noun ·Moderate ·College level
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"The goal of positivism is to construct an objective, empirical and systematic foundation for knowledge. Given the above five tenets, it follows that positivists would hold that the world is composed of ‘facts’, or ‘sense data’ (or ‘atoms’)."
"He never set out to work in the computer field or in business, and he certainly had no notions of becoming massively wealthy. He’s a multi-billionaire, for the record. No, what Reid Hoffman planned on becoming was a professor of philosophy. He’s still happy to expound upon the differences between analytic philosophers and continental philosophers. He knows his empiricism from his logical positivism, and as you’ll hear, computers found a way into his philosophy."
A doctrine that states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method, refusing every form of metaphysics.
Common synonyms include: animalism, atomism, behaviorism, bigotry, certainty, commonsense realism.
He never set out to work in the computer field or in business, and he certainly had no notions of becoming massively wealthy. He’s a multi-billionaire, for the record. No, what Reid Hoffman planned on becoming was a professor of philosophy. He’s still happy to expound upon the differences between analytic philosophers and continental philosophers. He knows his empiricism from his logical positivism, and as you’ll hear, computers found a way into his philosophy.
Pronounced /ˈpɒzɪtɪvˌɪzm/.
Borrowed from French positivisme, from positif (“positive”). Equivalent to positive + -ism.