Logical positivism was a highly influential philosophical movement in the early 20th century that came to define major philosophical focuses and problematics of the contemporary analytic philosophy, including logic, language, empiricism, analytic/synthetic distinction, the problems of justification and induction, and so on. Although the common lore speaks of its "demise" after Quine's seminal criticism in his "Two dogmas of empiricism" (1951) and Kuhn's The structure of scientific revolutions (1962), detailed historical studies after 80's (most notably by Friedman and Coffa) and recent developments in formal philosophy (e.g. Halvorson, Awodey) have generated a renewed attention to the logical positivism. In this seminar, we read classical works of positivists to identify their ideas and implications to today's philosophical questions.
Reading materials are selected from writings of major positivists, including but not limited to Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel, as well as secondary literatures.