Logical Positivism, Wittgenstein and Ayer

Logical Positivism began in the 1900's in Vienna by a group of intellectuals known as the 'Vienna Circle' which became an intellectual powerhouse of philosophy, art and music. Members such as Ludwig Wittgenstein became some of the most influential people in history as they changed the way people thought. They believed that science was the only valid method by which knowledge could be explained and this could be applied to many sciences such as logic and language and also social sciences such as economics and history. This marked the beginning of the modern world and many theories still have significance to this day. Science was considered to be an international language in which scientists and philosophers from all over the world were able to understand as it consisted of a number of universal formula. This was because human beings are exactly the same biologically, it didnt matter whether a person was from England or Germany.  Philosophers from the Vienna Circle were only concerned with the function of an object within society not its aesthetic value, they were anti- romantic and believed that the world could be explained through science and not religion.

One philosopher, A.J Ayer attempted to explain language in his book Language, Truth, and Logic published in 1936. In his book he argued that there are two types of language, emotive and propositional.  Emotive language is made up of statement that invoke feelings such as those of love or hatred and Ayer argued that this type of language is most commonly used by humans in order to get what they desire. Propositional language consists of a series of statements that can be verified as provisionally true, definately false or cannot be verified. The way in which a statement can be verified is through the truth of a statement.  For example, the statement " it is hot outside today" can be verified as being provisionally true as we are able to recognise the signs of a hot day through our knowledge. We are able to recognise that the sun is shining and we our bodies can feel warmth from the sun. Therefore the statement is not definately false and it can be verified using knowledge.

Ludwig Wittgenstein focused his studies on language as he believed that it both affects people and infects people like a virus from outer space. Language is an entire system that can be broken up and reformed in various ways. He believed that speech is only a very small part of the wider world of language and the acts of speaking and listening are almost performance acts. These acts occur in language games as there are a certain set of rules that define language. His book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus can be considered to be one of the most famous and influential books of the 20th century. It focuses upon the use of language and is divided up in seven main propositions that are explained. These propositions will be listed and explained below

1. The world is everything that is the case. (The world is all we know to exist)
2. What is the case (a fact) is the existence of states of affairs. (the world that we believe to be reality is made up of facts not material objects)
3. A logical picture of facts is a thought. (propositions create images of the world)
4. A thought is a proposition with a sense.
5. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. (language has rules which determine whether a statement is true or false)
6. The general form of a proposition is the general form of a truth function, which is: This is the general form of a proposition. (a logical sentence can be created from a series of formula)
7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

These propositions can be slighly confusing but accurately describe the ways in which language can be constructed, broken apart and then analysed