On Thursday, June 12, 2003, at 02:29 am, Erik Reuter wrote:
On Wed, Jun 11, 2003 at 05:20:00PM -0700, Jan Coffey wrote:
Do you consider yourself a Positivist?
If I say no, will you think negatively of me? :-)
Ummm, wait while I look it up (I've heard it before but I don't really know what it means, I'm quite ignorant on a lot of philosophy, in fact, despited my 3 letter designation I can't remember having ever read a philosophy book)
"The basic affirmations of Positivism are (1) that all knowledge regarding matters of fact is based on the "positive" data of experience, and (2) that beyond the realm of fact is that of pure logic and pure mathematics, which were already recognized by the Scottish Empiricist and Skeptic David Hume as concerned with the "relations of ideas" and, in a later phase of Positivism, were classified as purely formal sciences. On the negative and critical side, the Positivists became noted for their repudiation of metaphysics; i.e., of speculation regarding the nature of reality that radically goes beyond any possible evidence that could either support or refute such "transcendent" knowledge claims. In its basic ideological posture, Positivism is thus worldly, secular, antitheological, and antimetaphysical. Strict adherence to the testimony of observation and experience is the all-important imperative of the Positivists. "
"The Logical Positivist school differs from earlier empiricists and positivists (David Hume, Ernst Mach) in holding that the ultimate basis of knowledge rests upon public experimental verification rather than upon personal experience. It differs from Auguste Comte and J.S. Mill in holding that metaphysical doctrines are not false but meaningless-that the "great unanswerable questions" about substance, causality, freedom, and God are unanswerable just because they are not genuine questions at all. This last is a thesis about language, not about nature, and is based upon a general account of meaning and of meaninglessness. "
Britannica is handy :)
-- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/
One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth
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