Answer to Question #197356 in Philosophy for SBONGISENI

Question

The Covid-19 pandemic that plagued the globe from the beginning of 2020, reset much of the population’s Positivist-based belief in the effectiveness and certainty of empirical science as scientific opinion on the virus changed rapidly. In this light, discuss this foundational precept of Logical Positivism, ensuring that your essay includes a critical discussion thereof.

Answer 1

Logical positivism is a philosophical movement that arose in Vienna in the 1920s and was characterized by the view that scientific knowledge is the only kind of factual knowledge and that all traditional metaphysical doctrines are to be rejected as meaningless. Covid 19 proved that we need scientific knowledge to prove anything in a pandemic and the general life knowledge instead of believing in doctrines that prove to have no evidence at all.