d-m-c at worldnet.att.net wrote:
> >such as? i don't know of any self-declared sociologists who don't have a
> commitment
> >to a positivist or empiricist view - care to name some?
>
> There are a few: Norman Denzin, Steven Seidman, and some others whose
> names escape me at the moment.
>
> >more importantly, exactly
> >what is this critique of positivism that logical positivists have made?
>
> Yes, i've quite forgotten all this stuff, it seemed so utterly irrelevant
> at them time; care to remind Jim?
The classic critiques of positivism were W.V. Quine's attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction, N.R. Hanson and Thomas Kuhn's critique of theory- neutral observation, many attacks on the verificationist theory of meaning e.g the verification principle is not itself empirically verifiable. Wilfred Sellars attack on the notion of a "given". Hilary Putnam's critique of the fact/value distinction.For an overview see _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature_ by Rorty. While these writers may have have been influenced by positivism they were not positivists at the time they made these critiques.
The classic statement of positivism in social science is Milton Friedman's mid-fifties paper "A Theory of Positive Economics" or something like that. Basic point: the content of the assumptions is irrelevant as long as the model yields predictions. The positivist theory par excellance in the social sciences is neoclassical microeconomics. Micro theory has crept into all the social sciences through the work of people like David Gauthier, Richard Posner, Jon Elster, J.Maynard Smith, Harsanyi and Russell Hardin. There's lots of work on the positivism in social science question. My favorite is Martin Hollis/Ed Nell _Rational Economic Man_ and Hollis _the Philosophy of Social Science. What's the old saying? Neoclassical economics; you have to be smart enough to understand it and stupid enough to believe it.
Sam Pawlett.
>
>
>
> >> To sociologists 'positivism' means roughly the same thing as scientific
> >> objectivity. Which is automatically suspect.
>
> Well, no. There are many different versions of positivism and of the
> positivism that sociologists reject. For instance, I know of one fellow
> who thinks that it's just the idea that we can look and see what's out
> there. For others, positivism is the claim that there must be an absolute
> dissociation between the logic of discovery and the logic of justification.
> Others are simply out to reject the notion that there is a unity between
> natural and social science. Now, I'm hazily recalling Hempel's concession
> speech re that topic, but I do think that he clearly adhered to the
> ultimate possibility that everything could be reduced to physics. Btw,
> there are a number of sociologists in the US who proudly proclaim their
> positivism, Randall Collins is one who comes readily to mind. Oh and
> Jonathan Turner.
>
> >no one has claimed that facts are 'arbitrary verbal constructs'. if
> you're thinking
> >of saussure, then this is about the relation between the signifier and the
> >signified, nothing to do with facts, unless you somehow - in your peculiar
> >vocabulary -
>
> Yeah....and wasn't Saussure trying to create a science out of semiotics.
> And honest to good red blooded Science?
>
> >> But lo and behold! Were did we learn such things? Why, from the logical
> >> positivists themselves. It was not Adorno or Horkheimer who coined the
> >> phrase 'anti-essentialism' as a pejorative rejection of objectivity, it
> >> was Karl Popper.
>
> Oh and btw I seem to recall that Horkheimer did refer to Popper's critique
> as useful to his own. Horkheimer seems to have been rejecting the attempt
> to reduce justification to the process of empirically testing theories.
> For Horkheimer, "If the truth of the pudding is in the eating, then the
> eating is still in the future" (paraphrased) He was rejecting Popper's
> 'plaints about politics and science, though again it's been a long time.