ЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ ЭМПИРИЗМ

Logical Empiricism

A trend in contemporary idealist philosophy stemming directly from the logical positivism of the late twenties and early thirties and forming one of the varieties of analytical philosophy. The main exponents of Logical Empiricism are Carnap, Reichenbach, Feigl, Hempel, Bergman, and Frank.

Logical Empiricism preserves the basic ideas of logical positivism—reduction of philosophy to the logical analysis of language (now not only syntactical, as in the early thirties, but also semantic—see Logical Semantics) and the proposition that it is impossible to provide theoretical proof of the existence of objective reality, etc.; but it has been slightly modified in comparison with the earlier logical positivism. The logical empiricists have repudiated the extreme subjectivism of the Vienna circle. As an "empirical language of science" they offer a so-called physical-object language expressing sensually perceptible physical phenomena instead of a language of the personal experience of the subject. This does not mean, however, the adoption of materialist positions, since for Logical Empiricism the acceptance of a physical-object language does not involve recognition of the theoretical assertion of the objective existence of the world of things.

Logical Empiricism also rejects the principle advanced during the period of the Vienna circle that scientific knowledge may be reduced to what is empirically given. In scientific concepts, however, Logical Empiricism sees only "purposive" forms of organizing the data obtained by the senses, not the reflection of objective reality. Recognition of the fact that besides the data scientific knowledge has its own specific content is essentially at variance with the basic epistemological ideas of the Vienna circle, i.e., the principle of verification, etc., to which Logical Empiricism seeks to remain loyal. This gives rise to internal contradictions and eclecticism in its epistemological doctrine.

As a philosophical trend Logical Empiricism is undergoing a profound internal crisis, as is shown by its abandonment of the widely proclaimed programmes characteristic of the early logical positivism, by its acceptance of watered-down versions, and by its gravitating away from the broad philosophical problems to specifically logical and specifically methodological researches in which representatives of Logical Empiricism have performed good service.