[Marxism-Thaxis] We May Be Born With an Urge to Help
Take that Social Darwinism. Humans are instinctively social. CB We May Be Born With an Urge to Help By NICHOLAS WADE December 1, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html What is the essence of human nature? Flawed, say many theologians. Vicious and addicted to warfare, wrote Hobbes. Selfish and in need of considerable improvement, think many parents. But biologists are beginning to form a generally sunnier view of humankind. Their conclusions are derived in part from testing very young children, and partly from comparing human children with those of chimpanzees, hoping that the differences will point to what is distinctively human. The somewhat surprising answer at which some biologists have arrived is that babies are innately sociable and helpful to others. ( Some biologists should have been listening to some anthropologists -CB). Of course every animal must to some extent be selfish to survive. But the biologists also see in humans a natural willingness to help. When infants 18 months old see an unrelated adult whose hands are full and who needs assistance opening a door or picking up a dropped clothespin, they will immediately help, Michael Tomasello writes in Why We Cooperate, a book published in October. Dr. Tomasello, a developmental psychologist, is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The helping behavior seems to be innate because it appears so early and before many parents start teaching children the rules of polite behavior. It's probably safe to assume that they haven't been explicitly and directly taught to do this, said Elizabeth Spelke, a developmental psychologist at Harvard. On the other hand, they've had lots of opportunities to experience acts of helping by others. I think the jury is out on the innateness question. But Dr. Tomasello finds the helping is not enhanced by rewards, suggesting that it is not influenced by training. It seems to occur across cultures that have different timetables for teaching social rules. And helping behavior can even be seen in infant chimpanzees under the right experimental conditions. For all these reasons, Dr. Tomasello concludes that helping is a natural inclination, not something imposed by parents or culture. Infants will help with information, as well as in practical ways. From the age of 12 months they will point at objects that an adult pretends to have lost. Chimpanzees, by contrast, never point at things for each other, and when they point for people, it seems to be as a command to go fetch something rather than to share information. For parents who may think their children somehow skipped the cooperative phase, Dr. Tomasello offers the reassuring advice that children are often more cooperative outside the home, which is why parents may be surprised to hear from a teacher or coach how nice their child is. In families, the competitive element is in ascendancy, he said. As children grow older, they become more selective in their helpfulness. Starting around age 3, they will share more generously with a child who was previously nice to them. Another behavior that emerges at the same age is a sense of social norms. Most social norms are about being nice to other people, Dr. Tomasello said in an interview, so children learn social norms because they want to be part of the group. Children not only feel they should obey these rules themselves, but also that they should make others in the group do the same. Even 3-year-olds are willing to enforce social norms. If they are shown how to play a game, and a puppet then joins in with its own idea of the rules, the children will object, some of them vociferously. Where do they get this idea of group rules, the sense of we who do it this way? Dr. Tomasello believes children develop what he calls shared intentionality, a notion of what others expect to happen and hence a sense of a group we. It is from this shared intentionality that children derive their sense of norms and of expecting others to obey them. Shared intentionality, in Dr. Tomasello's view, is close to the essence of what distinguishes people from chimpanzees. A group of human children will use all kinds of words and gestures to form goals and coordinate activities, but young chimps seem to have little interest in what may be their companions' minds. If children are naturally helpful and sociable, what system of child-rearing best takes advantage of this surprising propensity? Dr. Tomasello says that the approach known as inductive parenting works best because it reinforces the child's natural propensity to cooperate with others. Inductive parenting is simply communicating with children about the effect of their actions on others and emphasizing the logic of social cooperation. Children are altruistic by nature, he writes, and though they are also naturally selfish, all parents need do is try to tip the balance toward social behavior. The shared
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Soviet Cultural Psychology
