JF: >>I am interested in them because of my general interest in the philosophy of science and the broader implications: culturally, socially and politically of differing philosophies of science. Concerning the Vienna Circle, I am in agreement with George Reisch that because of the peculiarities of the reception of logical empiricism into the anglophone world, especially in the US, people have generally failed to understand or appreciate the broader concerns of the Vienna Circle, so that it was generally understood in the US as having been mainly about modern logic and the philosophy of science, whereas they in fact had much broader interests.>>
I'm interested in issues in philosophy of social sciences (psycho-, logico-formal, cognitive, linguistic, social, etc.), but my limited knowledge of the VC leads me to think (perhaps quite wrongly) there wasn't much fruitful work done amongst them in such areas. I haven't had time to search down info. on all the official members listed in that manifesto. And although Popper never got listed as a VC member (and was down officially as an opponent of the logical positivists), they published at least of his books, didn't they? Of their contemporaries, I find Husserl and Vygotsky much more interesting on scientific approaches to the social and psychological realms. And in education, I would cite Freire and his use of non-positivistic approaches. (You could say variations of positivism pervade academic social sciences in the anglophone world and much of Europe. And that would include the way academia co-opts 'practitioner sciences' in order to make more high-paying work for itself and to control certification and indoctrination in education and other applied and clinical specialities. For example, academic approaches to 'qualitative research' , 'classroom resarch', and 'action research'.) Husserl, I believe, is a hugely under-estimated influence on so much of modern and post-modern philosophy. Directly and indirectly. He got somewhat dismissed because of anglo-analytic propaganda about Frege. Popper seems to have got some of his ideas about open society directly from Husserl, but Popper is a direct product of the logical positivists/empiricists and Husserl is not. He is a true opposition to it. You can dismantle Popper with Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend. You can find parallels between late Popper and Piaget. But you can also demolish Popper using Husserl's analysis of why positivist programs fail in the 'sciences of man'. Interestingly enough Carnap's itinerant education led to his being taught by a who's who of philosophy, including Husserl, Frege, and Bruno Bauch, as well as personal correspondence with Russell. Also, you could say Heidegger's philosophy starts with the teaching of Husserl. Even Goedel cited Husserl as an influence. I should like to re-read Wittgenstein on psychology in light of having read more of Brentano, Husserl and the gestaltists. Husserl is that rationalist hinge on which so much modern and post-modern philosophy swings. So why did Husserl and Vygotsky refer to a CRISIS in naturalistic and positivist approach to the 'sciences of man'? (Though it is often forgotten that to quite an extent positivism originates in attempts to shift social philosophy into a scientific framework--such as Comte's sociology.) (I think RD has reviews and essays that relate to Husserl (such as Husserl vs. positivism). Could he post some links and excerpts if he has time? ) Here are some online Husserl and Vygotsky primary sources, typical of what I have I have been reading off and on for the past two years at marxists.org. 1. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/husserl2.htm (by the way, I have the book, but am citing an online source for list participants) small excerpt >>§61. Psychology in the tension between the (objectivistic-philosophical) idea of science and empirical procedure: the incompatibility of the two directions of psychological inquiry (the psychophysical and that of "psychology based on inner experience"). ALL SCIENTIFIC empirical inquiry has its original legitimacy and also its dignity. But considered by itself, not all such inquiry is science in that most original and indispensable sense whose first name was philosophy, and thus also in the sense of the new establishment of a philosophy or science since the Renaissance. Not all scientific empirical inquiry grew up as a partial function within such a science. Yet only when it does justice to this sense can it truly be called scientific. But we can speak of science as such only where, within the indestructible whole of universal philosophy, a branch of the universal task causes a particular science, unitary in itself, to grow up, in whose particular task, as a branch, the universal task works itself out in an originally vital grounding of the system. Not every empirical inquiry that can be pursued freely by itself is in this sense already a science, no matter how much practical utility it may have, no matter how much confirmed, methodical technique may reign in it. Now this applies to psychology insofar as, historically, in the constant drive to fulfil its determination as a philosophical, i.e., a genuine, science, it remains entangled in obscurities about its legitimate sense, finally succumbs to temptations to develop a rigorously methodical psychophysical - or better, a psychophysicist's empirical inquiry, and then thinks that it has fulfilled its sense as a science because of the confirmed reliability of its methods. By contrast to the specialists' psychology of the present, our