you don't use empiricism, then we should also accept what schizophrenics say is true.
A methodology makes truth claims on how to arrive at other truth claims, so yes, this would be a problem
I know this is an old video but it was recently shown to me. I only see one flaw in this example. The issue is the "question everything" and then respond with "why?" That doesn't defeat or contradict the advice to question everything. It simply becomes an obligation to answer the question "why." And the answer is simple. If you do not question everything you will blindly accept anything and in so doing you truly know nothing and become more easily deceived and convinced of anything just because someone else told you it is so. If you do not question everything, how would you know there is a "self destruct button?" You have to question it and then seek the answer to it why it is either objectively true or objectively false.
I agree that questioning is good. The question then is, when is your skepticism properly satisfied? JB
@@GoodandBasic demonstrative supporting facts that are consistent. :)
The critical detail is the definition of a fact. JB
@@GoodandBasic I thought I clarified that with the word demonstrable.
There's nothing wrong with questioning "Question everything". It will lead to a discussion of why you should question everything. It doesn't have a self-destruct button.
This was good and basic
In all seriousness, succint yet compelling. Fantastic work
Explaining the origin of the universe with some type of creator god is kind of self-destructing.
how so?
Because life can create itself, right? Abiogenesis, amirite, fellow empiricist?
@@factoryman28 Kicks the can down the road, if you need a creator for something to exist, who is the creator of the creator?
The core idea of logical positivism : All genuine(attainable) knowledge is EITHER exclusively derived from experience of natural phenomena and their relations OR is true by definition that is analytic and tautological.
You omitted (perhaps strategically) half of the above to create a strawman.
That "or" statement fits neither of the two conditions. Argument stands. JB
That "or" statement fits neither of the two conditions. Argument stands. JB
@@GoodandBasic Incorrect. The statement serves as a definition of attainable knowledge and is thus analytic.
That's a set theory loop. The definition of meaning, or knowledge has descriptive content. Reducing it to analytic tautology makes it a circular definition that ceases to be useful in a real conversation. JB
@@GoodandBasic This definition of knowledge includes experience of natural phenomena, thus not reducing knowledge to mere tautologies (even though the definition itself is analytic). Put another way, all (attainable) knowledge is either arrived at through reason (is rational) or is empirical. Such a definition of knowledge would not preclude utility in conversations, provided that by 'real conversations' you mean reasoning about knowledge.
Not sure what you mean by a 'set theory loop'. Why indulge in deliberate name-dropping of abstract mathematical topics (which are barely even used in physical sciences) whose relevance here is entirely redundant and banal?
You should look into Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem, it's really cool and related to this idea.
Indeed it is. Spot on. JB
I’m on study unit 3 “The Vienna Circle and logical positivism” studying for exams.
Love this video. Great bashing!
So there are meaningful things that is not material, but we still cannot prove or presume their existence... right?
I mean, I am not sure this person quite gets the problem right. The enemy of positivists was *synthetic a priori* statements (axioms about the world). Their methodological statements might be seen as merely the best techniques and not strictly true for all time.
There are many weaknesses that explain why positivism took a beating, I just think maybe they didn't necessarily claim all methodological statements were to be eliminated, too.
Several crypto-Jews vs one blond boi
Who will win?
Jews don’t believe in a soul?
I dont think i agree that this is a valid crique of positivism. How do you test if a philosophical belief about the nature of truth? By seeing if operating under that belief inreases your understanding of the world and what is and isnt true, and its pretty historically obvious that positivism did this.
Amazing! This is really going to help me with my discussion board for my Philosophy class. Thank You!
Glad to help! JB
@@GoodandBasic I've noticed Matt Dillahunty does that as well, he likes to appeal to the physical or "common sense" reality of truth as the basis of his arguments, the everyday things we take for granted as being true.
"You can't" that's where you're wrong kiddo.
The positivist would argue that you could in fact measure the accuracy of that statement. Obviously no experiment has been performed as there are inappropriately numerous statements that could be thusly anslysed, but a process of analysis nevertheless presents itself.
There is no possible measurement other than surveys. And those measure the current opinions of people on value, not value itself. The only measurement tools imaginable would fit in the domain of anthropology, not ethics. This domain is beyond empiricism. Hence, if the truth has value, then the logical positivists are irrevocably wrong in their claims of the complete truth. JB
@@GoodandBasic "All statements that are meaningful must at their root be able to be proven using measurement" when applied to itself becomes a hypothesis, I think we agree on that, but you contend that you can't measure it except for the use of surveys which measure opinion.
I would argue that 1. there are other measures, and 2. opinion surveys are not a valid measure of that hypothesis.
In science, social or otherwise, research must be both reliable and valid, and you correctly point out that surveys only measure "current opinions of people on value, not value itself", thus being malleable, relative and neither reliable or repeatable.
Where we disagree is in the fact that surveys were not valid to begin with, opinions don't come into this. To test the hypothesis one must identify the elements that require testing and then come up with a measure of that element.
"Statements" can be quantified, "statements that are meaningful" even more readily, particularly if one has taken the time to establish a functional definition of "meaningful" such as perhaps 'that which when put into practice we derive utility from' or something to that effect.
So let's take a hundred statements, then divide them into those that are measurable, e.g: "an increase in inflation will increase the price of consumer goods", and non-measurable, e.g: "Souls exist".
Of these statements, which are meaningful, and what is the ratio between them of meaningful to meaningless? Which expand our knowledge of the world? Which explain other phenomena? Which increase the wellbeing of those that live their lives in a manner that acknowledges the validity of that statement? Which are not contradicted by other ontological statements of fact? Or as I suggested above, which provide one or society with some measure of utility?
Now, I haven't conducted this study, but I don't need to, I just need to think of how such a study could be organised for it to be valid within the realm of positivism.
Isn't the case that they DID measure the accuracy of that statement and it ended up being meaningless by their own criteria? After all.. how meaningful can "meaning" be, if it's tried to be justified empirically? I think what happened was probably something similar to barber's paradox. It won't usually work to just draw straight and absolute lines (demarcation) and think you can fit the reality in those parameters. I think anyone who red Gödel would find it counter-intuitive to think you could make a working empirical system of meaning and make it same time describe meaning accurately and include the meaning and empiricism itself in the test-set. So you CAN test it but you probably can't get very positive outcome from circular assumptions.
Love it!
Skepticism
4:13 xD Gave me a chuckle.
Stop being so impatient.
Totally agree. Most of logical positivism has been refuted as a naive realism as it not only undermined sociology but science itself. Renowned atheist philosophers such as Mary Midgeley and Oxford mathematicians such as John Lennox have been banging their head off a brick wall for years trying to explain this fact to Material reductionists.
Then how do you know people with hallucinations are wrong ?
Sorry buddy but you are obviously not well versed is Logical Positivism. They claim that there are two types of statements- analytic statements" and “synthetic statements." The statement that you describe in this video is an
Analytic Statement. Analytic statement: the truth value of which is determined by the meanings of its terms;e.g., "All squares are four-sided." It is sometimes said (e.g. by Kant), when a statement is in simple subject-predicate form, that an analytic statement is one in which the predicate (e.g., the property of being four-sided) is-"contained within" the subject (the concept of a square).
Logical Positivism ftw