Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
> Beating on "positivism" is beating a dead horse, if logical empiricsim
> is meant--at least in philosophy.
>
i am not entirely sure you are right, especially since there is no
clean line of separation of philosophy from other fields. the
motivation underlying many of today's science anti-science debates
(including the science wars that we started out discussing), on
the scientistic side, is, i suspect, a positivist one. i will
agree that in philosophy the death of positivism has been loudly
proclaimed, similar to, i suppose, the celebration of the end of
platonism during the time of the positivists.
> There are affinities between W's Tractarian views and the LPs, but W was
> no positivist even at this point. He was, btw, sympathetic to Communism.
> Russell's Logical Atonomism also has affinities to LP, but is a quite
> distinct view. Though no Bolshevik, indeed a critic of Bolshevism,
> Russell was a radical socialist, and a militant,
> put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is actvist his whole long life.
the politics of wittgenstein's involvement and differences with the
vienna circle are well documented but his influence on the group is
unquestionable. russell and many other mathematicians, scientists
and philosophers of the period actively argued against positivism.
("atonomism" above i guess is a typo on your part?).
>
> 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).
>
> The biographical facts I have mentioned above suggesr that thsi may be a
> mistake.
>
i think that hinges on what one calls the "left". perhaps the
political left, socialists and marxists, found great utility in
positivism. however, if one were to include relativists, and
humanists of a particular kind (russell might be one, but here i
include anyone who wished to uphold diversity in knowledge and
ways of life and deny absolute authority to experts), indeed a
lot of the "left" has despised positivism. this i would suggest
is again illustrative of the quarrels of the academic left.
pure opinion follows:
personally i would see the left as the intellectual left and the
humanitarian left and it is the latter that has (imho, rightly,
as scott says) problems with positivism, behaviourism, etc. this
humanitarian position is a double-edged sword, it seems, since
it attempts to uphold the integrity of the individual (by
denying her reduction to measurable parameters) but plays right
into the hands of the personal responsibity argument of the
right. the positivist would (rightly?) respond, as dawkins does,
that describing something in the most exact manner possible,
while leaving entirely alone guesses about "true nature" etc
(in fact, denying meaning to such guesses), they emphasize our
capability for action - to change what we do not like (dawkins
of course departs a bit, since we could read him to suggest
that the selfish gene is the "true nature" of humans).
>
>> 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.)
>
> This is ignorant on two counts. Neither K nor the LPs thought any such
> thingh. K thought that we had lots of empirical knowledge, and that it
> was only through the action of the kind that we did. The LPs also
> thought we have lots of empirical knowledge; they just denied that there
> was other kinds of knowledge, such as metaphysical knowledge. Here they
> followed Kant. And it is a rash person whoa ccuses K or the LPs of not
> having thought of an obvious point.
>
it does seem like there is a lot of confusion in mixing up the
hume/berkeley empiricist influence on kant, for kant's thought
itself. i would agree entirely that the positivists would have
only responded that it is meaningless to pose the question or
posit other forms of knowledge of things and phenomena.
>>
>> 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".
>
>
> Rubbish. The LPs thought that ethics had "emotive" rather than
> "cognitive" meaning, that it wasn't true or falsa, but correct or not.
> You confuse their denunciation of traditional philosophy and religion
> with their views of ethics.
>
i would agree entirely (apart from the "rubbish" part ;-)).
the criticism of positivist ethics (or explanation of morality) is,
i think, that it continues the atomistic and reductionist approach,
(and if i guess right, tends to push them towards self-interested
agents and selfish gene theories) and many have argued against this
reductionism (lewontin as mentioned earlier, but also philosophers
like searle, in an entirely different context, w.r.t "higher-order
properties" such as "consciousness", and feyerabend, a relatvist of
sorts, and interestingly someone whom searle tried to kick off of
the uc berkeley faculty, and so we bring it back to the quarrels of
the academic left ;-)).
["the philosophy of science" - editors: boyd, gasper, trout -
contains some interesting papers on related matters, including a
bit from schlick, and later day reductionists like dennett.
schilck's piece is particularly relevant to this discussion, since
he addresses the development of positivism from comte and addresses
the variations which come under the name].
> It's stupid to suggest that Popper only believed his ideas to win
> friends and influence respectable people. He was a right winger, as it
> happens, but he offered real arguments for his views....
popper was, by all accounts, a windbag and i would point to PKF
who calls him "an insignificant puff in the positivist teacup"
(popper was PKF's teacher and some have questioned PKF's
motivation behind criticism of popper, but popperians like imre
lakatos have themselves backed away from his positions). of course
what the man was is of no relevance, but the debate is quite alive
in the philosophy of science as to whether popper's theories of
science, despite their great popularity among the scientists of his
time, are/were naive at best (certainly i am not qualified to
critique popper, so i must emphasize that these are not my
opinions). i respond only to suggest that there has been some
significant opinion that to some extent agrees with scott's
description of popper - enough to refrain from calling that view
stupid. but what do i know, i am stupid too!
scott:
>
>> 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.
>
while positivist reductionism leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as
does their savage attack on metaphysics, i am not comfortable to
condemn them altogether. in fact, i find their attack on platonism
"a good thing".
--ravi
