A

TERM PAPER

ON

THE CENTRAL THEME OF LOGICAL ATOMISM AND LOGICAL POSITIVISM.

WRITTEN BY:

UMEJIBURU, OGECHUKWU BENEDICTA 16/0354082.

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY.

FACULTY OF ARTS.

UNIVERSITY OF CALABAR, CALABAR.

SUBMITTED TO:

DR T.E. OGAR (COURSE LECTURER)

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY.

FACULTY OF ARTS.

UNIVERSITY OF CALABAR, CALABAR.

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE COURSE REQUIREMENT:

CONTEMPORARY ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY (PHL 442).

JUNE, 2021.
 ABSTRACT

The logical atomism and logical positivism is birth from a philosophy that has existed over the course of
the twentieth century, ‘Analytic Philosophy’, which was developed into the dominant philosophical
tradition in the English-speaking world. The analytic philosophers attempted to produce a philosophy of
clear and precise components. They propelled a philosophy which broke down complex components or
concepts to simpler ones. The analytic philosophy split up into different phases, methodology, ideas and
position, some of which are the logical atomism and logical positivism. This work focuses on the
clarification of logical atomism and logical positivism, while also highlighting their central theme(s).

INTRODUCTION

The analytic philosophy is one of the most dynamic and influential schools of thought in
philosophy in the 20th century. Although, the term ‘analytic philosophy’ was first used in a 1933 essay by
R. G. Collingwood. Analytic philosophy also refers to the philosophy brought about mainly by G.E.
Moore and Bertrand Russell. It was a rejection of the British idealism which was the then dominant
philosophy. Moore and Russell were at first strong supporters of idealism. Over the time, they revolted
against it, Moore initiating the phase and Russell behind him. Moore was upset with idealism about the
view that nothing exists independent of consciousness and also the view that common sense is not to be
trusted. Russell’s anger was the view by the idealist monism that there are in reality no separate objects.
Thus their development of analytic philosophy.

The name of the analysis practiced then is ‘Conceptual Analysis’. It aims at breaking down
complex concepts into their simpler components. Successive analysis performed on complex concepts
would yield simpler concepts. According to Moore, the process, might lead ultimately to simple concepts
of which no further analysis could be given. The designation ‘conceptual’ was supposed to distinguish the
philosophical activity from various analyses applied to non-conceptual objects (Martinich 1).

Analytic philosophy underwent several changes that divided its history to five phases which
include, the Quasi-Platonic realism (1900-1910); The Philosophy of Common Sense (G. E. Moore) and
Logical Atomism (Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein) (1920-1930); Logical Positivism (1930-
1945); The Ordinary-Language-Analysis (1945-1965); and finally the breakdown to Linguistic
Philosophy to Philosophy of Language to Metaphysics and then to variety of philosophical sub-
disciplines (1960- to beyond the end of the twentieth century).
 LOGICAL ATOMISM

Logical atomism is a philosophical belief that originated in the early 20 th century with the
development of analytic philosophy. Its principal exponent was the British philosopher Bertrand Russell
and Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. A Vienna circle member Rudolf Carnap was
influenced by some of the aims of the logical atomism. The term ‘logical atomism’ was first coined by
Russell in March 1911 in a work published in French titled ‘Le Realisme Analytique’, meaning, ‘Analytic
Realism’ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_atomism). The book was a response to what he called
‘logical holism’, originally called ‘monism’, which is the belief that the world operates in such a way that
no part can be known without the whole being known first. Logical holism or monism was associated
with the absolute idealism or British idealism which was dominant at that time and strongly criticized. It
was the criticisms by Moore and Russell that gave rise to the development of analytic philosophy which
then prompted logical atomism. According to the Wikipedia

the criticism of monism seen in the works of Russell and his colleague G.E. Moore can therefore
be seen as an extension of their criticism of absolute idealism, particularly as it appeared in the
works of F.H. Bradley and J.M.E McTaggart. Logical atomism can thus be understood as a
developed alternative to logical holism, or the ‘monistic logic’ of the absolute idealists, on which
logical analysis is a kind of falsification (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_atomism).

