Logical positivism [split: A splendid video about evolution]

[Laird]

the terms involved can’t be empirically defined or verified.

"Empirically" is redundant: all terms are defined empirically, by people out in the empirical world starting to use them with a certain meaning.

When lexicographers "empirically verify" that a term is in widespread enough usage with a widespread enough particular (set of) meaning(s) to be considered standard usage, then they add it, along with that corresponding (set of) meaning(s), to a dictionary.

The conditions you stipulate thus apply to all terms anyway. You're not stipulating any unique set of conditions.

Thus, your claim reduces to, "the terms involved can't be defined", which is clearly false, because they already are defined: all of them can be found in any reputable dictionary, and any fluent English speaker would understand a sentence of the form "There are n spiritual dimensions".

So the sentence has propositional form, but it doesn’t express a cognitively meaningful proposition

More redundancy: I'm not aware of any means of apprehending meaning (in this sense) other than cognitively. Thus, your claim reduces to "it doesn't express a meaningful proposition", but, as I pointed out above, it clearly does. Its terms can be found in any dictionary, and any fluent English speaker would understand it.

Thus, that...

we can’t meaningfully assign it a truth value at all

...is also false (again, setting aside for now the question of whether or not we could know what the correct truth value is).

Given that, clearly, your claim that such sentences are "meaningless" is false, it seems to me that what you're really doing here is redefining "meaningful".

With that in mind, let's return to your original claim:

ontological statements are meaningful only if they can be verified through empirical observation or are analytically true (such as logical or mathematical statements).

This is not so much a claim as an idiosyncratic, context-limited redefinition of "meaningful" (the limited context being that of ontological statements).

Do you accept this?

But multiple subjects have independently had spiritual experiences of apparently other realities, therefore they have empirically experienced them.

What you mean is a scientific definition, or scientifically verified evidence of non-physical realities, which by definition has never been possible, because science is locked into a Materialist bias, physical tools, and so can never see beyond the physical at current.

Psychedelics involve experiencing different realities, OBEs involve layers above this one, NDEs involve coming close to the afterlife reality, veridical NDEs can be empirically verified ~ these can be indirectly defined and verified, yet the researcher themselves cannot empirically define and verify them for another.

You can't poke them in a petri dish. Yet they empirically exist for those that have experienced them.

I wish there was a 10x like buttons here. If there was, I'd give you one of those for that post!

Exactly - which is why any physical/quantum chemistry textbook I know of defines Ψ in terms of the corresponding Hamiltonian for that specific physical system. The wavefunction only becomes meaningful when it's tied to observable, measurable properties through the Hamiltonian operator - this is completely in accordance with logical positivism's requirement that meaningful statements must be empirically verifiable.

The Hamiltonian gives rise to a whole series of possible wave functions, the ground state (which may be degenerate, and so give rise to an infinite set of possible Ψ), but also the system might be in an excited state!

I too can play at being picky, but I don't do it often because it just irritates people.

I think this forum works best when people each contribute their own ideas and constructively combine them.

David

"Empirically" is redundant: all terms are defined empirically, by people out in the empirical world starting to use them with a certain meaning.

Technically, every single thing within experience is "empirical" by raw definition ~ but what the philosophical Empiricists redefine that to mean is that everything must be "objectively" known to be "valid", therefore, everything must ergo be physical or objective, because that is the shared, public world. (Nevermind that what we call "objective" is barely so, because it is really inter-subjective agreement about what is what.)

But such a view inherently denies private, subjective experiences that are had by the individual, because those denying them haven't personally experienced them. All we generally have down here are mostly private, subjective experiences anyways. (Barring telepathy, which pierces that wall) Besides that, it can be considered that many have a perhaps minor form of telepathy through the unconscious ability to empathically pick up on the emotions of others without realizing it. 

There is too much overlap between classical Empiricists and Materialists these days ~ perhaps they are basically identical, in that the Empiricists are the ancestors of the modern Materialist? Especially considering that so many definitional-Materialists espouse that they believe in an "empirical" worldview.

The Hamiltonian gives rise to a whole series of possible wave functions, the ground state (which may be degenerate, and so give rise to an infinite set of possible Ψ), but also the system might be in an excited state!

I too can play at being picky, but I don't do it often because it just irritates people.

I think this forum works best when people each contribute their own ideas and constructively combine them.

David

The Hamiltonian gives rise to a set of solutions, one ground state and a set of excited states,  and the general solution is a superposition of these. In terms of logical positivism, the general solution is meaningful because it yields observable predictions. Without additional constraints it is the general solution that describes the QM system defined by a given Hamiltonian.

The Hamiltonian gives rise to a set of solutions, one ground state and a set of excited states,  and the general solution is a superposition of these. In terms of logical positivism, the general solution is meaningful because it yields observable predictions. Without additional constraints it is the general solution that describes the QM system defined by a given Hamiltonian.

But observable predictions do not fill our lives with actual meaning ~ that is the way of the heartless pragmatist, who does anything purely because of its mechanical benefit. Which can lead to any number of atrocities and ethical horrors in name of it.

But from a logical positivist perspective, the deeper issue is that the question itself is meaningless, because the terms involved can’t be empirically defined or verified. So the sentence has propositional form, but it doesn’t express a cognitively meaningful proposition, which means we can’t meaningfully assign it a truth value at all.

It seems the assertion of logical positivism itself would need to be empirically defined and then verified?

It seems the assertion of logical positivism itself would need to be empirically defined and then verified?

You are right! The principle of verification itself cannot be empirically verified - it's a methodological framework or criterion for evaluating statements, not an empirical claim about the world.

You are right! The principle of verification itself cannot be empirically verified - it's a methodological framework or criterion for evaluating statements, not an empirical claim about the world.

It would therefore seem that logical positivism is self-refuting, as it itself cannot confirm its own validity per its claims about knowledge.

You are right! The principle of verification itself cannot be empirically verified - it's a methodological framework or criterion for evaluating statements, not an empirical claim about the world.

But the principle itself demands something it cannot provide then?

It seems we can only assess it based on our rationality...which then leads to the question of what grounds rationality itself...the mysterious "groundless ground of Reason" as Schelling would say...