I’m not familiar with the term

Who were the other scholars associated with logical positive?

Edit: I asked ChatGPT…

Milton Friedman was not associated with logical positivism, but there is an interesting connection worth unpacking.

⸻

Milton Friedman vs. Logical Positivism • Friedman was an economist, not a philosopher. His intellectual home was the Chicago School of Economics, rooted in neoclassical economics and monetarism, not in logical positivism or the Vienna Circle. • That said, in his 1953 essay “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” Friedman borrowed certain ideas that sound similar to logical positivism, especially the idea that the realism of assumptions doesn’t matter—only the predictive power of a theory does. “Truly important and significant hypotheses will be found to have ‘assumptions’ that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality… The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of its predictions with experience.” — Friedman, 1953

This echoes the logical positivist attitude that the empirical consequences are what matter—whether a theory “matches reality” in some intuitive sense is secondary.

⸻

Key Differences:

Logical Positivism	Milton Friedman / Chicago School

Discipline Philosophy of language and science Economics Main Concern Meaningfulness of statements; verification principle Predictive accuracy of economic models View on Assumptions Assumptions must ideally correspond to observable facts Assumptions can be unrealistic if predictions are good Attitude to Metaphysics Rejected as meaningless Not central—Friedman focused on policy relevance

⸻

In short:

Friedman was not a logical positivist, but his methodological approach to economics—especially his focus on prediction over realism—shows a family resemblance to logical positivism’s emphasis on empirical testability.

Some critics even accused Friedman of smuggling in positivist thinking into economics, especially in the way he defended abstract models regardless of their assumptions. But Friedman himself did not explicitly align with the Vienna Circle or the verification principle.

Let me know if you want a quote from Popper or Hayek, both of whom offered important criticisms of logical positivism that also influenced Friedman.