Caledonian: Has anyone ever suggested to you that you look into early-mid 20th century refutations to “positivism”? Operational definitions etc are good heuristics, not divine edicts.
They are neither heuristics nor edicts. They’re what’s necessary for a definition to be functional and make sense—if you cannot divide the world into A and ~A based on a provided definition, it is invalid.
As for positivism, the ‘refutations’ made certain assumptions critical to their validity that I assert do not hold. With a whole field dominated by Richards, why would you assume that long-standing consensuses are valid?
The concept of logical positivism is certainly wrong… but it’s the ‘logical’ part that’s the problem.
They are neither heuristics nor edicts. They’re what’s necessary for a definition to be functional and make sense—if you cannot divide the world into A and ~A based on a provided definition, it is invalid.
As for positivism, the ‘refutations’ made certain assumptions critical to their validity that I assert do not hold. With a whole field dominated by Richards, why would you assume that long-standing consensuses are valid?
The concept of logical positivism is certainly wrong… but it’s the ‘logical’ part that’s the problem.