So, phenomenology is psychology. Sounds like quintessential positivism- starting with the individual and trying to derive a fundamental of humans. I see why Husserl is first cousin to the existentialists like Heidegger. They all fall into the bourgeois error of primacy of the individual. Semiotics is fundamentally social because symbols and language are inherently social. Nobody thinks that individuals are born with their own symbol system or language, only the capacity to symbolize or learn languages. CB On 12/1/09, CeJ jann...@gmail.com wrote: While Pavlov might have denied his status as 'pscyhologist', Vygotsky was considered an outsider to the psychological establishment of his nation. He seems in terms of his reading (who he cites anyway) and understandings rooted in the phenomenological traditions (Brentano and after) which gave the world versions of empirical psychology (Brentano, Stumpf), but also gestalt psychology, and the philosophical phenomenology of and after Husserl. In terms of concerns and approaches, the strongest parallels I can find are Merleau-Ponty. In terms of mainstream academia today, his biggest impact has been in American education (they always cite Dewey, Vygotsky and Freire--while Americans dutifully avoid any Marx or Marxism in Vygotsky or Freire) and perhaps, although unknown to most who read them now, 'social semiotics' people, such as functionalist (not Eastern Bloc functionalism) linguistic M. Halladay. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] South American Revolution continues
Uruguay Elects Former Guerrilla as Next President Written by DarÃ-o Montero Monday, 30 November 2009 http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2229/48/ (IPS) - Left-wing candidate José Mujica was elected president of Uruguay with nearly 52 percent of the vote Sunday, seven to eight percentage points ahead of his rival, the right-wing Luis Alberto Lacalle, according to projections by pollsters. Mujica, a former senator and agriculture minister, will take over from socialist President Tabaré Vázquez on Mar. 1, to head the second administration of the leftist Broad Front coalition. The unseasonal heavy rains of the last few weeks, which have forced more than 6,000 people out of their homes due to flooding in different provinces, hardly let up on Sunday, but voters flocked to the polls anyway in this South American country, where voting is compulsory. The mood during Sunday's runoff was much less jubilant than in the first round on Oct. 25, when the Broad Front garnered just over 48 percent of the vote, winning a majority in parliament for the second time in history, but falling short of an all-out victory for Mujica. By contrast, Lacalle's National Party won 29 percent, and the Colorado Party took nearly 17 percent. The National and Colorado Parties, which were founded in 1836, dominated the political life of the country until 2005, when the Broad Front - created in 1971 - won the national elections for the first time ever. Observers consulted by IPS said Sunday's calm was due to the sensation among voters on the left that the runoff was merely a formality, given the large proportion of votes won in October and the projections of the polling companies. However, Montevideo, the capital, exploded in celebrations when Mujica's triumph was announced. Nor will there be any surprises on Mar. 1, when Vázquez hands over the presidential sash to his successor. Despite their very different personalities, no major modifications are expected in terms of the government's economic policy, marked by a strong emphasis on social justice, or its foreign policy, according to political scientist César Aguiar and economist Marcel Vaillant. Despite the contrast between the blunt-talking Mujica, known for his colourful, colloquial expressions, who did not trade in his comfortable casual garb for a sports jacket until the campaign was well under way, and the soft-spoken circumspect Vázquez, an oncologist, there will be no shift in course, as the president- elect himself has repeated over and over during the campaign. If at any point my temperament as a fighter made me go too far in my remarks, I apologise, and tomorrow we will all walk together, Mujica said Sunday night from the platform set up in front of the NH Columbia hotel across from Montevideo's oceanfront drive, addressing thousands and thousands of supporters whipped by the heavy rains and the strong winds coming off the Rio de la Plata estuary. His comments were directed towards the opposition, with which the Broad Front has proposed negotiating policies of state on certain issues above and beyond party politics, over the next five-year presidential term. Here there are neither winners nor losers; all that has happened is that a new government has been elected, said Mujica. The calm was reinforced by the words of Lacalle, who greeted his rival and called on his followers to be respectful of the Broad Front's victory. The president-elect based his campaign on the achievements of the current administration, which included a reduction of the poverty rate to 20 percent from a record high of 32 percent in 2004, and a decline in extreme poverty from four to 1.5 percent of the population. In addition, as Mujica and his running-mate Danilo Astori - Vázquez's former economy minister - pointed out during the campaign, economic growth ranged between 12 and seven percent a year until last year, before the global economic crisis hit, and unemployment fell from 21 percent in 2002 - during the financial collapse in neighbouring Argentina and Uruguay - to just eight percent today. Another major accomplishment was the Plan Ceibal, which made Uruguay the first country in the world to provide a laptop, with internet connection, to every primary schoolchild in the public education system - a programme that will now be expanded to secondary school. In addition, the government carried out a major tax reform aimed at redistributing income by increasing the burden on the middle and upper income sectors. To judge by the campaign, the changes with respect to the current government will be minimal, university professor César Aguiar, a sociologist who heads the Equipos MORI polling firm, told IPS. While Aguiar said that although the president-elect's personality could usher in certain modifications, he added that there will be no radical changes, and that the next five years will be calm. That view, which coincides with those of other experts who spoke to IPS, contrasts
