Is there such a thing as growth of humanity ? What could be the meaning of the term ‘Progress’ ? what does it mean to understand ? Can a philosophy be clean from metaphysics ?
This article shows a link between Language, Philosophy and Science, we discuss positivism, and in particular – how words are used to build the truth and which mistakes words create along the way
It is mostly western culture that is obsessed with the Hellenistic hybris of trying to achieve proper thinking: to conceptualize, to invent ontologies and implement logic and structure. This type of thinking defines the core of the western human spirit.
Aristoteles began this project (in massive scale) with his Organon around 340 BC, hugely influential and dominating the western logic and thought until the 17th century. After that other methodologies and types of logic were starting to appear, we deal with some of them later on. Aristoteles invented with his thought a set of tools and sciences which is used to align thought with reality. Among them, a method in which statements can be verified to get a value of ‘true’ and ‘false’, what kind of thoughts can we verify against reality ? what amount of control and understanding do we have over the world ? Aristoteles believes that the world is logic, that it has a specific order that can be reached, through it man can gain control over his environment, world and universe.
Today we are still continuing the effort recognizing reality, more specifically through scientific knowledge. In order to verify our theories against (materialist) reality, all knowledge types should be reducible to scientific knowledge. The only kind of knowledge about the materialist reality is scientific knowledge. We are talking about Cognitive knowledge, there exists other types of knowledge but they are inferior in the sense of relation to reality. Language builds reality and through language it would be possible to achieve knowledge, but only through the valid products of language. In the 20th century thinkers like Saussure, Cassierer, Wittgenstein (TLP), Heidegger (and phenomenology) helped show how thought and Language are inseparable. Validation of our thoughts can be done through analysis which investigate the validation of statements, or to be more precise generalizing which type of sentences can say something about the world and our reality.
Language is the medium which is not transparent and manipulates our image of reality
Language in the medium which through thought is communicated. it was considered to be transparent – not to have the ability to interfere with thought or to be the same as. Cartesian thinking for example, does not take language in consideration. If we read Lewis Carroll (1832-1898 Mathematician and a writer, and some other things as well…) we understand how language can become a playful and amusing game in problems of Logic, Semantics, Semiotics, Paradoxes.
Ideas, ideas, I have so many ideas
Niklas Kvarforth
Thoughts born of desire and dream
Plato in his dialogues, referencing the imaginary world of ideas, ignores the language and presumes his words have self ontological justification. If talking about justice, there needs to be an idea of ‘justice’, it does not relate to anything in the real world, and it is just a construct of language. The understanding of ‘justice’ must precede reality, and it stays mostly ideal, and justice in the 21st century is a word that should not exist, because it relates to nothing (in the real materialist world), or to too many things, which cannot be used in practicality. This is the perfect form of idealism and from the point of view of materialism it is meaningless. Most idealist doctrines failed, and maybe because of this reasons among others. The strive for the perfect white often yields the perfect black.
Every sentence can be checked for validation, every sentence tries to tell something about the world, and it might contain errors, because language is not mistake-free, Language is problematic. It was formed in an organic way therefore not built or designed to be error-free from logical mistakes (reading:Saussure). Language imposes itself, so far nothing is regulating it to be error free. Frege (1848-1925) suggested the inspection of language, the analysis of propositions, and also Carnap (1891-1970) which criticized Heidegger over the significance of Kantian notions of freedom and rationality, that was even before late Wittgenstein who took the call, the duty of the philosopher in the 21st century is to clean up the language from those mistakes.
Before the 19th or 20th century, philosophical approaches, such as the Cartesian, suggests that even before language, ideas such as infinity or justice exists. Modern thinking would suggest that such terms do not refer to anything real and therefor a mistake of misuse of language, a non existent illusion. Wittgenstein would say that this is a disruption in language. Every discussion that leaves out the medium – which is language, is open for mistakes, because it does not take into consideration a major, fundamental element upon which all other assumptions are built – the mistake would be to create invalid statements or propositions in language and there continue building on top of those, whole metaphysics, phenomenology, Existentialism.
To understand what makes science special, especially with everything dealing with language, a group of people, the Vienna Circle, wrote a manifesto (1929) which explains how science keeps itself free from mistakes through the use of language.
Science actually existed since the 17th century in the same way we know it today. The ancient Greeks came quite close to something of a raw science. The church did not busy itself with science, but with Theology and Scholasticism and had no instruments of scientific investigation – no physics or astrophysics. Before science, the coherence of thought filled the world with what we call certainty and knowledge. One of the agreed catalysts of the appearance of scientific knowledge was the appearance of the bourgeois, there were enough people with leisure to investigate in their free time outside the institution. Only an the end of the 19th century after scientific knowledge was something of itself, then it became the subject of investigation itself.
