there's no such thing as positivism

[James Farmelant]

On Fri, 1 Jan 1999 15:00:16 -0500 (EST) Rakesh Bhandari
<bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU> writes:
>Looking through the discussion of the Frankfurt School critique of
>positivism in Christopher Bryant's Positivism in Social Theory and
>Research, I had the following questions.
>
>1. religion
>It may be that statements about the existence of God are not 
>verifiable
>and thus meaningless. But it seems to me the wrong strategy to 
>prohibit
>talk about the existence of God. Best to engage religious people in
>dialogue so as to reveal the contradictions and absurdities entailed 
>by
>the belief in the existence of god. That is, we may need more talk 
>about
>god in order to weaken religion, not no talk as mandated by positivist
>canons. 

Concerning the thesis that religious language is cognitively meaningless.
David Hume defended a similar view in his _An Inquiry Concerning Human
Understanding_  back in the eighteenth century.  In the nineteenth
century, British atheist, Charles Bradlaugh had asserted: "I know
not what you mean by God; I am without the idea of God; the word
"God" is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation."
In the twentieth century, as Rakesh notes it was the logical positivists
who formulated the verificationist critique of religious language
as part of a larger critique of metaphysics.  For the positivists,
statements to be meaningful either had to be empirically verifiable,
analytic (such as propositions of logic or mathematics) or be
self-contradictories.  The positivists contended that theological
and metaphysical statements fit into none of these categories
and so were without cognitive meaning.


Even after the fading of logical positivism there have continued
to be a number of defenders of the verificationist critique.  Thus,
Antony Flew in his essay "Theology and Falsifiability" replaced
the verifiability principle with the principle of falsifiability and
he then proceeded to find theological statements wanting on the
grounds of their not being falsifiable.  Kai Nielsen has defended
an atheistic position on the basis of a verificationist critique
as has Michael Martin in his  _Atheism: A Philosophical
Justification_.  Martin defends the verificationist critique of
religious language as lacking in cognitive meaning.  However,
he recognizes that many people including many atheists have
been unwilling to accept the verification theory of meaning.  So,
Martin then attempts to show that if we stipulate for the sake of
argument that theological statements may be meaningful, they
must then (after exhaustive analyses) be false.  So the statement
that "God exists" is meaningless but if we insist that it is meaningful
then we must conclude it to be false.  In that sense at least he
would agree that we probably would still have to as Rakesh
recommends engage religious believers in dialog so as to expose
the contradictions within their views.

Returning to the subject of the rejection of metaphysics  by
the positivists.  It should be pointed out that they thought it
to have politically progressive consequences.  Back in
the 1920s and 1930s , Austria was sliding towards a
kind of clerical fascism, so the critique of theology had
definite political implications.  Likewise, the leading philosopher
in the German-speaking world then was Martin Heidegger.
The positivists especially Carnap (and Ayer) like to cite
his writings as prime examples of assertions that they deemed
to be literally nonsensical.  The fact that Heidegger became
a supporter of National Socialism, for the positivists brought
out the connection between what they condemned as woolly-
minded philosophizing and support for fascism.  Otto Neurath,
the Marxist within the Vienna Circle attempted to link the positivists'
critique of metaphysics with the Marxist critique of ideology.

>
>2. universals laws as inapplicable to the historical world
>
>I agree with Horkheimer's criticism here but as Grossmann reminded us,
>Richard Jones was able to undermine the universality of Ricardian rent
>theory by intenstive study of India, Persia and China. Jones knew 
>nothing
>of the Hegelian dialectic. Grossmann called attention to the detailed
>discussion of Richard Jones in Theories of Surplus Value. Of course 
>Jones'
>research would have to be updated, and the whole idea of the Asiatic 
>mode
>of production, reconsidered in light of new evidence and debate among,
>e.g., R S Sharma, Harbans Mukhia, Irfan Habib, Lawrence Krader, 
>Brendan O
>Leary, etc. 
>
>3. unobservables.
>
>I like Bryant's formulation:
>
>" The exclusive concern with the oobservable in the positivist 
>conception
>of science has its origin in the rejection of metaphysics. The 
>positivists
>were right to have rejected the timeless ideal character of the forms 
>and
>essences which are supposed to underlie phenomena, it is argued [by 
>the
>Frankfurt School], but it does not follow that, because *these* 
>concealed
>forms are chimera, all structures and proceses which underlie 
>observable
>phenomena are chimera. Ahistoricity and concealment should not be
>confused, and the validity of the positivists' objection to the first 
>is
>no guarantee of their objection to the second. On the contrary, the
>critical theorists conclude, one must always remain alive to the
>possibility that there are historically limited structures and 
>processes
>which generate phenomena but whose existence can only be inferred. The
>extraction of surplus value in the capitalist mode of production, for
>example, is analysable in these terms." p, 121
>

In recent years many Marxists have turned towards some form
of scientific realism as the best philosophy for grounding Marxism.
Among its appeals is that it seems to retain many of the strengths
identified with logical empiricism without the pitfalls.  Justin
Schwartz is an advocate of this position amongst others.  For
these people scientific realism can overcome the kinds of
pitfalls that Bryant and the Frankfurters perceive in logical
positivism without in turn descending into the kind of
wooly-minded philosophizing that the Frankfurters seem
prone.

		Jim Farmelant
>yours, rakesh
>
>
>
>

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