70. Hume's Fork, Logical Positivism, & Quine | THUNK
Channel: THUNK
Date: 2015-07-15

Logical positivism ran with Hume's analytic/synthetic distinction...turns out running with forks is a bad idea. 

-Links for the Curious-

Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding," where he posited the analytic/synthetic distinction  - https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9662/9662-h/9662-h.htm

AJ Ayer's "Language, Truth, & Logic," one of the most popular logical positivist works published - http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/ayerLTL.pdf

Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" - http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html

Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus," one of the inspirational texts for the Vienna Circle - https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf

A fantastic interview with AJ Ayer regarding the formation/development logical positivism, its collapse, & its wider effects - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMlXmLbGKJY

Carnap's "The Elimination of Metaphysics" - http://www.calstatela.edu/sites/default/files/dept/phil/pdf/res/Carnap-Elimination-of-Metaphysics.pdf

"The Partially Examined Life" podcast on Quine's work targeting logical positivism - http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/11/21/episode-66-quine-on-linguistic-meaning-and-science/

The Reddit thread where various philosophy buffs helped me straighten out - http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/2fzzvv/mistaking_intuition_for_logic_results_in/