Founder of Vienna Circle Moritz Schlick
German Philosopher Famous for Logical Positivist Movement
German philosopher Moritz Schlick (1882-1936) founded the Vienna Circle, a group of logical positivists. Studying physics with Max Planck, he taught the philosophy of inductive science at the University of Vienna. Unlike other positivists who emphasized experience as the tool to truth, he did not reject metaphysics as being meaningless. His major works are General Theory of Knowledge (1925) and Problems of Ethics (1939).
Verification Theory of Meaning
Influenced by Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Treatise of Philosophical Logic), he became deeply interested in language and meaning that led him to develop the "verificationist" theory of meaning.
Schlick argues that a statement is meaningful if it is either true by definition or in principle, which is verifiable by experience. For him, the statements of science are meaningful only as far as there is some method, in principle, by which they can be verified. It is necessary to 'in principle' caveat to allow that false statements are just as meaningful as true ones.
Meaningless statements, on the other hand, and in principle, are those for which no experience could ever lead to a confirmation. Examples according to him are "The soul survives after death," and "God is all-knowing," and such like statements are neither true nor false but meaningless.
Verificationism and Mathematics
As for mathematics and logic, his propositions fall into the same bracket as those true by definition. They are, according to him, literally tautologies. This presents a major problem for the verificationist account of meaning.
To equate mathematics with tautology seems absurd, mathematics being as much as a discipline of discovery as science is. One needs only look at its development from Pythagoras to the modern mathematics, then discoveries in pure mathematics that underlie predictions made by physical theories, in particular, Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Schrödinger's quantum mechanics.
Criticism of Verificationism Principle
The main criticism of verificationism is that it seems to fall of its own criteria for meaninglessness. Schlick's claim that a statement is only meaningful as far as there is a means for its verification is in itself neither analytic nor can it be tested empirically.
This led Schlick and the Vienna Circle to modify the principle, but none of their attempts proved convincing enough. His principle was eventually abandoned.
Legacy of Schlick's Philosophy
Schlick highlighted an important principle through his insights on verification. His work helped progress the growing emphasis on language and the need for a theory of meaning prior to settling other philosophical issues that came after.
Schlick's Major Works
- General Theory of Knowledge,1925 – This book explores the mind-body problem of philosophy, which acknowledges a reality beyond the senses. He refutes Immanuel Kant's arguments for a priori knowledge. This work set out many ideas identified with the Vienna Circle.
- Problems of Ethics,1931 – Schlick expounded as ethical the view that punishment should not be about retaliation for previous acts, but rather, it should be justified by its consequences in preventing similar actions in the future.
- McGovern, Una, Ed. Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2002.
- Stokes, Philip. Philosophy, the Great Thinkers. London: Capella, 2007.
Moritz Schlick, German Philosopher Verificationism
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