[Marxism-Thaxis] In the Shadow of Hoover
We were discussing this the other day. CB In the Shadow of Hoover Capitolism By William Greider November 23, 2009 While he was in China, Barack Obama made a bizarre declaration that the US government must reduce its budget deficits in order to avoid a double-dip recession. The remark was alarming because it suggests the president may not fully understand the country's economic predicament. Deficit spending is a cure for our troubles, not the cause. If Obama follows through and actually reduces the red ink, the Great Recession could be born again with new fury. In an interview with Fox News, the president said: It is important to recognize if we keep on adding to the deficit, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point people could lose confidence in the US economy in a double-dip recession. Maybe he didn't mean it. Or was merely nodding to Chinese leaders, our leading creditor, who had scolded him for profligate spending. Still, his backward logic gave me a chill. If Obama acts on it, he will be walking in the footsteps of Herbert Hoover, not Franklin Roosevelt, and I fear his presidency could be doomed as a result. I know that sounds too strong and brutally unfair, given the president's energetic vision for the country and his early efforts to stimulate economic recovery. But history is often unfair to leaders who do not get their priorities straight and fail to deliver what they promise. Hoover was the Republican president from 1929 to 1933 and faced a far more dramatic unwinding of the economy after the 1929 stock market crash. In popular memory, he was blamed, somewhat unfairly, for causing the Great Depression. People came to loathe him personally for the repeated pep talks--Prosperity is just around the corner--and Democrats ran against Hoover for many years after. Barack Obama is a towering political talent by comparison, but also has troubling similarities. In an age of limited government, Hoover preached volunteerism and worked earnestly to persuade business to cooperate with labor and do the right thing. Obama's softball approach to the financial crisis reveals a similar reluctance to use government's powers to compel results. Instead of directing bailed-out banks to lend more aggressively, Obama asked them nicely. The bankers blew him off. His economic stimulus was a good start, yet clearly insufficient. If Herbert Hoover was guilty of anything, it was ambivalence and confusion of purpose. Hoover was a very intelligent technocrat who sincerely tried various sound measures to relieve the general suffering. But Hoover never found the will to follow through decisively. He was pulled in an opposite direction by failed market orthodoxy that was [and is] still influential. To his subsequent regret, Hoover heeded the steely advice of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon: Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. In other words, let nature takes its course. Clear away the wreckage and capitalism will heal itself. In the era of big government, Obama is a far more activist president, but he has followed a less brutal version of the same conservative thinking. Pour billions first into restoring the financial system, then it can revive the real economy. That approach was backwards, as nervous members of Congress are beginning to grasp. Like Hoover, Obama is pulled between opposing imperatives. Deficit hawks demand he get control over the budget deficits to restore confidence among investors (those Chinese creditors who buy our Treasury bonds). Bleeding-heart politicians, on the other hand, want him to focus on rescuing the folks (who need jobs and foreclosure relief and can renew consumer demand for businesses). Obama would like to do both, but hesitates to choose decisively. Blaming this on his center-right advisors -- Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, Rahm Emmanuel -- is too easy. Obama picked them. He obviously agrees with their reluctance to go full bore in behalf of the real economy. Geithner and Summers, meanwhile, are taking victory laps for saving the country. Ordinary citizens wonder what they are talking about. Obama should tell them to shut up with their self-congratulations (better still, he should replace them with more imaginative policy thinkers). Piling up more government debt is undesirable and involves risk, but it is not as bad as a low-grade depression that would go on for many years without relief. In this crisis, the United States is astride a fundamental disjuncture that only the federal government can repair by borrowing tons of money and spending it--force-feeding recovery, then cleaning up the balance sheet afterward. The awkward truth about capitalism is the machine does not function unless someone is borrowing money and spending it. The genius of the capitalist system is that it recycles surplus wealth -- savings and profits from past economic activity -- by lending the wealth for new production and consumption. When
[Marxism-Thaxis] Positivism
