CHAPTER ONE: BETWEEN SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS 1. METAPHYSICS AND ANTI‑METAPHYSICS OF POSITIVISM
by Igor Naletov There is hardly any trend or school in Western philosophy that could compare with positivism in the depth and durability of its influence on society, particularly on intellectuals. Since the first half of the 19th century positivism has suffered many ups and downs and the interest in this teaching has alternately risen and subsided. Its founders have had the greatest of triumphs a thinker can dream of and sunk to the depths of the bitterest humiliation and derision that may fall to the lot of an unlucky philosopher. The powerful grip of positivist philosophy on intellectuals' minds and the periodic tides of its universal popularity can only be accounted for by its sincere devotion to, even worship of, science. However biting today's remarks about the destiny of positivism as a philosophical trend, one can hardly question the sincerity of its intentions to enter into a firm and durable alliance with science. Born in the atmosphere of universal ecstasies over the successes of the natural sciences, positivism has preserved till nowadays its romantic faith in the power of experimental investigation, its appeal for realism in cognition and genuine interest in the scientific analysis of everyday experience and language. In the light of contemporary science and philosophy which have gone far ahead in the understanding of the laws of scientific cognition and the effectiveness of the interaction of natural and social sciences a number of its concepts appear now to be naive and sometimes even ill‑matched, the more so as positivism, like any other philosophical trend, assumed different forms in the works of its exponents: John S. Mill earnestly strove for accurate applied knowledge without realising the fatal narrowness of his concept of such knowledge restricted within the bounds of the bourgeois world outlook and system of values; Bertrand Russell hoped to find strict logical rules for solving philosophical problems, including those in the sphere of ethics; Rudolf Carnap made persistent attempts to resolve the growing contradictions inherited from the previous forms of positivism. In positivism, like in many other philosophical schools, one should always distinguish between the ideas of the classics and their followers. The former, representing progressive tendencies in science, can usually be identified, first and foremost, by their profound devotion to the goddess of philosophy and, alas, by sometimes no less profound delusions. Unlike the wholehearted founders of positivism, their numerous mediocre imitators lack the necessary critical spirit of trailblazers in science and, instead of exploiting the success of their forerunners and rising to a higher level, fall to aggravating their shortcomings and debasing their fruitful ideas, For all the delusions of the founders of positivism we cannot but pay tribute to the noble endeavours of such outstanding scholars of their time, scientists in the proper sense of the word as Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap and Ludwig Wittgenstein who did everything possible to bring closer together science and philosophy even at the expense of their personal self‑disparagement. Indeed, there is something unnatural about a professional philosopher contending for self‑destruction of philosophy, its abrogation and dissolution in "positive" scientific knowledge. People usually regard this either as cunning, or as reprehensible folly, and are apt to overlook the possibility of the scientist's utter selflessness in the service of his goddess which goes hand in hand with modesty and complete indifference to scientific degrees, honorary academic titles, priority and material benefits. Such selflessness may induce a true scientist of outstanding erudition and talent to be content with the role of a humble clerk in attendance on an endless flow of scientific papers the meaning of which will always remain unknown to him. His devotion to science may even cause him to assume voluntarily the function of a cleaner of scientific Augean stables and become, so to speak, a scientific scavenger. In the 1830s, when German classical philosophy with its pledges to explain nature by itself, to penetrate the very core of the universe and establish eternal control over its mechanism seemed to be at the summit of glory, the challenge of young positivism and its promise to rid science of quackery, whoever the genius behind it, came as a gust of fresh wind and deserved every respect and recognition. Positivism was indeed a tree planted for the benefit of science and intended to promote its greatness and glory—however bitter the fruit that was eventually born by it. The rapid development of experimental science in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the natural attraction held out to scientists by the empirical methods of research gave rise to an illusion that all problems of natural science and social development could be solved exclusively by empirical means and that the techniques used in the natural sciences should be broadly applied to social research. Practicism and utilitarianism characteristic of the way of life in the developing capitalist countries of Western Europe—Britain, France, later Germany and still later the USA—gradually became a standard of scientific thinking. Referring to this feature in early positivism in the first half of the 19th century one of its founders, Herbert Spencer, said that the wish to possess a "practical science" which could serve the needs of life was so strong that the interest in scientific investigation not directly applicable to practical activities seemed ridiculous. Enthusiasm over the new methods of scientific investigation, naturally, went side by side with growing scepticism towards the knowledge which did not conform to everyday experience, could not be obtained within the framework of the empirical approach or had no direct practical application. Nevertheless, the ideology of positivism contributed to some extent to the development of natural science, particularly experimental investigations, and helped science to free itself from the fetters of the religious world outlook and various speculative doctrines and artificial, not infrequently mystic, concepts and theories. Positivism as an embodiment of this tendency has served as a good purgative. In the 1830s, while still in its cradle, positivism came out with a demand to oust idealistic philosophers from science and subjected idealism and religion to sharp criticism regarding them both a product of the mythological stage in the development of human spirit. According to the positivists, metaphysics had very much in common with theology and differed from it in form only. Both of them represented different systems of world outlook and, as such, were outside the limits of scientific knowledge. Auguste Comte, another founder of positivism, repeatedly stressed the affinity and, in some important, aspects, even the identity of the theological and metaphysical methods of thinking. In his opinion, the basic distinction of metaphysical concepts consisted in regarding phenomena as being independent of their carriers, and in attributing independent existence to the properties of each substance. He considered it immaterial whether these personified abstractions were later turned into souls or fluids. They came from one and the same source and were the inevitable result of the method of studying the nature of things which was characteristic in every respect of the infancy of human mind. This method, according to Comte, inspired originally the idea of gods which were transformed