Ismail, you wrote
>I don't accept the methological monism that positivist social sciences promote;
>the social world is an open system and the natural world is a closed system.
>Likewise, I have difficulty accepting the "objectivism" and "indiidualism"
>promoted by positivism and economics methodology..
I don't want to pick up single sentences ore positions, there are quite a lot of different ways
to find out the truths about this ore that.
But I do not share a few assumptions in your posting:
1) I think nature includes mankind and society and is surely not more open ore closed then society.
Spinoza critized those, who treated man as being not a part of nature, who saw man capable of unbounded
freedom (Preface of part III of the Ethica, see http://www.yesselman.com/e3elwes.htm#PREFACE), I think he put it the right way to get a realistic idea of what freedom is.
2) I would not like to polemize in general againt positivism. On the one hand postivists have done quite a lot of good work in the field of logic in the twentys and thirties. (And unlike the Heideggers they were the good guys: Anti -Nazis, like Reichenbach, Neurath, Schlick, Zilsel - ore in Poland Ajdukiewicz and Chwistek.) On the other hand every empiricism is
an advocat of the - as Hegel put it - great truth, that man has to be present in the process of producing
knowledge. But pure empiricism in the sense of pure description can not be and never was the methodology of natu ral
ore social science: There are preconditions of measuring, like space and time, and the dynamical laws
already in Newtonian mechanics are not properties of isolated individuals: gravitation is a relationship between masses.
That's why experiments are indispensable to find out the forces of nature. So not against, but beyond positivism.
3) The idea that "conceptual categories we use to identify and
understand social events are socially and historically determined - in
that sense they precede us/our knowledge of them" seems me to be an exaggeration. We do not only use
old, already prior to our knowledge existing concepts, but we produce new concepts, invent new instruments of
research too. And sometimes we take away the old concepts, because we think them to be not appropriate.
4) I do not want to give methodological differences too much weight in the dicussion of
political economy. Leftists like to ignore mainstream and ricardian and keynesian debates, because they like all lack
the only critical method. But this is tantamount to a quite uncritical attitude, in so far all the mainstream and ricardian
and keynesian positions are untouched by such a abstract critique.
5) Last, but not least: The question of the use of math in econmics is not only a scientific, but it is a social issue.
The access to the necessary knowledge to controll modern technology and planning techniques is quite restricted today.
May be that some kind of ancient communism was possible wit hout modern science. A feasible postcapitalist mode
of production will not. And it will not work with the old division of labour, on the one side the architects, on the other
the construction workers. Architects and the construction workers will have to learn new things - like we have to every day.
Sebastian
http://www.yesselman.com/e3elwes.htm#PREFACE), I think he put it the right way to get a realistic idea of what freedom is.
2) I would not like to polemize in general againt positivism. On the one hand postivists have done quite a lot of good work in the field of logic in the twentys and thirties. (And unlike the Heideggers they were the good guys: Anti -Nazis, like Reichenbach, Neurath, Schlick, Zilsel - ore in Poland Ajdukiewicz and Chwistek.) On the other hand every empiricism is
an advocat of the - as Hegel put it - great truth, that man has to be present in the process of producing
knowledge. But pure empiricism in the sense of pure description can not be and never was the methodology of natural
ore social science: There are preconditions of measuring, like space and time, and the dynamical laws
already in Newtonian mechanics are not properties of isolated individuals: gravitation is a relationship between masses.
That's why experiments are indispensable to find out the forces of nature. So not against, but beyond positivism.
3) The idea that "conceptual categories we use to identify and
understand social events are socially and historically determined=2 0- in
that sense they precede us/our knowledge of them" seems me to be an exaggeration. We do not only use
old, already prior to our knowledge existing concepts, but we produce new concepts, invent new instruments of
research too. And sometimes we take away the old concepts, because we think them to be not appropriate.
4) I do not want to give methodological differences too much weight in the dicussion of
political economy. Leftists like to ignore mainstream and ricardian and keynesian debates, because they like all lack
the only critical method. But this is tantamount to a quite uncritical attitude, in so far all the mainstream and ricardian
and keynesian positions are untouched by such a abstract critique.
5) Last, but not least: The question of the use of math in econmics is not only a scientific, but it is a social issue.
The access to the necessary knowledge to controll modern technology and planning techniques is quite restricted today.
May be that some kind of ancient communism was possible without modern science. A feasible postcapitalist mode
of production will not. And it will not work with the old division of labour, on the one side the architects, on the other
the construction workers. Architects and the construction workers will have to learn new things - like we have to every day.
Sebastian
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