Validating Psychological Constructs by Kathleen Slaney

Author:Kathleen Slaney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

Logical Empiricism

Beginning in the late 1930s, in the wake of criticisms of the feasibility of verificationism as a criterion of meaning and in anticipation of Quine’s devastating blow against the analytic-synthetic distinction, individuals either in or otherwise associated with the Vienna Circle began to question certain of the fundamental doctrines of logical positivist philosophy. In an attempt to maintain the observability criterion of testability but at the same time contend with the intractable problems of the verifiability principle , individuals such as Carnap and Hempel began developing logical systems based on principles of confirmation as opposed to verification. Others, most notably Reichenbach and Feigl , urged for the adoption of a more liberal meaning criterion that distinguished clearly between theoretical terms that serve as mere shorthand notational devices for summarizing observations and those that refer to real, but unobservable, structures and mechanisms that have observable effects. Unlike the former, the latter, it was argued, could be tied, if only indirectly, to the observation base, and, thus, played a legitimate role in scientific testing.

Sometime during the 1930s, it was suggested that given such revisions to the doctrine, logical positivism be renamed to “logical empiricism .” 5 This coincided with the emigration from Europe to America (in response to the Nazi uprising) of several key members of the movement: Feigl to Iowa (and then Minnesota), Carnap to Chicago, Hempel to Pittsburg (and then Princeton), and Reichenbach to UCLA (after a five-year stay at the University of Istanbul). Although it was still generally agreed that the analytic-synthetic and observational-theoretical distinctions were essential to a productive science, the rationale upon which these distinctions were justified was beginning to change. Whereas theoretical terms had previously been viewed as uniformly meaningless, and thus dispensable, now they were recognized as being essential to the practicing scientist who wants to test hypotheses about the real, but unobservable, theoretical entities designated by such terms.

It is argued here and elsewhere (Slaney 2012) that logical empiricism , in particular the work of Feigl , began to depart in three primary ways from its progenitor, namely, in terms of (1) the explicitly realist ontological stance it adopted regarding theoretical terms; (2) the conception of scientific theorizing it promoted; and (3) the view of meaning it assumed. It is contended here that, together, these key alterations from classical logical positivist philosophy anticipated in important ways the transition to scientific realism in the latter half of the twentieth century and provided the philosophical foundations for CVT.

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