Positivism For other meanings of positivism, see positivism (disambiguation). Sociology Portal v • d • e Positivism is a philosophy which holds the only authentic knowledge is that which is based on actual sense experience. Though the positivist approach has been a 'recurrent theme in the history of western thought from the Ancient Greeks to the present day' [1] and appears in Ibn al-Haytham's 11th Century text Book of Optics,[2] the concept was first coined by the philosopher and early sociologist, Auguste Comte, in the early 19th century.[3] As an approach to the philosophy of science deriving from Enlightenment thinkers like Pierre-Simon Laplace (and many others), Comte saw the scientific method as replacing metaphysics in the history of thought, and observed the circular dependence of theory and observation in science. Sociological positivism was later expanded by Émile Durkheim, particularly in relation to the conduct of sociological method and experimentation. At the turn of the 20th century, the first wave of German sociologists, including Max Weber and Georg Simmel, rejected the stricter elements of the doctrine, presenting antipositivist sociology. In the early 20th century, logical positivism—a stricter version of Comte's basic thesis but a broadly independent movement— sprang up in Vienna and grew to become one of the dominant movements in Anglo-American philosophy and the analytic tradition. Logical positivists reject metaphysical speculation and attempt to reduce statements and propositions to pure logic. In psychology, a positivistic approach has historically been favoured in behaviourism. The positivist view, however, is sometimes associated with scientistic ideology, and is often shared by technocrats[4] who believe in the necessity of progress through scientific progress, and by naturalists, who argue that any method for gaining knowledge should be limited to natural, physical, and material approaches. Contents [hide] 1 Principles 2 Sociological positivism 2.1 Comte's positivism 2.2 Durkheim's Positivism 2.3 Weber's Antipositivism 3 Logical positivism 4 Further thinkers 5 Positivism in science today 6 Criticism 6.1 Positivists' self-critique 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References [edit] Principles This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009) Positivists are guided by five principles: Unity of scientific method - logic of inquiry is the same across all sciences (social and natural) The goal of inquiry is to explain and predict. Most positivists would also say that the ultimate goal is to develop the law of general understanding, by discovering necessary and sufficient conditions for any phenomenon (creating a perfect model of it). If the law is known, we can manipulate the conditions to produce the predicted result. Scientific knowledge is testable. Research can be proved only by empirical means, not argumentations. Research should be mostly deductive, i.e. deductive logic is used to develop statements that can be tested (theory leads to hypothesis which in turn leads to discovery and/or study of evidence). Research should be observable with human senses (arguments are not enough, belief is out of question). Positivists should prove their research using logic of confirmation. Science does not equal common sense. Researchers must be careful not to let common sense bias their research. Relation of theory to practice – science should be as value-free as possible, and the ultimate goal of science is to produce knowledge, regardless of politics, morals, values, etc. involved in the research. Science should be judged by logic, and ideally produce Universal conditionals: For all conditions of X, if X has property P and P=Q, then X has property Q. Statements must be true for all times and places. clip Stephen Hawking is a recent high profile advocate of positivism, at least in the physical sciences. In The Universe in a Nutshell (p. 31) he writes: Any sound scientific theory, whether of time or of any other concept, should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science: the positivist approach put forward by Karl Popper and others. According to this way of thinking, a scientific theory is a mathematical model that describes and codifies the observations we make. A good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested… If one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is. All one can do is describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time and say what predictions it makes. However, the claim that Popper was a positivist is a common misunderstanding that Popper himself termed the Popper legend. In fact, he developed his views in stark opposition to and as a criticism of
[Marxism-Thaxis] Antipositivism
[edit] Weber's Antipositivism
Main article: Antipositivism
At the turn of the 20th century, the first wave of German sociologists
formally introduced methodological antipositivism, proposing that
research should concentrate on human cultural norms, values, symbols,
and social processes viewed from a subjective perspective. Max Weber
argued that sociology may be loosely described as a 'science' as it is
able to identify causal relationships—especially among ideal types, or
hypothetical simplifications of complex social phenomena.[12] As a
nonpositivist, however, one seeks relationships that are not as
ahistorical, invariant, or generalizable[13] as those pursued by
natural scientists. Weber regarded sociology as the study of social
action, using critical analysis and verstehen techniques. The
sociologists Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tönnies, George Herbert Mead, and
Charles Cooley were also influential in the development of
sociological antipositivism, whilst neo-Kantian philosophy,
hermeneutics and phenomenology facilitated the movement in general.
