Ideas that Self-Destruct when You Think Them Through. (Logical Positivism)

Question everything! All truth is relative. Nothing is true. All statements are either meaningless or verifiable through empirical measurement. Logical Positivism generally.

Some ideas have self destruct buttons built into them because they can't apply to themselves. These paradoxical ideas are wrong, inherently, but they often live on longer than they should if people don't think them through.

[JoelDowdell]

Most channels' early days are unpolished. Either this channel is an impressive exception or the future of this channel will be even better.

[martinbennett]

Goedel's incompleteness deduction relates to mathematics and logic, but is likely to be applicable more widely. If so it would mean that all systems of thought depend upon an an exterior reference or exterior assumptions. Logical positivism rests on an assumption of an external, objective, physical reality; in Kant's terms a noumenon that is causally related to the phenomenon or empirical experience.

What logical positivism says is that it is possible to explain why statements derived from empirical references are meaningful, whereas those that lack empirical reference cannot. Actually I am sure that most logical positivists (following Hume) would accept that statements of logic have meaning that does not require empirical data. Logical positivism is really an extension of Hume's fork.

[zsedcftglkjh]

The model philosopher for the logical positivists is David Hume. That about says it all.

[Theviewerdude]

This was good and basic

In all seriousness, succint yet compelling. Fantastic work

[druwayu]

I know this is an old video but it was recently shown to me. I only see one flaw in this example. The issue is the "question everything" and then respond with "why?" That doesn't defeat or contradict the advice to question everything. It simply becomes an obligation to answer the question "why." And the answer is simple. If you do not question everything you will blindly accept anything and in so doing you truly know nothing and become more easily deceived and convinced of anything just because someone else told you it is so. If you do not question everything, how would you know there is a "self destruct button?" You have to question it and then seek the answer to it why it is either objectively true or objectively false.

[clips]

I’m on study unit 3 “The Vienna Circle and logical positivism” studying for exams.

[jorgemachado]

So there are meaningful things that is not material, but we still cannot prove or presume their existence... right?

[halleyork]

Amazing! This is really going to help me with my discussion board for my Philosophy class. Thank You!

[gerardt]

If you take logical positivism as a methodology rather than a truth claim, this isn't really a problem

[doNotForceChannel]

he criticized some caricature of the logical positivism. neither he nor his supporter can produce any self-destructive ideas except of his. there is yet future for the logical positivism.

[JohnCamacho]

There's nothing wrong with questioning "Question everything". It will lead to a discussion of why you should question everything. It doesn't have a self-destruct button.

[scrtandwhspr]

You should look into Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem, it's really cool and related to this idea.

[frimports]

All moral claims are relative and subjective. This is another one that is self-refuting.

[martinkunev]

Explaining the origin of the universe with some type of creator god is kind of self-destructing.

[robertb]

I mean, I am not sure this person quite gets the problem right. The enemy of positivists was *synthetic a priori* statements (axioms about the world). Their methodological statements might be seen as merely the best techniques and not strictly true for all time.

There are many weaknesses that explain why positivism took a beating, I just think maybe they didn't necessarily claim all methodological statements were to be eliminated, too.

[snypervyper]

I dont think i agree that this is a valid crique of positivism. How do you test if a philosophical belief about the nature of truth? By seeing if operating under that belief inreases your understanding of the world and what is and isnt true, and its pretty historically obvious that positivism did this.

[earlturner]

Several crypto-Jews vs one blond boi



Who will win?

[ambrishabhijatya]

The core idea of logical positivism : All genuine(attainable) knowledge is EITHER exclusively derived from experience of natural phenomena and their relations OR is true by definition that is analytic and tautological.

You omitted (perhaps strategically) half of the above to create a strawman.

[samuel]

"You can't" that's where you're wrong kiddo.
The positivist would argue that you could in fact measure the accuracy of that statement. Obviously no experiment has been performed as there are inappropriately numerous statements that could be thusly anslysed, but a process of analysis nevertheless presents itself.

[celestialoutcomes]

Sorry buddy but you are obviously not well versed is Logical Positivism. They claim that there are two types of statements- analytic statements" and “synthetic statements." The statement that you describe in this video is an
Analytic Statement. Analytic statement: the truth value of which is determined by the meanings of its terms;e.g., "All squares are four-sided." It is sometimes said (e.g. by Kant), when a statement is in simple subject-predicate form, that an analytic statement is one in which the predicate (e.g., the property of being four-sided) is-"contained within" the subject (the concept of a square).