Positivist philosophy in its broadest sense is a general tendency in philosophy which embraces aspects of the thought of many philosophers including Humean scepticism, the work of Comte (who coined the term), elements of utilitarianism and pragmatism, and logical positivism.

Metaphysical Positivism is a positivistic philosophical system formulated for the twenty first century, building on a heritage going back at least as far as David Hume; cognisant of developments in logic and computer science which have taken place in the 20th Century, but turning away from some of the recent tendencies in analytic philosophy.

A philosophical tract arising from the retrenchement of Metaphysical Positivism from a philosophical position aspiring to be a system and a programmme to being, more modestly, the description of certain philosophical problems. This kind of regression is of course, for a sceptical philosophy, its best approximation to triumphal progress.

Four features enumerated by Kolakowski as characteristic of positivism: phenomenalism, nominalism, status of value judgements, unity of science.

Other features which may be present, such as empiricism, scepticism, semantic doctrines (verification, utility, pragmatics), methodology for science and philosophy, foundationalisms.

Scepticism has a long history.

The views of some late medieval philosophers may be said to have elements of positivism in them, and contributed towards the separation of scientific knowledge from metaphysics and a separation of secular from ecclesiastical matters.

According to Kolakowski, "the Enlightenment had a positivism all of its own".

Hume scores well on all of Kolakowski's key features and is therefore considered the first full blooded positivist.

Comte is the founding father of positivism, the first to deliberately formulate a positivist philosopher abd the person who gave the position its name.

My notes on the book by Leszek Kolakowski.

The proximate predecessor of metaphysical positivism is logical positivism. Semantic positivism descends in direct line from Russell's embryonic conception of Logical Analysis, and the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap inspired by and intended to realise that conception.

Here I outline what I consider the most important sources of confusion, error and irrelevance, and mention some possible remedies.

Metaphysical positivism is concerned primarily with the articulation of a conception of rationality (the positivist connection is not our present concern). At the core of this conception is deductive inference, which may be used in the establishment of logical truths. Around this central core rationality consists first in the appropriate application of deductive reasoning using abstract models. The description of appropriate methods, languages and tools for this kind of deductive modelling provides a base from which we may approach an understaning of ways in which one may rationally go beyond the scope of deduction.

In his "picture theory" Wittgenstein suggested that the relation between language and fact was similar to that between a picture and the thing portrayed. In metaphysical positivism language is construed as providing models of the world, the "true structure" of which is inaccessible to scientific method. Insofar as it is possible to go beyond the exhibition and evaluation of (mathematical) models with enquiries into the true structure of the universe this is the domain of metaphysics.

Positive science, a term coined by Auguste Comte which gave rise to the notion of positivism, is revived in metaphysical positivism as an idealised model of scientific method, broad enough to encompass what Russell talked of as "scientific philosophy".

Logical analysis is the analytic part of positive science and scientific philososphy. It consists of methods for maximising the rigour of reasoning using abstract models of the domain of discourse. The logical aspects are thereby rendered as rigorous and reliable as mathematics, and other aspects are exposed for other kinds of scrutiny.

An abstract semantics is a (not necessarily complete) account of the meaning of some language in terms of abstract entities. If the intended subject matter of a language is concrete, its semantics can be factored into abstract and concrete parts. The abstract part suffices to determine the relation of semantic entailment, which in turn settles the question of which inferences are deductively sound. Abstract semantics can be defined with much greater precision than concrete semantics, but cannot be made absolutely unambiguous. When we strive for limits in semantic precision, foundational problems come to the fore.

Here the limits of positivism are tested as we seek to identify real philosophical problems concerning the nature of reality which are not not directly soluble either by the methods of empirical science or those of logic. Much of metaphysics as it is and has been practiced remains beyond the pale, but reasons are discussed for taking some metaphysical problems seriously, for telling which ones they are, and for making some progress on them.

The reducibility of rationality to abstract analysis receives its greatest test when the domain of discourse moves from the hard to the social sciences, from descriptive to evaluative, when economic, political and ethical considerations are at stake. Can we then expect rigour?

Metaphysical Positivism is described by comparison with Logical Positivism, with particular reference to the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. In this we follow Carnap's own account of his philosophy as given in the Carnap volume of the library of living philosophers, using his own headings.

In which is explained the purpose and structure of this work. This consists in taking a philosophical position and some problems which flow from it and then recasting these problems. The aim is to do this as clearly possible while replacing, wherever possible, philosophical presumptions with choice of appropriate language for the formulation of the problems. The role of the position then becomes motivational rather than substantive.

A sketch of a conception of philosophy and of metaphysics closer to those of ancient Greece than to contemporary conceptions.

The re-presentation of metaphyisical positivism, insofar as this can be done, as a choice of idiom rather than as a body of doctrine, preliminary to the use of that language for the statement of various problems.

A discussion of metaphysics from the point of view of metaphysical positivism.

Some temporary notes about particular metaphysical problems of personal interest.