concern - the philosopher's concern - is to move this "sense as a science" to the central point of interest - especially in relation to psychology as the "place of decisions" for a proper development of a philosophy in general - and to clarify its whole motivation and scope. In this direction of the original aim toward - as we say - "philosophical" scientific discipline, motifs of dissatisfaction arose again and again, setting in soon after the Cartesian beginnings. There were troublesome tensions between the [different] tasks which descended historically from Descartes: on the one hand, that of methodically treating souls in exactly the same way as bodies and as being connected with bodies as spatio-temporal realities, i.e., the task of investigating in a physicalistic way the whole life-world as "nature" in a broadened sense; and, on the other hand, the task of investigating souls in their being in-themselves and for-themselves by way of "inner experience" - the psychologist's primordial inner experience of the subjectivity of his own self - or else by way of the intentional mediation of likewise internally directed empathy (i.e., directed toward what is internal to other persons taken thematically ) . The two tasks seemed obviously connected in respect to both method and subject matter, and yet they refused to harmonise. Modern philosophy had prescribed to itself from the very beginning the dualism of substances and the parallelism of the methods of mos geometricus - or, one can also say, the methodical ideal of physicalism. Even though this became vague and faded as it was transmitted, and failed to attain even the serious beginnings of an explicit execution, it was still decisive for the basic conception of man as a psychophysical reality and for all the ways of putting psychology to work in order to bring about methodical knowledge of the psychic. From the start, then, the world was seen "naturalistically" as a world with two strata of real facts regulated by causal laws. Accordingly, souls too were seen as real annexes of their physical living bodies (these being conceived in terms of exact natural science); the souls, of course, have a different structure from the bodies; they are not res extensae, but they are still real in a sense similar to bodies, and because of this relatedness they must also be investigated in a similar sense in terms of "causal laws," i.e., through theories which are of the same sort in principle as those of physics, which is taken as a model and at the same time as an underlying foundation. << 2. http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/psycri11.htm >>What a trifle! Psychology wanted to be a natural science, but one that would deal with things of a very different nature from those natural science is dealing with. But doesn't the nature of the phenomena studied determine the character of the science? Are history, logic, geometry, and history of the theater really possible as natural sciences? And Chelpanov, who insists that psychology should be as empirical as physics, mineralogy etc., naturally does not join Pavlov but immediately starts to vociferate when the attempt is made to realize psychology as a genuine natural science. What is he hushing up in his comparison? He wants psychology to be a natural science about (1) phenomena which are completely different from physical phenomena, and (2) which are conceived in a way that is completely different from the way the objects of the natural sciences are investigated. One may ask what the natural sciences and psychology can have in common if the subject matter and the method of acquiring knowledge are different. And Vvedensky (1917, p. 3) says, after he has explained the meaning of the empirical character of psychology: "Therefore, contemporary psychology often characterizes itself as a natural science about mental phenomena or a natural history of mental phenomena." But this means that psychology wants to be a natural science about unnatural phenomena. It is connected with the natural sciences by a purely negative feature – the rejection of metaphysics – and not by a single positive one. James explained the matter brilliantly. Psychology is to be treated as a natural science – that was his main thesis. But no one did as much as James to prove that the mental is "not natural scientific." He explains that all the natural sciences accept some assumptions on faith – natural science proceeds from the materialistic assumption, in spite of the fact that further reflection leads to idealism. Psychology does the same – it accepts other assumptions. Consequently, it is similar to natural science only in that it uncritically accepts some assumptions; the assumptions themselves are contrary [see pp. 9 – 10 of Burkhardt, 1984]. According to Ribot, this tendency is the main trait of the psychology of the 19th century. Apart from this he mentions the attempts to give psychology its own principle and method (which it was denied by Comte) and to put it in the same relation to biology as biology occupies with respect to physics. But in fact the author acknowledges that what is called psychology consists of several categories of investigations which differ according to their goal and method. And when the authors, in spite of this, attempted to beget a system of psychology and included Pavlov and Bergson, they demonstrated that this task cannot be realized. And in his conclusion Dumas [1924, p. 1121] formulates that the unity of the 25 authors consisted in the rejection of ontological speculation. << CJ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