later into souls and finally into imaginary fluids. Comte rejects metaphysics, i.e. everything that goes outside the limits of science (religion, mysticism, idealism, materialism, dialectics, etc.) and proclaims the ideal of positive knowledge and, accordingly, a new philosophy. Yet metaphysics, according to Comte, is not entirely identical with religious thinking. Moreover, it prepares mankind for a transition to scientific thinking. A metaphysical thought is, so to speak, an intermediary between the theological and the scientific ways of thinking and performs simultaneously a critical function in relation to science. Owing to imagination which prevails in metaphysical thinking over observation, the thought becomes broader and is prepared unostentatiously for truly scientific work. According to Comte, another contribution of metaphysics to the emergence of positive science consisted in that it performed the vitally important function of theory until the mind was able to develop it on the basis of observations. Philosophy in its traditional guise is identical with metaphysics. Its existence can only be justified as long as science is unable to solve certain general problems. Hence, philosophy is only destined to pave the way for science and ceases to exist as soon as science takes over. It is only within this brief lifespan, measured off by history, that philosophy contributes to the emergence of science. Its cognitive value is limited to the preliminary formulation of problems. The social task of philosophy consists in attracting the attention of the broad masses, even amateurs in different fields, to these problems, but their solution should be the concern of the positive sciences and narrow specialists. Despite the long evolution of positivist philosophy, this understanding of science and of the relationship of science to metaphysics was shared by all exponents of positivism. The problem of demarcation between science and metaphysics, in some periods just implied, in others posed sharply and uncompromisingly, was one of the key issues in the programme of positivism at all its stages and even the main driving force of its development. In the 1920s, logical positivism, starting from the investigations of the Vienna Circle, continued its struggle against "metaphysics" from the positions of empiricism, though less radical than that of Auguste Comte, John S. Mill, Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius. According to the principle of verification first defined by Moritz Schlick [1 <http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/naletov11.html#1> ] and further generalised by Ludwig Wittgenstein [2 <http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/naletov11.html#2> ] the truth of every scientific statement must be ascertained by comparing it directly with the evidence of the senses. In a later version Alfred Ayer described this principle as follows: "The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability. We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express—that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false. If, on the other hand, the putative proposition is of such a character that the assumption of its truth, or falsehood, is consistent with any assumption whatsoever concerning the nature of his future experience, then, as far as he is concerned, it is, if not a tautology, a mere pseudo‑proposition. The sentence expressing it may be emotionally significant to him; but it is not literally significant. And with regard to questions the procedure is the same. We enquire in every case what observations would lead us to answer the question, one way or the other; and if none can be discovered, we must conclude that the sentence under consideration does not, as far as we are concerned, express a genuine question, however strongly its grammatical appearance may suggest that it does." [3 <http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/naletov11.html#3> ] Hence, empirical verification was assigned a function which went far beyond its possibilities—to appraise the truth‑value of all statements without exception. As compared wilh the previous forms of positivism, the new element here (actually borrowed from Kant) was the division of all statements into two types: analytical and synthetic. Analytical statements were regarded as tautological or identical, similar to those often used in mathematics and mathematical logic. Synthetic statements were regarded as object judgements characteristic of empirical, factual sciences and claimed to be the only statements which carried any new information. Regarding the first two types of statements as being of some scientific significance, logical positivism not only denies all other statements any scientific, value, but considers them simply senseless. If one or another statement does not lend itself to direct verification, it must at least be reducible by logical means, as a theoretical, non‑analytical statement, to a corresponding basic or protocol statement which can be confirmed by direct observation. Statements which are neither analytical nor synthetic are meaningless and subject to elimination from the language of science as metaphysical. The narrowness of the verification criterion induced the positivists to make repeated attempts at its modification. The watered‑down (for instance, Ayer's) version of this criterion admits of both full and partial verification of statements, i.e. of their partial confirmation by empirical data. A theory was needed, however, which being itself in agreement with this criterion, would define more accurately the notion of confirmation, on the one hand, and correspond to the general programme of positivism (construction of the logical language of science) and to the traditions of empiricism, on the other hand. A most significant attempt to develop such a theory was Carnap's inductive logic expounded by him in Logical Foundations of Probability [4 <http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/naletov11.html#4> ] and in The Continuum of Inductive Methods, [5 <http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/naletov11.html#5> ] and then, in an enlarged and elaborated form, in A Basic System of Inductive Logic. [6 <http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/naletov11.html#6> ] A characteristic feature of both versions of his system consisted, first and foremost, in that the logical probability of the meaningfulness of universal generalisations was recognised to equal zero and that there existed a theoretically neutral language of observations. Out of the three phases of inductive inference—the selection of the language, the selection of the statements of this language and the assessment of the degree of confirmation of a given statement by other statements—Carnap focused on none other than the appraisal of the probability of statements relative to the results of the observation (empirical data). As we see, in Carnap's inductive logic the traditional problem of induction undergoes a considerable transformation. The main task of an inductive conclusion is regarded to be the formulation of a probabilistic prognostication of a particular event rather than of a universal assertion. Induction for Carnap is practically any non‑deductive conclusion and, primarily, a metalinguistic statement establishing, on the basis of experimental data, a definite degree of confirmability of a hypothesis. Consequently, Carnap expands the volume of the traditional concept of induction, on the one hand, and, on the other, eliminates the problem of confirmation of universal assertions, i.e. laws, from its content. Rest at: http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/naletov11.html
