Mathew Forstater wrote: > Jim, D. writes: > > >Being empirically-oriented is not the same thing as being an empiricist. > > I like to think of it this way: Empiricism is not the same thing as taking > an historical approach. The former carries the baggage of definite > ontological and epistemological commitments that the latter does not. mf ? Wouldn't it be better to say that they carry *different* ontological and epistemological commitments? The assumption that history is real (which of course I share with Mat) or, better, that history *is* reality, seems as much an ontological commitment as the empiricist's assumption that the world is a pile of chaotic data on which the observer imposes an (arbitrary) order. A historical approach does demand (as empiricism does not) that one make one's principles as explicit and conscious as possible. (Lou, of course, is being insufficiently empirical [as opposed to empiricist] himself when he confidently proclaims that certain propositions dealing with matters of fact violate "marxist principle." That is the sort of thing that happens when one oversimplifies the complex relationships of theory and fact. My claim that empiricism is a greater danger (for marxists) than "post modernism" is of course grounded in certain empirical conclusions about the influence of various currents of contemporary thought. Carrol