Karl Marx had long since drawn upon critical analysis rather than
empiricism, a tradition which would continue in the development of
critical theory.
Antipositivism
v • d • e
Antipositivism (or non-positivist sociology) is the view in social
science that academics must necessarily reject empiricism and the
scientific method in the conduct of social theory and research. In
practice, non-positivist (or 'qualitative') research is often coupled
with positivist (or 'quantitative') techniques.
[edit] The concept
In the 19th century the prospect of empirical social analysis was
questioned by various intellectuals, including the Hegelians, and
later by Wilhelm Dilthey and Heinrich Rickert, who argued that the
social realm, with its abstract meanings and symbolisms, is
inconsistent with scientific analysis. Karl Marx died before the major
contributions of Durkheim but nonetheless fiercely rejected Comtean
sociological positivism (despite establishing his own historical
materialist 'science of society'), whilst Edmund Husserl negated
positivism through the rubric of phenomenology.
At the turn of the 20th century, the first wave of German sociologists
formally introduced methodological antipositivism, proposing that
research should concentrate on human cultural norms, values, symbols,
and social processes viewed from a subjective perspective. Max Weber
argued that sociology may be loosely described as a 'science' as it is
able to identify causal relationships—especially among ideal types, or
hypothetical simplifications of complex social phenomena.[1] As a
nonpositivist, however, one seeks relationships that are not as
ahistorical, invariant, or generalizable[2] as those pursued by
natural scientists.
Ferdinand Tönnies presented Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (lit.
community and society) as the two normal types of human association.
For the antipositivists, reality cannot be explained without concepts.
Tönnies drew a sharp line between the realm of conceptuality and the
reality of social action: the first must be treated axiomatically and
in a deductive way ('pure' sociology), whereas the second empirically
and in an inductive way ('applied' sociology). Both Weber and Georg
Simmel pioneered the Verstehen (or 'interpretative') approach toward
social science; a systematic process in which an outside observer
attempts to relate to a particular cultural group, or indigenous
people, on their own terms and from their own point-of-view.
[Sociology is ] ... the science whose object is to interpret the
meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the
way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces. By
'action' in this definition is meant the human behaviour when and to
the extent that the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful
... the meaning to which we refer may be either (a) the meaning
actually intended either by an individual agent on a particular
historical occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate average
in a given set of cases, or (b) the meaning attributed to the agent or
agents, as types, in a pure type constructed in the abstract. In
neither case is the 'meaning' to be thought of as somehow objectively
'correct' or 'true' by some metaphysical criterion. This is the
difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology
and history, and any kind of priori discipline, such as jurisprudence,
logic, ethics, or aesthetics whose aim is to extract from their
subject-matter 'correct' or 'valid' meaning.
