AN EXAMINATION OF LOGICAL POSITIVISM By J. R. Weinberg
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Whoever first gave the title of Logical Positivists to the members of the Viennese Circle and their sympa- thisers did them a disservice. For the affixing of such a label suggests that these philosOphers have merely added one more to the already excessive num- ber of philosophical schools ; whereas, in fact,- not the least of their merits is that they repudiate the academic con- ception of philosophy as a form of party politics. Fortunately, Dr. Wein- berg is too good a philosopher to care about the success or failure of a philo- sophical party. He does not reckon himself among the logical positivists, but he is not in the least malicious towards them. His exposition and criticism of their theories is uniformly fair, serious, sensible and dispassionate. He begins his book (Kegan Paul, 12s. 6d.) with a critical analysis, the fullest and most lucid, that has yet been given, of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. He is prepared to accept Wittgenstein's two main theses, that all a priori pro- positions are tautologies and that it is impossible to construct a system of metaphysics, but he holds that Witt- genstein's theory of meaning is un- tenable, because it leads to solipsism and does not allow place for an adequate account of scientific method. For even if the analysis of probability and the solution of the problem of induction which have been worked out by mem- bers of the Viennese Circle are internally satisfactory, they ought, if Wittgenstein is right, to be incapable of being ex- pressed. In this and certain other respects Carnap's most recent theories, which are based on the work of Tarski, Neurath and Popper, are an improve- ment on Wittgenstein's, but neither he nor anyone else has yet discovered a satisfactory way of escape from the solipsistic predicament. To have made this clear is, perhaps, the chief virtue of Dr. Weinberg's book.
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