Positivism
ipsa scientia potestas est
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon was the first one to offer a method which is different from the Aristotelian, he was earlier than Descartes in 20 years although it is Descartes which got the title ‘father of the new philosophy’. Descartes was the first one to suggest that reality is being perceived by a Subject and as such, reality is defined by the subject’s perceptions as well. Bacon was only offering a different methodology to establish what we call cognition, while Aristoteles developed a methodology around the essence of things, and those were the object of investigation. Metaphysics were the base of investigation. Bacon established the inductive empiricism, the modern method of inductive reasoning – the requirement for materialist evidence as a condition for a proposition in order to get the valued ‘true’.
The base point of inductive reasoning would be observations on the outside world instead of relying on Logic. Collection of data would allow us to suggest generalization or inclusions (mechanical in nature), Bacon knew long before David Hume that there a categorical difference between what we get from induction (generalizations) and the truth. This stands in contrast to religion, because data has no absolute status. Therefore we start to understand – truth has no absolute status. Further than that, there are a lot of things that get in our way in our attempt to reach reality, such as cognition who is communicating through language which tries to perceive reality. Therefor the positivist approach does not try to find the object called truth or an object which is absolute in nature, but rather more humbly trying to expand the limit of human understanding.
Francis Bacon also talked about the False Idols, those are concepts that most of us have running in our thoughts, which tend to mislead us, and make us make mistakes, those are : Idola tribus, Idola specus, Idola fori and Idola theatri:
| Tribal idols | rooted in human nature itself and in the very tribe or race of men |
| Cave idols | belong to the the individual, in psychology Freud and C.G. Jung |
| Markt idols | from the mutual agreement and association of the human race for example : Democracy |
| Theater Idols | misguided into men’s souls from the dogmas of the philosophers and misguided laws of demonstration as well; For example : Marxism |
The parents of Eros are unknown
Francis Bacon
Eros (Roman: Cupid) is the atom or the origin, the source all the rest, the affinity between elements. In that Bacon suggests that is to say : it is in vain to seek to carry our investigations beyond the fact of existence of matter possessed of such and such primitive qualities. This is something similar to the approach of Goethe, which thinkers like Oswald Spengler would base their whole inquisitive organic approach upon, declared literally in his writings.
To put into simple words, in contrary to Aristoteles, Bacon believes that the absolute God, or the parents of Cupid, reason of all reasons, the Eternal truth is only a metaphysical fiction. This is contrary to Leibniz’s theory about the principle of sufficient reason, more about it later.
Truth is a metaphysical fiction. That is something very predominant in the though of the 20th century which originated somewhere in 1620 with Bacon. From this perspective Descartes, Kant, Leibniz and Spinoza, are mistaking for not using inductive thinking, but going on a wild goose chase, getting lost in words, sentences and metaphysics which have nothing with reality outside language.
David Hume made the distinction between the two possibilities using language: or to build sentences that can look at the outside world and testify over our observations – (‘collecting data’ in Bacon’s sense), or sentences that are only a testimony of affinities between ideas. Reality and those type of ideas or ideals are not connected in any way.
In the type of reality we are talking about here statements and propositions can only be assigned with a True or False value but never necessarily, and that is the core statement that would define the reality that science is talking about. For Hume because the nature of Ethics is claimed necessary and reality is not – then the whole ‘sacred’ status of Ethics is being undermined. Ethics is also only a fiction of language.
There are different types of statements and what they offer us :
| Type of sentence / statement | What it offers |
|---|---|
| Analytic a priori | affinities between ideas |
| Synthetic a posteriori | data, real-world facts |
| Synthetic a priori | truth not based on experience, arithmetic statements, “there is no greenish red” |
Positivism – The positivist movement would regard Truth, Absolute, Certainty , Necessity as invalid. A mistake in logic. There is the model of the flashlight – which is to find a way towards something, that something is the truth with the only difference that is a constant vector instead of a destination, Progression.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857) which first formulated the positivist approach claimed for 3 linear phases of human thinking: theological, metaphysical and positive.
First phase : The theological approach managed to create an elaborated system of beliefs which did support answers regarding the questions about : Truth, the Absolute, Certainty and Necessity, with the help of Theo(logy) Deo – the divine, spiritual entity. Comte also claimed that theological thinking is in a way childish and intellectually not developed, it is also by the 20th century terms phylogenetic (applies for the development of humanity) and ontogenetic (the personal development of every human being).
In the first years of a child the mind seeks a domestication of the environment in the form of absolute entities such as a father and mother figure. That is a basic and fundamental world view which might pattern itself later in life, again phylo and onto-genetic (reading:C.G.Jung, Archetypes) has low resolution and low level of complexity. A religious approach towards the world, which is full with Ad-Hoc explanations, is easy and guaranteed to give a person a peace of mind, everything has an answer and the doubts are taken away, it is a closed system theory while the world is complex and contradictory, not everything has an answer and therefor in order to find peace of mind, the soul would rather not face a world with no god. William James (1842-1910) in his books can provide some good insights into that matter. So the search for the absolute form, the ideal gives birth to mythology, religion, mystics, magic, alchemy, kabbalah etc.
