Re: [Marxism] What is wrong with positivism?

[Haines Brown <brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  On 8/2/07, Haines Brown <brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> >That was once a tendency in bourgeois sociology, but it collapsed
> >along with positivism.
> 
> What exactly is wrong with positivism? Isn't positivism a kind of
> materialism? (Sorry about my ignorance here).

Good question, which I can't help but address although I'm hardly
qualified to do so. There seem to be four issues involved: a) A
definition of positivism; b) What is wrong with positivism?; c) What
has been its ideological function; d) Is it now dead and why? This is
a lot, and so I'll try to keep things short and sweet.


What is positivism

A development of the Enlightenment outlook associated with Auguste
Comte and which prevailed in the philosophy of science until
challenged after World War II. It suggests that our only real
knowledge is scientific knowledge, and truth derives from a
methodology that gives primacy to observables (phenomena) and their
relations. These observables are considered to be the only real
"facts"; one can't acquire knowledge of causes, origins and
purposes. This view is sometimes called "scientism" because of its
focus on the scientific method.

Aren't science and materialism good things? Well, yes, of course, but
this tells us little. For one thing, the term materialism is
ambivalent. For example, it can mean a physicalism (which was embraced
by positivism but is contrary to the scientific consensus today), or
it can mean ontological monism (with which all scientists would agree
today, at east as far as reliable knowledge is
concerned). "Materialism" originated as a counter to idealism. It was
victorious long ago and is no longer an issue except in some esoteric
philosophical debates over modalities.

As for science, most people the world over would say that
science/technology is a good thing in the sense that it represents
human empowerment, which can be argued to be a good in itself as a
necessary condition of progress. Of course, it is an empowerment to do
both good and ill, but that's a political issue. However, even simple
empowerment has in recent years been criticized because it is
necessarily connected with environmental dissipation (Second Law of
Thermodynamics ["You can't get somethin' for nothin']). While the
Marxist notion of contradiction implies that our dissipation of the
environment is necessarily accompanied by a rise of new possibilities
that can be actualized if accompanied by a change in social structure,
at this point I don't know how and so am forced to be a bit
pessimistic on the issue. That is, beyond some short term bandaids, I
don't know how we can exercise every more power without suffering from
the resulting degradation of our environment. 

More to the point, if we assume that a humanity's ability to control
its own destiny is a good thing, then science in principle is also
good. For most of the world's population, technology is its principle
hope for improvement. Science is also the only universal language in
our world. It is our principle way to acquire truth and prmote
wellbeing. But such a defense of science per se does not in any way
validate the kind of values associated with positivism.


What's wrong with positivism?

There is no question that positivism is dead in the philosophy of
science. It is no longer the philosophy that is supposed to underly
scientific practice (it never was, but that's another issue). In
support of this, let me recommend Richard Boyd, Philip Gasper, and
J. D. Trout, The Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, MIT, 1995). This is
a synaptic and comprehensive survey that represents the consensus
in the philosophy of science at the time of its writing. It is really
quite excellent. 

I'm inclined to see the 1980s as the turning point at which positivism
finally died and alternatives came to take its place (but I've no
reason to assume anyone would agree with this dating). What replaced
it are a) scientific realism, b) neo-Kantian social constructivism,
and c) post-positivist empiricism. The authors of the text cited above
suggest that these three together represent a new consensus, but I
suspect they may be optimistic, for these three seem contradictory to
me. I hope that that scientific realism (incorporating constructivist
elements) will become the consensus in the next decade or two (and I
optimistically see Marxist philosophy reviving because it its original
close association with realism and recent Marxism's association with
social constructivism).

So what was wrong with positivism? One thing is its being wedded to
the hypothetico-deductive method. School kids were long taught that
this is the one and only legitimate scientific method. That is
nonsense. It is not much carried out in practice, and it is irrelevant
in the "evolutionary" sciences (geology, meteorology, cosmology,
evolutionary biology, human history, etc.), where an abductive method
must be used. It is argued that all sciences in fact to some extent
use the abductive method and its implied realism. Part of positivism's
problem is its associated verificationism theory; it simply does not
stand up. Popper's falsificationism may be popular, but it has little
impact on the philosophy of science because of its obvious
problems. There's no generally accepted way in which positivism can
justify or verify its conclusions.

