Re: [Marxism] What is wrong with positivism?

[Haines Brown <brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:59:48 -0400 Haines Brown <brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> writes:
> > 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.
> 
> I am inclined to think that this runs two issues together, namely
> the issue of whether science (especially natural science)
> constitutes the only genuine form of human knowledge and the issue
> of whether the positivism as a philosophy of science is an adquate
> analysis of how science works.  One could subscribe to the first
> thesis while rejecting the second one, and vice versa.  In the past
> lots of people embraced the positivst analysis of science while
> still holding to belief in metaphysics or theology (i.e.  the
> Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain seems to have done this).

You are right to note the distinction, but the real sticking point is
just what is meant by "science". One definition seems roughly to be
any coherent body of thought that claims some truth value in relation
to the world (no mention of method or verification). Positivism
certainly had something more specific in mind than this, and it seems
to have assumed that its particular vision of science was the only
real knowledge. That's what gives "scientism" such a bad rep, and
unfortunately for some people that serves to damn science altogether
 
> > 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),
> 
> I don;t know about that.  I think that in the academic world today,
> physicalism is by far the most common outlook among philosophers of
> mind as well as among neursocientists.  You see very few defenders
> of the psycho-physical dualism that Descartes had defended in the
> 17th century and which had been embraced by Karl Popper and John
> Eccles in the last century.

Yes, agreed. Unfortunately I assumed an overly constrictive monist
definition of the term physicalism in which all things real are
empirically describable. In neuroscience it seems to suggest that
conscsiousness is an emergent property of matter, which is monist, but
I gather that there ia a dualist physicalism. Incidentally, I was
surprised to hear that Popper was Cartesian. 

> > 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.
> 
> I think the Straussians would disagree with you on that point.
> Strauss, as I recall, proclaimed himself to be an enemy of
> positivism in the social sciences.

You may well be right. I don't know Leo Strass's work first hand. The
problem may not my associating Strauss with operationalism, but my
association of operationalism with positivism. I associated them on
the basis of a shared empiricism, and obviously, as you illustrate,
one can be an operationalist without being a positivist.

Thanks for your other elaborations and corrections.

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM

         
        

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