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Part 1:

The received view logical positivist program in philosophy of science (Berlin and Vienna, 1920).

First document: Der Wiener Kreis. Member came to be known as the Vienna circle.

Combines logicism (all scientific language, including mathematics, is an extension of logic) and positivism (means empiricism knowledge arises out of sense experience).

Main aim of the program demarcate scientific knowledge and to remove metaphysical/ imagined content from scientific knowledge.

Scientific knowledge:

analytic propositions (1);

synthetic a posteriori propositions (2).

Immanuel Kant third type of propositions: synthetic a priori (3).

Door toenemende ontwikkelingen in de wiskunde en natuurkunde werden enkele van deze beweringen ontkracht (e.g. non-Euclidian geometries are possible) logical positivists deny the existence of synthetic a priori propositions in science all propositions that are not true by definition should be investigated (empirical research).

Empiricism (4) grondslag voor logcical positivists:

synthetic statements’evidence derived from sense perception;

predicates must be empirically verifiable (verifiable by senses).

Verifiability principle a non-analytic statement is meaningful only if it is empirically verifiable (verifiable by sense perception).

Ultimate goal of the Vienna circle purge science off all propositions that contain terms that are not meaningful. Only aspects of which we can acquire scientific knowledge are those that are directly accessible by sense perception (on the surface of things).

Goals:

1. Verifiability principle and the distinction between analytic claims and synthetic claims;

2. Develop precise definitions of central scientific notions.

Distinction made between the context of discovery (5) and the context of justification (6):

philosophy of science should really concentrate only on the context of justification;

context of discovery irrelevant to establishing the scientific value of a theory....