Is Logical Positivism pozzed?

submitted by Pink from self.debatealtright

Just asking for opinions on this, I've been reading some logical positivist texts and they're pretty convincing epistemologically. The writers were all Jews and commies though. But I think this may be an Einstein/von Neumann thing. They were both Jews with abhorrent political views yet their intellectual work was genius.

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[–]Albatros 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

First thing as i google:

Logical positivism, also called logical empiricism, a philosophical movement that arose in Vienna in the 1920s and was characterized by the view that scientific knowledge is the only kind of factual knowledge and that all traditional metaphysical doctrines are to be rejected as meaningless.

This is a joke. Science and metaphysics are not antagonizing but rather complement each other. An excessive focus on science to the point where everything else is disregarded seems to imply to me a very materialistic approach to life and i wouldn't take these texts seriously, but i do not know much about this subject so you do you OP.

[–]Pink[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They define metaphysical statements as those which are not verifiable and not a tautology. An example that is given is a real quote which I remember as something along the lines of (paraphrased) "lines of Being unfold into evolution but do not enter into it itself." Since a statement is verifiable when the speaker/listener know what sense-content is predicted by it, the point is that metaphysical statements such as these carry no factual content. Statements may still carry emotional meaning for the speaker or listener but they can't say anything about the world unless they relate to sensations in some way, since everything we perceive is through one type of sensation or another.

[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I don't particularly care about this to be honest but I would recommend reading some people who have an Organic worldview rather than the Mechanistic-Materialist one. This chapter of Imperium might be of interest, I recommend reading the whole book.

If you want to actually get into this philosophical stuff seriously, read some people who are of the right (Organic worldview). Plato, Aristotle, Goethe, Hegel, Heidegger, Gentile, Spengler, Evola, maybe even guys like Carlyle, Metternich, De Maistre etc. You might find their stuff to be nonsense and continue having this kind of materialistic outlook or you might change your mind. I'm very much a virgin in regard to philosophy but I find that there's much more compelling stuff to read from the metaphysical and theological perspective than materialism that posits the view that objects are simply the sum of physical, chemical etc properties.

Check out Keith Woods, Tyler Hamilton, and Chad A Haag; they talk a lot about philosophy, theology etc. /u/NeoRail might also have something valuable to add to this. He seems to have some knowledge in regards to theology and philosophy.

[–]Pink[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I don't particularly care about this to be honest but I would recommend reading some people who have an Organic worldview rather than the Mechanistic-Materialist one. This chapter of Imperium might be of interest, I recommend reading the whole book.

I read the chapter. It was interesting and I agree in spirit with his exhortations. But insofar as that is claimed to be an intellectual work, it is not. It reminds me a lot of my way of thinking from 15-17 years old. I can't say that I learned anything from that chapter except that the author feels that the power elite are normatively shallow because it's all unverifiable statements and unjustified claims otherwise. For example:

It is still materialism to confuse a civilization with factories, homes, and the collectivity of installations. Civilization is a higher reality, manifesting itself through human populations, and within these, through a certain spiritual stratum, which embodies at highest potential the living Idea of the Culture. This Culture creates religions, forms of architecture, arts, States, Nations, Races, Peoples, armies, wars, poems, philosophies, sciences, weapons and inner imperatives. All of them are mere expressions of the higher Reality, and none of them can destroy it.

These statements are either unverifiable or meaningless tautologies that point to concepts that refer to no sense content. Therefore all this talk is merely emotional exhortation saying that he feels like our culture is transcendent and will never be destroyed by the rootless cosmopolitans etc. I feel him but on an intellectual level this is worthless and I happen to think that that's dangerously optimistic because the reality is that white genocide is the end of white culture. It won't float back down from the 3rd realm, ever.

And despite this I'm not the materialist he speaks of. To me a civilization is something like the expression of a racial-national will over time. This is like talking about transcendent racial spirit except it's actually verifiable & true.

[–]NeoRail 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I just saw this now, I am not sure if you are even still on this website but I'll address everything in your post.

Yes, logical positivism is pozzed. What can be conceded to positivism is a rigorous drive to truth, but this drive is completely wasted because the premises of positivism exclude everything that can be considered "truthful" in a higher sense. This obsession with "sense content" is precisely the problem - every form of materialism essentially reduces the world as it is merely to the world of the senses. This is also why the materialist perspective lends itself so well to democracy and egalitarianism - there is no difference in quality and personality within the realm of "sense content". The senses are used for perception, but that perception only receives meaning through consciousness. The senses are the tools which consciousness uses to interact with the material world. Consciousness is active, the senses are passive - the two are in a hierarchical relationship. The very premises of positivism (and every other type of materialism) invert this hierarchy, which naturally makes it impossible for its adherents to perceive anything more than "matter" and "sense content".

I have only skimmed Imperium, but you should keep in mind that its aim is to present a worldview, not to rigorously prove every single claim the worldview presupposes. The criticism of the passage you have quoted is also unwarranted, because Yockey explicitly states that Civilisation manifests through human populations - it is an independent and superior reality to mere human life, but relies on human life to manifest within the material world. Even if everything produced by this Civilisation on the material plane is obliterated, this will not somehow invalidate the past achievements, struggles, aspirations and existence of the proponents of that Civilisation - they are eternal and even if you wipe out every sign that they ever existed, they still exist, continuously, within history. This higher reality does not depend on acknowledgement by people, because it is what provides people with inspiration, direction, meaning and unity - not vice versa.

/u/Markimus in case you are interested on my opinion of positivism.

[–]DragonerneJesus is white 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I used to be a logical positivist and stoicist. Both compliment each other well. I remember that logical positivism had a logical flaw but it is 10 years ago and I don't remember what it was to be honest.

We know from maths that not every true statement can be proven true. This is at least one flaw, but I don't think it was the one that made me quit that philosophy back then.

[–]Pink[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I remember that logical positivism had a logical flaw but it is 10 years ago and I don't remember what it was to be honest.

You're probably thinking of the bad criticism that "the verification principle is not verifiable." The reason this is wrong is that the verification principle is an analytic statement.

We know from maths that not every true statement can be proven true. This is at least one flaw, but I don't think it was the one that made me quit that philosophy back then.

That's Godel's theorem and it doesn't apply to language/the verification principle. For any system of signs there must be a given ground level. There is no way to defer and "prove" 2=2. It simply is. We don't run into a problem like that by simply noting that what you experience is all you have access to, so for synthetic statements to be factually meaningful they need to refer to a set of experience you can imagine.

[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Keith Woods made a relevant video