Logical positivism

By Friedman, Michael

Logical positivism (logical empiricism, neo-positivism) originated in Austria and Germany in the 1920s. Inspired by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revolutions in logic, mathematics and mathematical physics, it ...

Language, philosophy of

By Crimmins, Mark

Philosophical interest in language, while ancient and enduring (see Language, ancient philosophy of; Language, medieval theories of; Language, Renaissance philosophy of; Language, early modern philosophy of), has blossomed ...

Twentieth-century philosophy

By Livingston, Paul M.

Although it is difficult to generalize, twentieth-century philosophy has a number of broadly characteristic and widely shared concerns. These include the ambition to clarify the nature and foundations ...

Reichenbach, Hans (1891–1953)

By Salmon, Wesley C.

Philosophy of science flourished in the twentieth century, partly as a result of extraordinary progress in the sciences themselves, but mainly because of the efforts of philosophers who ...

Positivism in the social sciences

By Kincaid, Harold

Positivism originated from separate movements in nineteenth-century social science and early twentieth-century philosophy. Key positivist ideas were that philosophy should be scientific, that metaphysical speculations are meaningless, that ...

Hempel, Carl Gustav (1905–1997)

By Jeffrey, R.

Hempel’s defence of Carnap’s and Neurath’s physicalism testifies to the presence of certain ‘postmodern’ themes in logical empiricism (or logical positivism): (1) a textualist turn to sentences from ...

Vienna Circle

By Stadler, Friedrich
Translated by Piller, C.

The Vienna Circle was a group of about three dozen thinkers drawn from the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics who met regularly in Vienna between the ...

Atheism

By Rowe, William L.

Atheism is the position that affirms the nonexistence of God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief. Since many different gods have been objects of ...

Ayer, Alfred Jules (1910–89)

By MacDonald, Graham

A.J. Ayer made his name as a philosopher with the publication of Language, Truth and Logic in 1936, a book which established him as the leading English representative ...

Causation

By Cartwright, Nancy

Two opposed viewpoints raise complementary problems about causation. The first is from Hume: watch the child kick the ball. You see the foot touch the ball and the ...

General relativity, philosophical responses to

By Ryckman, T.A.

Much of the early philosophical attention given Einstein’s theory of gravitation was not uncontaminated by a grim post-war atmosphere conducive to public diversions, hysteria and national chauvinism. Most ...

Holism: mental and semantic

By Block, Ned

Mental (or semantic) holism is the doctrine that the identity of a belief content (or the meaning of a sentence that expresses it) is determined by its place ...

Hume, David (1711–76)

By Garrett, Don

David Hume, one of the most prominent philosophers of the eighteenth century, was an empiricist, a naturalist and a sceptic. His aim, as stated in his early masterpiece, ...

Linguistic turn

By Glock, Hans-Johann; Kalhat, Javier

The term ‘the linguistic turn’ refers to a radical reconception of the nature of philosophy and its methods, according to which philosophy is neither an empirical science nor ...

Putnam, Hilary (1926–2016)

By Ben-Menahem, Yemima

Putnam’s work spans a broad spectrum of philosophical interests, yet nonetheless reflects thematic unity in its concern over the question of realism. A critic of logical positivism, Putnam ...

Theories, scientific

By Suppe, Frederick

The term ‘theory’ is used variously in science to refer to an unproven hunch, a scientific field (as in ‘electromagnetic theory’), and a conceptual device for systematically characterizing ...

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann (1889–1951)

By Heal, Jane

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26 April 1889 and died in Cambridge on 29 April 1951. He spent his childhood and youth in Austria and Germany, ...

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann (1889–1951)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26 April 1889 and died in Cambridge on 29 April 1951. He spent his childhood and youth in Austria and Germany, ...

Agnosticism

By Rowe, William L.

In the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in God, whereas an atheist disbelieves in God. In the strict sense, however, agnosticism is ...

Ordinary language philosophy, school of

By Warnock, Geoffrey

The label ‘ordinary language philosophy’ was more often used by the enemies than by the alleged practitioners of what it was intended to designate. It was supposed to ...

Popper, Karl Raimund (1902–94)

By Jarvie, Ian C.

Popper belongs to a generation of Central European émigré scholars that profoundly influenced thought in the English-speaking countries in this century. His greatest contributions are in philosophy of ...

Behaviourism, methodological and scientific

By Gallistel, C.R.

Methodological behaviourism is the doctrine that the data on which a psychological science must rest are behavioural data – or, at the very least, publicly observable data – ...

Mach, Ernst (1838–1916)

By Hamilton, Andy

Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. Though not one of the great philosophers, he was tremendously influential in the development of ‘scientific philosophy’ in the late nineteenth ...

Bobbio, Norberto (1909–2004)

By Borsellino, Patrizia

The foremost legal and political theorist in Italy today, Norberto Bobbio founded in the 1940s Italian analytical legal positivism, trying to merge logical positivism and Kelsen’s legal positivism. ...

Berlin, Isaiah (1909–97)

By Williams, Bernard

Berlin said that he decided about 1945 to give up philosophy, in which he had worked up to that time, in favour of the history of ideas. Some ...