Logical atomism proposes that language like other components of the world consists of ultimate
logical “parts” (or “atoms”) that cannot be broken down any further, each of which can be understood
independently of the other. In order to understand ordinary language, we must perform “analysis” upon it,
attempting to break it down to these elemental components. Although, Russell and Wittgenstein were
both logical atomists, their version on the principles of logical atomism though closely related, was a bit
different. But Russell’s version was greatly influenced by Wittgenstein. Russell in giving his reason for
calling his doctrine ‘logical atomism’ said,

it is because the atoms that I wish to arrive at as the sort of last residue in analysis are logical
atoms and not physical atoms. Some of them will be what I call ‘particulars’- such things as little
patches of color or sounds momentary things- and some of them will be predicates or relations
and so on. The point is that the atom wish to arrive at, is that atom of logical analysis, not the
atom of physical analysis (Russell 179).

It is clear that Russell regards logical atomism as the ultimate constituents of reality.

THE CENTRAL THEME OF LOGICAL ATOMISM

It is the view of many philosophers that philosophy consists mainly, if not entirely of “Linguistic
Analysis”. Russell and Wittgenstein went in toe with this view when creating the movement. They
believed philosophy to be about linguistic analysis or the clarification of meaning, thus their venture into
the logical atomism. Logical atomism eliminates what they saw as meaningless and incoherent assertions
in philosophy and sought clarity and precision in argument by the use of exact language and by breaking
down philosophical propositions into their simplest grammatical components.
 LOGICAL POSITIVISM

Logical positivism also known as ‘logical empiricism’ and ‘logical neo-positivism’ is the name
given in 1931 by A.E. Blumberg and Herbert Feigl to a set of philosophical ideas put forward by the
Vienna circle. The school arose in Austria and Germany during the 1920s and was primarily concerned
with the logical analysis of scientific knowledge. Among its members were Moritz Schlick, the founder of
the Vienna circle, Rudolf Carnap, the leading exponent of logical positivism, Hans Freichenbach, the
founder of the Berlin cirlcle, Alfred Jules Ayer, Carl Gustav Hempel, Victor Kraft, Otto Neurath and
Friedrich Waismann (Muriz 5). It was the most influential philosophy of science in the twentieth century.

Logical positivism is a combination of the two approaches upheld by positivism and symbolic
logic. Positivism is a particular school of knowledge which advocates that valid knowledge must be based
in sense knowledge. Any knowledge which is not based on sense is meaningless. It could be noted that
positivism is the extreme form of empiricism, as the empiricists do not claim that knowledge not based in
sense is invalid or meaningless, but they do advocate that knowledge should begin with sense experience.
According to A.F. Chalmers,

logical positivism is an extreme form of empiricism according to which theories are not only to
be justified by an appeal to facts acquired through observations, but are considered to have
meaning only insofar as they can be derived (Logical Positivism: Basic Ideas, Implications &
Critique 2).

The term positivism comes from the philosophy of August Comte, an early 19 th century philosopher who
was skeptical of philosophical systems and of metaphysics generally and emphasized knowledge based on
experience. He took science to be the paradigm of knowledge, citing as its strength the fact that it was
empirically grounded in experience. The term ‘logical’ reflects the role that modern symbolic logic
played in the views of logical positivists. The positivists used the resources of logic in attempting to
provide a formal rendering of the structure of science. Because, ordinary discourse often fail to adhere to
the standards of symbolic logic, the positivists found it necessary to propose the use of formal languages
designed to adhere to the canons of symbolic logic in order to present their analyses. Their hope was that
such a clear, formal presentation of science would ground the claim that science is a source of knowledge
as well as help to resolve the issues in science that had resulted from the lack of precision (The Locus of
Philosophy of Science 18-19).

The logical positivists thought of themselves as continuing a 19 th century Viennese empirical

tradition, closely linked with British empiricism and culminating in the anti-metaphysical, scientifically
oriented teaching of Ernst Mach… the prominent members of the Vienna circle came together as an
informal group to discuss the philosophy of science. They hoped to give an account of science which
would do justice… to the central importance of mathematics, logic and theoretical physics, without
abandoning Mach’s general doctrine that science is fundamentally the description of experience
(Passmore 52).

