A Study Of Schlick's Philosophical Thought

As a German philosopher and physicist, Moritz Schlick was the leader of the Vienna school and one of the founders of logical empiricism. Schlick's theory of philosophy changed from critical realism to logical empiricism. He lived in the era of the rise of scientific philosophy, and created the school of philosophy of science in its true sense. The change of Schlick's theory of philosophy was only on the issue of reality. He held views of critical realist preciously, and later held views of logical empiricism. Except that, Schlick's theories in the precious and later period are coherent.Schlick's theory of philosophy preciously, that is the critical realism, was influenced by empiricism, particularly positivism in European. The thoughts of Schlick'critical realism could be presented mainly in two aspects. Firstly, he made the distinction between experience and understanding to reject metaphysics. Secondly, he made the division between analytic propositions and synthetic propositions to oppose a priori synthetic judgements. The former is the main tool of his rejecting metaphysics; the latter is the basis of his opposing a priori synthetic judgements. Meanwhile, Schlick's interpretation of them indicated the tendency of the thoughts of his logical empiricism.Schlick's later theory of philosophy was impacted by Russell and Wittgenstein's logical atomism and other related philosophical thoughts. Meaning and confirmation are two important concepts of Schlick. He held that the standard of a proposition'having a meaning is the methods of verifying it. The views of causality and mind-thing further demonstrates Schlick's views of logical empiricism.By the investigation of classical physics, statistics, new physics, he expressed his own points of view of causality; by the interpretation of the problem of mind-thing he revealed his own view on it. Schlick's profound thoughts had an impact on the Vienna School and made an important contribution to contemporary philosophy.