The second phase : metaphysics. It is almost as the child of theology is sobering up, saying “how foolish can I be ?” and then goes full power rational. Rationality is the other side of that spectrum of human conciseness, Enlightenment as opposite of religion. The mistake is still there because the term ‘absolute’ is still searched for and achieved through (a non-mythical) philosophical way, the result are idealist doctrines such as Kantianism and Marxism etc. Although mind blowing, like some of the myths and religions, those theories has nothing to do with reality, again from a what we call scientific point of view which things can be tested and measured, therefor the application of those doctrines is always doubtful and problematic to say the least, their don’t have a lot of practical value, but they sell very well in book form and win nobel prizes.
The third phase : discarding pure rational thinking, understanding that the nature of our relation to reality is the collection of data through better and worse instruments of organisation, and the main goal would be – better organization through better instruments. The determine factor of the instrument does not have to do with the Truth, not true or false but with how effectieve and efficient it is performing certain tasks – usability as the truth. Truth is instrumental, the mind sets itself on goal, such as a more comfortable (and surprisingly materialistic) world, and through the power of thinking and performance the goal is achieved. That was the ambition of the Vienna circle (German:Wiener Kreis) sometimes with the addition of –logical- positivism, which is closely related to Frege.
The Principle of sufficient reason (PSR)
ex nihilo nihil fit
Parmenides
The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause. It is a problematic principle which rules out contingency and favors logic. It was developed by Leibniz.
Absolute entities (GOD) are their own Principle of sufficient reason, they are a self justified starting point for thinking (Hegel and Marx : Spirit of history : ruling of the proletarian) a self justified principle not questionable. Everything exists because of god otherwise it could not exist.
Principle of sufficient reason is an supreme metaphysical principle : it is a principle that determines other principles who are oriented towards a search, there is no point of looking for a principle if it is depended on another principe
if we use PSR on everything as a cause we are left with no explanations. it is an anthropomorphic ideal in which everything in the world has a reason which is open for human understanding, it does not take in account that a human, just like other animals (from a human perceptive), is limited in his perception in a way that everything around them is only being interpenetrated through their own single limited language, again Anthropomorphism.
Some writers and philosophers such as Kafka and Camus suggested the symmetric opposite : the inherent lack of meaning in everything, again through clever use of language around the (i)logical principle of The absurd.
from the PSR point of view there is no coincidence in the world. and PSR is a reversal of causation : causation is A > B, B followed A, PSR is A <> B, B followed A but also A must be there because of B, otherwise B does not make sense.
Avoiding mistakes
logo-semantic analysis takes a statement and investigates its own logic which is projected to the meaning of its terms. It is something that Plato did in his dialogues, though it was not called in the same name. Such analysis was used by Carnap against Heidegger. Misleadingly, one can take grammatical elements and twist them in a way that there would be no remaining logic left in them ,unless we develop an inner logic system that is built on those elements, and therefore we would be running in circles. At the end PSR is a dead end, oversimplification, it would never help us understand something better. It is an inversion of explanation lacking details instead of providing them, going down in complexity to explain rather than adding, which is contradictory to what an explanation is. The broken formula of the PSR is to explain everything with less explanation – the nature of something that explains everything is to explain nothing, it might sound contradictory but its not, it is one of the elusive characteristics of our complicated reality. ex nihilo nihil fit.
G.E. Moore (1873-1958) – Principia Ethica (1903) – Positivism is only acknowledging what is called contingency, lack of necessity – then, an explanation can provide us information about only what happened before chronologically but never about the essence of things, further it means that the world around us does not inherit human properties, we only observe it in a way that misguidedly looks familiar to us, the world is getting shaped familiar to us only in the shape of our cognition, but it is not the shape of the world. Absolute entities are always coming from cognition and not from the outer world / subject of cognition, therefor characterizing those as absolute is a logic mistake or a misuse of language and/or thought.
Facts by themselves are contingent, they do not hold their own logic but can only be known as facts, as observations. Fact can be only based on experience and therefor anything that is not based on experience, including Synthetic a priori is scientifically speaking, flawed.
Is there such a thing as thinking in a correct way ? that would mean that there are elements other than our IQ to help us use our mind and thought as a tool to achieve specific tasks.
