In a message dated 4/26/01 8:22:16 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
writes:
> avi narayan wrote:
> >
> > Carrol Cox wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Anyone have a better definition of positivism?
> > >
> >
> > http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/l/logpos.htm
> >
> > is a good start at logical positivism.
>
> Logical positivism I know (or at least knew quite well 50 years ago).
> The problem is that "positivism" is a widely used curse word, and it is
> its meaning as a curse word that often needs defining.
>
> Anti-positivism is only intelligible interms of the particular
> conception of positivism the anti-positivist is operating from. Very few
> people _call themselves_ positivists today, but many people are (rightly
> or wrongly) _accused_ of being positivists.
>
> Carrol
>
>
Most of the folks attempting to answer Carrol's question about postivism have
been referring to A. J. Ayer, the Vienna Circle and others who were or are
positivists of one variety or another. They might also mention the
Wittgenstein of the "Tractatus"--who inspired the VIenna Circle, and Bertrand
Russell of the "logical atomist" period, who inspired Wittgenstein. But I
think what Carrol is looking for is some definitions and condemnations of
positivism FROM THE LEFT perspective which explain why the LEFT has
traditionally despised positivism (and rightly so in my opinion).
A good place to start on questions like this is the old "Handbook of
Philosophy", adapted by Howard Selsam from the Soviet "Short Philosophic
Dictionary" edited by M. Rosenthal and P. Yudin. (Yes, I know there are more
sophisticated works of this type, including later revisions of this work from
the USSR. But this early work is a good place to start on matters like this
just because it IS shorter, and "less sophisticated". I.e., it often jumps
right to the heart of the matter, and doesn't pull any punches. That is, its
crudeness, partisanship and intemperance is something of a virtue!) Here is
what the 1949 edition has to say about positivism:
"POSITIVISM, one of the most widespread of the anti-materialist currents in
contemporary bourgeois philosophy. Claiming to stand above materialism and
idealism, positivism holds that it bases itself only on 'experience' and
that, consequently, it must reject the attempt to discover the essential
nature of things. In this regard, it takes the position of philosophical
agnosticism (see). However, limiting its concept of experience exclusively to
subjective sensations, it falls into the position of idealism. When it deals
with social phenomena, it tends to explain the evolution of society by the
levels reach in the intellectual development of man, of which the three
principal stages are: the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive, as
asserted in the work of Comte (see), nineteenth-century progenitor of
positivism. Positivism supports the existing order, admits only slow
evolutionary processes, and opposes revolution. At the close of the
nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century all philosophers who tried
to find a place somewhere between materialism and idealism, and to
'transcend' the opposition between these two basic schools of thought, tended
to gravitate to the positivists.
"Lenin in his 'Materialism and Empirio-Criticism' [1908] presents a
thorough-going critique of positivism. After the First World War positivism
was revived in Europe, especially in Austria, and spread to England and
America under the name of 'logical positivism' or 'logical empiricism'."
I would add there there tends to be a fairly strong Kantian odor to
positivism, suggestive of his claim that we can't know the real essential
nature of a thing, the "ding-an-sich", but merely exterior "sense data" (as
Russell put it). For example, we can't know what a tree actually looks like,
since all we "really" come in "contact with" are photons which bounce off the
tree and end up on our retinas. Positivists (and Kantians) assume that the
existence of any intervening MEANS of knowing something precludes true
knowledge of it. (If they really thought about this for a moment they might
realize it implies nobody can ever really know ANYTHING.)
Positivists often oppose theoretical postulated entities, and denounce them
as mere "hypothetical constructs". Or even deny they exist at all, as Mach
did in the case of atoms. (He recanted late in life, but only when the
evidence had long since become overwhelming.)
But it is in the social sphere that positivism really gets totally screwy.
All morality and ethics, for example, is denounced as "metaphysics"--by which
the positivists mean "nonsense". (Ethics is pretty easily explained in terms
of collective interests, and of class interests in class society, but
positivists are completely ignorant of such ideas which arose first among the
great thinkers of the Enlightenment, and were re-formed in class terms by
Marx and Engels.) Instead positivist writers on ethics hold views such as
that moral statements merely express emotions. (E.g., "Murder is wrong" means
"I disapprove of it and you should too.")
Karl Popper, who was strongly influenced by the Vienna Circle, and remained a
positivist of sorts his whole life, took a similar line against the very idea
that a science of history might be possible. He condemned all such theories,
including Marx's historical materialism as "historicism". Of course,
attacking Marx will win you lots of friends and influence in bourgeois
society. Note once again the common thread here though--the dogmatic claim
that scientiific knowledge of various types are "impossible". But since the
bourgeoisie has no coherent theory of history of their own, and since they
cannot possibly accept the Marxist theory that says that capitalism is merely
a transitory stage to history, their only alternative is to argue that NO
scientific theory of history is possible.
Modern bourgeois economics, too, has a strongly positivistic streak. Most
bourgeois economists don't even seriously TRY to explain basic things like
business cycles, and all of them denounce nearly every aspect of Marxist
economics. They tend to focus on narrow esoteric and technical issues, and
deny that a true scientific POLITICAL economy of capitalism is even possible.
The folks in this mail group can give many specific examples of how
positivism manifests itself in establishment economics much better than I
can.
But the fact remains that it is not wrong to point out positivist tendencies,
and condemn them, whether they are in economics or elsewhere. It is true
however that we should all do a better job of explaining just what is wrong
with such views, and not just leave it at the level of perfunctory
sloganeering.
--Scott Harrison
