On Fri, 13 Jan 1995, Marshall Feldman wrote: > The following list of "strict" positivist doctrines comes from Giedymin, > Jerzy. 1975. Antipositivism in contemporary philosophy of social science > and humanities. _British Journal of the Philosophy of Science_ 26: 275-301. > > 1. Identification of knowledge with science and mathematics. And logic. > 2. Empiricism in the extreme form of either phenomenalism or physicalism, > i.e. the ruduction of science to statements about directly observable > facts and the elimination as meaningless of any sentence that is neither > analytic nor empirical (synthetic in Justin's usage), e.g. of > metaphysics. This is confused. Phenomenalism is the doctrine that so-called external objects are sets of possible or actual experiences. Physicalism is a term which is almost as equivocal as positivism; it might mean that phenomenalism is false because physical objects are physical and not constituted by sets of possible experiences, or that mental entities and properties are really physical ones in some sense or.... The "i.e." is a mistake. "The reduction of science to statements about directly observable facts" does not follow fromn phenomenalism or physicalism as stated. Now the logical positivists thought that it might in principle be possible to reduce science to "observation sentences"--see Carnap's _Die Logische Aufbau der Welt_ from the 20's as the heroic attempt, conceded by him to have failed, but it must be carefully understood that this didn't mean that we we supposed to talk only in observation sentences but rather than that the cognitive content of theoretical claims was supposed to be secured by this in principle possible but in practice impossible reduction. The "elimination as meaningless" of any statement which is not analytical or synthetic is a motivation for the reduction of the sort mentioned in the last paragraph. Note that the LP thought that philosophical doctrines like phenomenalism and physicalism qualified as meaniningless by this criterion (the verifiability criterion of meaningfulness). > 3. The reduction of philosophy to the 'logic of science' and of mathematics. Well, even the LP admitted a place for ethics as the analysis of ethical terms. And of course Hume and Mill, both empiricists and maybe positivists in some sense, had a large place for ethical, social, and political philosophy. > 4. Methodological naturalism ... i.e. the view that the social sciences and > even humanities have basically the same aims and methods as the natural > sciences. I don't know of any positivist who makes such claims about the humanities. Look, the LP were all cultivated individuals with wide humanistic learning. They wouldn't say that the point of writing novels or music was the prediction and control of nature, which they thought was the point of science. > 5. Sociological relativism with respect to norms, in particular ethical ones. Of course not logical and epistemological ones! But again this is too quick. Some LPs who did ethics, e.g., Stevenson, admitted relativism, but not all. Noncognitivists in ethics like Hare are utilitarian absolutists. And of course Huma nd Mill again where no kind of relativists about ethics. > 6. Emphasis on the social value of science and on its practical applications. As opposed to whom? > > Giedymin gets this from Bacon, Comte, and that crowd, the British empiricist, > notably Mill, and the Vienna LP group. From this list, he proposes there are > 64 (=2^6) possible definitions of positivism as the term is commonly used in > social sciences. Probably a vast understatement of the range of positivisms. --Justin Schwartz
