Iria Oriol Rotaeche
Philosophy of the Humanities 1 - Textbook Summary
Chapter 1: Introduction
The humanities includes: literary theory, history, art, history, musicology, linguistics, film studies,
religious studies and philosophy. Humanities also are referred to as liberal arts, moral sciences or
humane sciences.
Philosophy of science strives for the truth. Studies questions regarding the natural sciences, focusing
on scientific knowledge and scientific styles of reasoning to justify epistemological claims allowing
for a better approximation to the truth. It has a normative character, accepting claims only by means of
adequacy. A central topic is methodology, the study of the procedures for quality control in the
production of knowledge that claims to be ‘scientific. Scientific statements should correspond with the
facts, by sensory experience; this is empirical science. This science is based on controllable
observables freed from subjective influences, observing rules. Findings should be presented in
quantitative form. The research method should start from true premises and by impeccable means
(logic and mathematics). Scientific knowledge is value-free, the scientific findings are focused
towards instruments of action.
Philosophy of humanities strives for the meaning. Studies the interpretation of a work from different
perspectives. Developments in the humanities are new techniques of interpretations and not
uncovering facts. Humanities are concerned with products of the human mind, they study culture and
aspects of the culture. Around the 1800s the classification of things changed and so it appeared in
other disciplines and the notion of man as an object of scientific investigation. Aristotle’s
classification was into: Theoretical sciences, practical sciences and political sciences. Nowadays’
classification is Natural sciences, Social sciences and humanities.
Both philosophy of science and of humanities have double tasks: descriptive and normative.
Chapter 3: Logical Empiricism and Critical Rationalism
The Vienna Circle: Logical Empiricism
In the 20th century, radical changes in science happened. Kant’s a priori judgements which were
thought to be universal could be disputed, which raised questions about his theory. The logical
empiricists discussed a radical rejection of Kant’s foundation of scientific knowledge. The centre of
this logical empiricism development was Vienna, and his members were called The Vienna Circle.
Their duty was to spread scientific knowledge based on Enlightenment ideals among the population.
They had an anti-metaphysical attitude.
Carnap: The Logic of Science
He attempted to recover the logic of scientific knowledge to logically reconstruct the normative
justification of established theories and hypotheses.
Basic logic concepts:
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- Validity
- Propositions
- Universal statements
- Singular statements
- Truth conditions
- Premisses
According to Carnap, metaphysical statements appear to be meaningful but in reality they are
pseudo-statements because they don’t have empirical truth conditions.
The Analytic-Synthetic Distinction and Reductionism
One key aspect of logical empiricism is that it makes a distinction between analytic (true by
definition) and synthetic (true on basis of experience) statements. In view of this semantic notion, the
growth of scientific knowledge can occur by introducing a new language. The notion of analyticity
coincided with the epistemological notion of a priori knowledge (Kant). Carnap rejected Kantian
philosophy and stated that all synthetic are dubitable.
Reductionism is another key aspect of classical logical empiricism, that is, the insistence that every
meaningful and empirical statement can be reduced or ‘translated’ into a statement about pure or
direct observation, a reduction statement. In this way, logical empiricism is related to behaviourism.
One type of reductionism is physicalism which takes pure facts as basis, being this more related to
logical empiricism and considered often as positivism (sees the basis of knowledge as ‘positive facts’).
Another type is phenomenalism, which takes pure experiences as basis. The Vienna Circle saw the
‘given’ of experience as an endpoint of logical analysis, indeed, Carnap described the ‘given’ as a
‘useful function’; as a useful tool in the rational reconstruction of scientific knowledge. Carnap
introduced the principle of tolerance, which allows different languages in the sciences to exist
alongside each other with the only criterion is to be convenient and successful in practice. Carnap
anticipated forms of pragmatism, the philosophical current that seeks explanation in terms of action
rather than epistemic states (accepts abstract terms only if they have a practical use. Empiricism
offered high hopes for the logical empiricists project of a unified science, and Neurath guided this
project publishing his International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (1938).
The Vienna Circle and the Humanities
The Vienna Circle’s anti-metaphysical attitude shaped their rejection of theology as a science;
according to the verification criterion, science can only contain testable statements, therefore
theological speculation can’t produce scientific knowledge. Only general laws can yield genuine
explanations. The deductive-nomological model of explanation/ covering law model occurs when the
statement about the phenomenon to be explained is deduced logically, from the universal law.
The statement to be explained is called the explanandum whereas the explaining statement is called
the explanans. Explanation consists of embedding explanandum and explanans, which should be in
the form of general law. Hempel argued that the hermeneutic method aims in the formulation of
general laws, as a means towards the end. Chomsky argued that the methodological constraints that
behaviourist and empiricist approaches impose on linguistic theories are far too strict, we should make
stronger assumptions about the not directly observable structure of the human brain than behaviourists
would allow for.
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Popper: The Logic of Falsifiability
Popper’s book Logik der Forschung/The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1902-1994) was a different
contribution to the discussions of the Vienna Circle. He rejected the linguistic turn as a waste of time
(the logical empiricist problematic of verification and the meaningfulness of statements). His interest
was put on theories of the world rather than of words. Popper also shared the Vienna Circle's belief
that philosophy could benefit from a clarification of the logical structure of scientific knowledge and
the way in which it develops. Thus, he also spoke of the ‘logic’ of the growth of scientific knowledge.
This logic aims to analyse and justify the methods of the empirical sciences and constitutes a true
methodology of the sciences.
Induction, Deduction, Demarcation
According to Popper, the problem of growth of knowledge is divided into two main questions:
1. Hume’s problem: The question of justification of induction
Solution to Hume: Popper argues that induction can be justified neither logical nor psychologically.
Hume had concluded that induction, although not logically justificable, is psychologically real, for
human beings simply have the psychological habit of formulating general expectations concerning the
future based on limited experience. Popper argued that induction can no more be defended
psychologically than logically, and therefore can’t be justified at all. In his view, the true growth of
scientific knowledge is deductive.
2. Kant’s problem: The question of how scientific knowledge can be distinguished from
non-scientific or pseudoscientific knowledge claims.
Solution to Kant: Given his rejection of the verification criterion, he had to pose anew the question
concerning the demarcation problem; the distinction between scientific and non-scientific knowledge
claims. Since induction cannot be justified, it cannot constitute the ‘method’ that distinguishes
successful empirical sciences from metaphysical and other non-scientific statements or systems either.
Unlike logical empiricists, Popper refuses to reject metaphysical statements, he says they could serve
as theories we can put to test where they can be falsifiable. Popper claims what characterizes science
is that scientific knowledge distinguishes itself not by empirical verifiability but on the contrary by
falsifiability; it can be refuted on the basis of experience and improved in the light of experience.
Hence, the demarcation criterion involves the question whether or not a theory can be put to test,
whether is falsifiable or not. Science is characterized by its openness to criticism, not by an inductive
method of verification, but by a deductive method of falsification. A crucial test is what challenges a
theory, and a theory is strengthened on the basis of the crucial tests it has survived. However, Popper
refused to characterize this strengthening as confirmation, instead, he introduced the concept of the
degree of corroboration, or the degree to which a theory has thus far survived tests.
Testing Theories
Popper believes that theories precede experience rather than the other way round. He thought that pure
observation was impossible. Each observation is inevitably guided and coloured by our beliefs,
expectations and interests. Popper was a rationalist; in his view, we proceed not from observations
but from theories, from conjectures that guide our observations. For Popper, knowledge is not founded
on experiencebu it can be corrected in the light of experience. Science is marked by a critical attitude.
Theories are not tested by observations but by basic sentences (a singular statement that can serve as a