Essentially, logical positivism is empiricism pushed to the extreme, absolutely as far as it can go.
It is anti-metaphysical, anti-idealist, and convinced that science alone can provide knowledge
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/positivism). It approached knowledge in general
and science and philosophy in particular. The Vienna circle was made up of a group of scientists,
mathematicians and philosophers. That were reacting against the intrusion of mathematics in science.
They believed that, metaphysics is harmful to science. They criticized the use of metaphysics categories
like Vital Force (Henry Bergson), Substantial Form (Aristotle) etc. Their goals was to; demonstrate the
meaningless of metaphysics in general and science in particular; and to establish a firm foundation for
science. They did not want metaphysics to be its foundation (Logical Positivism: Basic Ideas,
Implications & Critique 3). Metaphysic was rejected by the logical positivists because of its nature of
unverifiability. The logical positivists advocated the verification theory of meaning which states that, a
contingent proposition is meaningful if and only if there is an empirical method for deciding whether it is
true or false.

THE CENTRAL THEMES OF LOGICAL POSITIVISM

The logical positivism postulates two source of knowledge; logical reasoning and empirical
experience. The former is analytic a priori, while the latter is synthetic a posteriori, hence synthetic a
priori knowledge does not exist. It is precisely in the rejection of the possibility of synthetic knowledge a
priori that the basic thesis of modern empiricism lies (Murzi 7). The rejection of synthetic a priori
propositions (e.g. “All bachelors are happy”) which are by their nature unverifiable, as opposed to
analytic statements which are true simply by virtue of meanings (e.g. “All bachelors are unmarried”)
(www.philosophybasics.com/branch-logical-positivism.html). Logical knowledge includes mathematics
which is claimed to be reducible to formal logic. Empirical knowledge includes physics, biology,
psychology etc. Experience is the only judge of scientific theories, however, logical positivists were
aware that a scientific knowledge does not exclusively rise from the experience, scientific theories are
genuine hypotheses that go beyond the experience (Murzi 7).

The attitude of the logical positivists towards metaphysics was hostile. They rejected metaphysics
on the ground that its assertions were meaningless, since there was no possible way of verifying them in
experience. Nothing that we could possibly experience, they argued, would serve to verify such assertions
as “The Absolute is beyond time”. Therefore the positivists held, it tells us nothing… The propositions of
metaphysics, they argued, are neither true nor false; they are wholly devoid of significance (Passmore
54).

Another theme of the logical positivism is the language of science. According to logical
positivism, a scientific theory is an axiomatic system that acquires an empirical interpretation only by
means of appropriate statements called ‘Rules of Correspondence”, which establish a correlation between
real objects (or real processes) and the abstract concepts of the theory. Without such type of statements, a
theory lacks of a physical interpretation and it is not verifiable, but in an abstract formal system whose
only requirement is axioms consistency (Mauriz 9).

For the logical positivists, verifiability (empirical) becomes the criterion for meaningfulness. For
them, inductivism is the the right method for scientific inquiry and that alone is capable of constituting
authentic knowledge. It also believes that inductivism is an effective means to formulate infallible
scientific generalization on the basis of factually significant statements (Logical Positivism: Basic Ideas,
Implications & Critiques).
 CONCLUSION

Just like its rise and influences, both the logical atomism and logical positivism declined over the
time. For the logical atomism, one of its proponent, Ludwig Wittgenstein rejected “atomism” in the
logical atomism. This was realized in his book published after death, ‘Philosophical Investigations’.
Russell on the other hand never rejected, nor abandoned logical atomism. Rather, he noted that it evolved
and changed. For the logical positivism, by the late 1960s, it already was sizzling out. A.J. Ayer opined
“the most important defect of logical positivism was that nearly all of it was false”, though he maintained
“it was true in spirit”, thus contradicting the notion of the rejection of metaphysics by the positivists.

WORKS-CITED

Bennett, D. “Positivism/Positivist Geography”, In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography,

2009, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/positivism. Retrieved on June 27, 2021.

Logical Positivism: Basic Ideas, Implications & Critiques, pp 1-16, PDF File.

Martinich A.P. Introduction. A Companion to Analytic Philosophy, Edited by Martinich A.P. and Sosa
David, Blackwell Publishers, 2001.

Murzi, Mauro. The Philosophy of Logical Positivism, pp 1-30, PDF File.

Passmore, J. “Logical Positivism”, In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edited by Edwards P. Macmillan,

New York, pp 52-57.

Russell, Bertrand. “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism”, In Logic and Knowledge, Edited by Robert
Charles Marsh, Capricorn Books, New York, pp 177-189.

The Basics of Philosophy. “Logical Positivism”,

https://www.philosophybasics.com/movements_logical_positivism.html. Retrieved on June 27, 2021.

The Locus of Philosophy of science, pp 18-31, PDF File.