– Max Weber The Nature of Social Action 1922, [3]
Through the work of Simmel, in particular, sociology acquired a
possible character beyond positivist data-collection or grand,
deterministic systems of structural law. Relatively isolated from the
sociological academy throughout his lifetime, Simmel presented
idiosyncratic analyses of modernity more reminiscent of the
phenomenological and existential
[Marxism-Thaxis] Bailout prediction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Edward_Griffin CB: I know this guy is a rightwing libertarian, gold bug and all, but I skimmed the second chapter of his book on the Federal Reserve, and it read like a precise prediction from 2002 of the big bank bailout. When I can borrow a copy , I'll copy some of the statements. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Soviet Cultural Psychology
Soviet Cultural Psychology CB: So, phenomenology is psychology. Sounds like quintessential positivism- starting with the individual and trying to derive a fundamental of humans. I see why Husserl is first cousin to the existentialists like Heidegger. They all fall into the bourgeois error of primacy of the individual. You may well be on to something. I think this is why Merleau-Ponty is the greatest heir to Husserl--because M-P could successfully integrate Marxist thinking into phenomenology (or not, depending on your evaluation of M-P, I guess). At least he tried--as did Sartre and de Beauvoir. Husserl is, intellectually thinking, Heidegger's 'FATHER', and Heidegger his wayward son, so to speak. However, I must also point out that Husserl's phenomenology critiqued and rejected the empiro-positivism of his time but also critiqued and rejected types of 'historicism'. Still, Husserl is often quoted as saying something like We [phenomenologists] are the true positivists. A couple more points. My point about phenomenology and psychology is that, starting with Brentano and a handful of figures associated with him, we get both branches of psychology and branches of philosophy. Husserl goes decidedly in the direction of philosophy, away from psychology, although he was interested in the so-called 'crisis'. As did the relatively but criminally obscure Meinong. However, that doesn't mean he moved away from being interested in 'science', since he wanted to give philosophy a scientific basis (a concern of the positivists and Wittgenstein, as well, and not merely a coincidence). Also I would point out here--because it occurs to me--that much of the modern/post-modern 'science' of linguistics is actually phenomenological in its nature. As is emergent concerns around 'cognition' and 'cognitive science'. And the postmos are falling into the same old traps of the crisis when they want to rely on neuroscience to explain all. At any rate, getting back to phenomenology, it seems to indicate that Husserl's project was decidedly a 'rationalist' one, despite the reputation it gets through the distorting post-modern and post-structuralist filters. In research around 'second language acquisition', however, the projectors have never got past naive positivism and behaviourism. CJ See: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/6/6/5/6/p66560_index.html Abstract: Theoretical approaches to modernity (A.D. 1815 onwards) seem to suffer a twofold fate: (a) partial reconstructions of a European past presented as total reconstitutions of the Global present; and, (b) the belief that pre-modernity was dominated by a monolithic, intellectually hegemonic philosophy. While positivism characterizes much of the work of 19th century philosophers such as Kant, Comte, Hume, and Saint-Simon, it is generally accepted that Comte first used the word positivism in the place that the history of philosophy has ascribed to it, however, Kant appears to be more precise about philosophy's method, and therefore is used here to illustrate how modernity reaches backwards into Kantian deontological space: a transcendental space that arises out of a reliance on the human senses (as it leaves impresses in the human mind, Vorstellungen). Kant and Husserl, like Plato before them, assumed truth and value were discoverable within human beings. They were interested in the process and method of uncovering such truth and value, and how these equally modern qualities continue to be vigorously present in the positivist and phenomenological traditions. Briefly, positivism describes the nature of the scientific arrangements that were needed to discover knowledge; human beings became the center of the universe, and replaced religion as the focus of cosmological activity. At the center of Comte's arguments (that ran parallel to Kantian notions of time and space) was the search for proof and evidence: the primary logic for the excavation of knowledge. Phenomenology on the other hand did not view knowledge as a process of discovery as the positivists generally claimed. Rather, phenomenology emphasizes the creation of knowledge phenomena per se at historical points in time rather than a process of discovering knowledge as fixed and immutable assets. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/455564/Phenomenology/68551/Contrasts-with-related-movements# http://www.scribd.com/doc/13008675/Phenomenology-and-Positivism http://books.google.com/books?id=_JsOQAAJdq=husserl+social+worldsource=gbs_navlinks_s ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Positivism
What it has come to mean is, well, basically meaningless--most post-mos without a course in the philosophy of science or a lecture on the Vienna Circle wouldn't even know what it is--or to put it in Vygotskian terms--wouldn't have a conception of what it might be. And even those in the anglo-analytic tradition who think they know what it means wouldn't know much of anything about Comte. On the other hand, identifying it as an existing, evolving meme would would have to say in the social sciences and education, it has come to mean 'naive positivism' which clings to the idea that the only knowledge that is to be got in the psycho-social sense must be got from --not just empiricism-- but from experimental methods. To get even more specific, experiments carried out in universities and government institutions that are written up and published in a handful of publications for each particular field--with interlocking editorships and boards. To deny these rather small number of elite people an almost exclusive claim on 'knowledge making' will get you labelled a crank or at best a 'romantic'. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