E pur si muove
and yet it moves…
Aristoteles thought the world is build upon perfect shapes – the perfect circle. Johannes Kepler around 1602-1615 was faced around the fact that the earth moves around the sun in elliptical shape and not a perfect circle (like he thought at first under the influence of Aristotle). He did not doubt the Aristotelian thought and with good justification – it was not flawed, it was perfectly logic. BUT, the world did not and does not comply to that Aristotelian logic, that logic lies within our mind and not within the contingent world. The human mind is not a mirror of the world, that would again be anthropomorphism. There is no reason of asking why, because there would be no answer, and Kepler accepted it, he knew only facts, only then we as humanity progressed, a new paradigm of thought opened up for the west (reading:O.Spengler). Another good example is the Pythagorean comma -music theory principles when invented were only relating to human logic but not to the world, and therefore western music is never and can never be perfectly in tune, just close enough. You can read more about it in my other articles.
Ernst Mach (1838-1916) suggested that the great rational logic mind of Aristoteles was a result of Evolution. Evolution gave us tools as humans to make sense in a chaotic world, which were practical rather than being correct, logical rather than contingent, human scale rather universal. This might be why the mismatch exists between human logic and world contingency, lack of logical justification and reasons.
The three main dangers that the Vienna Circle want to warn us about :
- misuse of language
- metaphysics – logic without validation of observation or experience
- ruling out synthetic a priori – conclusions from analytical statements
The next questions would be : If science is based on facts that are based on experience, then what can be reducible to experience ? the answer vary with Carnap, Wittgenstein, Russel, Schlick, Neurath.
What is the correct method of reduction ? deduction, induction, extrapolation ? what are the end-statement that we can get eventually ?
The Vienna Circle Manifesto (1929)
This states the scientific world-conception of the Vienna Circle, which is characterized “essentially by two features.[29] First it is empiricist and positivist: there is knowledge only from experience. Second, the scientific world-conception is marked by the application of a certain method, namely logical analysis.”[30]
Logical analysis is the method of clarification of philosophical problems; it makes an extensive use of symbolic logic and distinguishes the Vienna Circle empiricism from earlier versions. The task of philosophy lies in the clarification—through the method of logical analysis—of problems and assertions.
Logical analysis shows that there are two different kinds of statements; one kind includes statements reducible to simpler statements about the empirically given; the other kind includes statements which cannot be reduced to statements about experience and thus they are devoid of meaning. Metaphysical statements belong to this second kind and therefore they are meaningless. Hence many philosophical problems are rejected as pseudo-problems which arise from logical mistakes, while others are re-interpreted as empirical statements and thus become the subject of scientific inquiries.
One source of the logical mistakes that are at the origins of metaphysics is the ambiguity of natural language. “Ordinary language for instance uses the same part of speech, the substantive, for things (‘apple’) as well as for qualities (‘hardness’), relations (‘friendship’), and processes (‘sleep’); therefore it misleads one into a thing-like conception of functional concepts”.[31] Another source of mistakes is “the notion that thinking can either lead to knowledge out of its own resources without using any empirical material, or at least arrive at new contents by an inference from given states of affair”.[32] Synthetic knowledge a priori is rejected by the Vienna Circle. Mathematics, which at a first sight seems an example of necessarily valid synthetic knowledge derived from pure reason alone, has instead a tautological character, that is its statements are analytical statements, thus very different from Kantian synthetic statements. The only two kinds of statements accepted by the Vienna Circle are synthetic statements a posteriori (i.e., scientific statements) and analytic statements a priori (i.e., logical and mathematical statements).
However, the persistence of metaphysics is connected not only with logical mistakes but also with “social and economical struggles”.[33] Metaphysics and theology are allied to traditional social forms, while the group of people who “faces modern times, rejects these views and takes its stand on the ground of empirical sciences”.[33] Thus the struggle between metaphysics and scientific world-conception is not only a struggle between different kinds of philosophies, but it is also—and perhaps primarily—a struggle between different political, social, and economical attitudes. Of course, as the manifesto itself acknowledged, “not every adherent of the scientific world-conception will be a fighter”.[34] Many historians of the Vienna Circle see in the latter sentence an implicit reference to a contrast between the so-called ‘left wing’ of the Vienna Circle, mainly represented by Neurath and Carnap, and Moritz Schlick. The aim of the left wing was to facilitate the penetration of the scientific world-conception in “the forms of personal and public life, in education, upbringing, architecture, and the shaping of economic and social life”.[35] In contrast, Schlick was primarily interested in the theoretical study of science and philosophy. Perhaps the sentence “Some, glad of solitude, will lead a withdrawn existence on the icy slopes of logic” is an ironic reference to Schlick.[33]
The manifesto lists Walter Dubislav, Josef Frank, Kurt Grelling, Hasso Härlen, Eino Kaila, Heinrich Loewy, F. P. Ramsey, Hans Reichenbach, Kurt Reidemeister, and Edgar Zilsel as people “sympathetic to the Vienna Circle” and Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein as its “leading representatives”.