“All metaphysical theories are inconclusively vulnerable to positivist attack.”

—  Iris Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist

Source: Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953), Ch. 9, p. 127

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "All metaphysical theories are inconclusively vulnerable to positivist attack." by Iris Murdoch?
Iris Murdoch photo
Iris Murdoch61
British writer and philosopher 1919–1999

Related quotes

Gustav Radbruch photo

“This view of a law and of its validity (we call it the positivistic theory) has rendered jurists and the people alike defenceless against arbitrary, cruel, or criminal laws, however extreme they might be. In the end, the positivistic theory equates law with power; there is law only where there is power.”

Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) German politician

"Five Minutes of Legal Philosophy" (1945)

Karl Popper photo

“Put in a nut-shell, my thesis amounts to this. The repeated attempts made by Rudolf Carnap to show that the demarcation between science and metaphysics coincides with that between sense and nonsense have failed. The reason is that the positivistic concept of 'meaning' or 'sense' (or of verifiability, or of inductive confirmability, etc.) is inappropriate for achieving this demarcation — simply because metaphysics need not be meaningless even though it is not science. In all its variations demarcation by meaninglessness has tended to be at the same time too narrow and too wide: as against all intentions and all claims, it has tended to exclude scientific theories as meaningless, while failing to exclude even that part of metaphysics which is known as 'rational theology'.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Ch 11. "The Demarcation between Science and Metaphysics." (Summary, p. 253)
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)

Karl Popper photo

“Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Unsourced variant: Evolution is not a fact. Evolution doesn&#x27;t even qualify as a theory or as a hypothesis. It is a metaphysical research program, and it is not really testable science. <br>Popper later retracted his criticisms: <br class="br">I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation.<br>:* &quot;Natural selection and the emergence of mind&quot; dialectica http://www.dialectica.ch/ Vol. 32 (1978), p. 339-355; republished in Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledge (1987) edited by Gerard Radnitzky and W. W. Bartley, III <br class="br">Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (1976)

Baruch Spinoza photo

“In Spinoza, at the origin of the Modern world, metaphysical theory and the theory of science are given in complete agreement for the first time. They represent the alternative to the entire subsequent path of metaphysics and of the bourgeois theory of science. Spinoza lives as an alternative: Today this alternative is real. The Spinozian analytic of full space and open time are becoming an ethics of liberation in all the dimensions that this discourse constructs and makes available.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Selected works, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (1991)

Pierre Duhem photo

“A physical theory reputed to be satisfactory by the sectarians of one metaphysical school will be rejected by the partisans of another school.”

Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) French physicist, historian of science

Notice sur les Titres et Travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem rédigée par lui-même lors de sa candidature à l'Académie des sciences (mai 1913), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906)

Fritjof Capra photo

“The mathematical framework of quantum theory has passed countless successful tests and is now universally accepted as a consistent and accurate description of all atomic phenomena. The verbal interpretation, on the other hand – i. e., the metaphysics of quantum theory – is on far less solid ground. In fact, in more than forty years physicists have not been able to provide a clear metaphysical model.”

Fritjof Capra book The Tao of Physics

Source: The Tao of Physics (1975), Ch. 10, The Unity of All Things, p. 132.

L. Ron Hubbard photo

“If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Dept. of Govt. Affairs (15 August 1960).
Scientology Policy Letters

John Horgan (journalist) photo

“Of the three great skeptics I interviewed, Popper was the first to make his mark. His philosophy stemmed from his effort to distinguish pseudoscience, such as Marxism or astrology or Freudian psychology, from genuine science, such as Einstein's theory of relativity. The latter, Popper decided, was testable; it made predictions about the world that could be empirically checked. The logical positivists had said as much. But Popper denied the positivist assertion that scientists can prove a theory through induction, or repeated empirical tests or observations. One never knows if one's observations have been sufficient; the next observation might contradict all that preceded it. Observations can never prove a theory but can only disprove, or falsify it. Popper often bragged that he had "killed" logical positivism with this argument.”

John Horgan (journalist) (1953) American science journalist

Source: The End of Science (1996), p. 27

Adam Schaff photo

“Ajdukiewicz's view, published in the Erkenntnis, certainly did not fail to influence the opinions held by the neo-positivist supporters of semantic philosophy. But Ajdukiewicz was not alone in his opinions which fitted Carnap's principle of tolerance and, e. g., the theories of C. G. Hempel.”

Adam Schaff (1913–2006) Polish Marxist philosopher and theorist

Source: Introduction to semantics, 1962, p. 80-81

Albert Memmi photo

“Racism does not limit itself to biology or economics or psychology or metaphysics; it attacks along many fronts and in many forms, deploying whatever is at hand, and even what is not, inventing when the need arises.”

Albert Memmi (1920) French writer

Racism (1982)

Related topics