Another thing wrong with positivism is its failure to explain
anything. While it is commonly held that an association of an event
with a covering law represents an explanation, there is good reason to
doubt that. General laws are a generalization of our experience and
give us some confidence in predicting the future. This instrumentalism
has been extensively criticized. On the other hand, both the
scientific realist and neo-Kantian social constructivist positions do
offer real causal explanations. The former in terms of unobservable
causal potencies; the latter in terms of social determinations. Unless
science can offer causal explanation, it never really empowers us.

Another problem with positivism is its being wedded to a naive
phenomenalism (sometimes called a naturalism, although I'd prefer that
word to retain its validity). This phenomenalism has been entirely
discredited. Just as all scientists in practice are realists, their
understanding of phenomena makes them constructivists. Phenomenmalism
has lost any merit in contemporary philosophy of science, and it is
not the view of practicing scientists.

Yet another criticism is the tendency to isolate the natural sciences
from other fields of knowledge and to appeal to mechanics as the model
of science in general. The new discoveries of physics in the 20th
century, such as general relativity and the Bell Theorem have clearly
demonstrated that the presumptions of positivism cannot claim
universal validity, which was a cornerstone of positivism, and its
privileging astract or general truth over particular and concrete
truth has alienated social scientists and makes it of little use for
practicioners of the evolutionary sciences.

 
What has been the ideological function of positivism?

I see that I need to be brief, which is an excuse to come out with
some questionable generalizations, I know ;-)

Positivism has its roots in the Enlightenment, which was the ideology
of the European bourgeoisie in the Age of Bourgeois Revolution. In
retropect, it seems positivism is the Enlightenment gone beserk ;-) 

Positivism was first articulated in a comprehensive manner by August
Compte. Compte reached his peak before the mid-19th century, at a time
when the bourgeoisie was consolidating its power. His personal
background was bourgeois, and he went to the Ãcole Polytechnique in
Paris, which was a major source of bourgeois ideology (republicanism
and progress). He wrote a defense of positivism in support of a reform
of bourgeois society (1822).

One weakness of positivism was its objectivism, for its method
precluded knowledge of the self and the relation of self to the world
or any social construction of reality. This objectivism served an
ideological end, for it validated property as a self-sufficient
objective entity. An aim of the bourgeois revolution was to sever
property from traditional moral, ideational and legal constraints to
make it an autonomous commodity (e.g., enclosure movement) so that it
could be privately possessed and exchanged. Marxism on the contrary
sees property as being caused by society's relation with nature and
not as a thing in itself.

The remarkable scientific achievements toward the end of the
nineteenth century tended to legitimate the bourgeois state and big
capitalists. For example, tycoons open to criticism from the yellow
press bought respectability by donating huge telescopes (Yerkes) or
funding scientific scholarly projects (Oriental Institute). I suspect
NASA long served that function in the USA, although today people have
a very ambivalent attitude toward the state and science.
   
The operationalism associated with positivism when carried over to
politics becomes the source of ideas such as those of Leo Strauss at
Chicago and the neo-conservativism he inspired. It arrogantly rejects
the fetters of (irrational) working-class mass democracy on the state
and sees state action as being legitimate if it brings the citizenry
security and prosperity. I see neo-conservatism as the dying gasp of
positivism, although I don't know whether anyone would agree with me
here.

   
Is positivism now dead?

Well, I guess I've sort of already answered this. However, I answered
it in terms of the philosophy of science, not in terms of popular
consciousness, and perhaps I should say something about that.

Teachers in K-12 (the first twelve grades in the US) treat the
scientific method associated with positivism (hypothetico-deductive)
as holy writ. This is because an education major is so demanding that
future teachers never learn much of anything about the subject they
will eventually teach, and science in their hands becomes a
caricature. For example, the "Two Cultures" divide of C.P. Snow still
persists, and so most historians still see science in terms of
scientism and therefore reject its relevance. By having an excuse to
ignore science, their work looses explanatory power beyond short range
causal explanations embedded in narration. I'm sure to raise hackles
with this point, but my aim is not to criticize historians, but to
suggest that positivism is not entirely dead outside the philosophy of
science.

And as I suggested above, positivism continues an implicit existence
in the Machiavellian globalism of U.S. foreign policy. These policies
may well be dying, but not yet.

Positivism perhaps also exists in the minds of those who embrace
consumerism and need material possessions to feel good about
themselves. This is a difficult argument to justify, but in many areas
of life, people have reason to sever the relationship of things to
society and to moral values, and to the extent such behavior is
abnormal, it can be said to be implicitly positivist. But don't ask me
to prove this; it is intuitive.

Well, sorry to go on at such length, but you raised an interesting
question that I couldn't resist.

Haines Brown





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