Dr. Charles Ess - Drury University
I. Comte
O. refers to L.Kolakowski's Alienation of Reason: A History of Postivist Thought (trans. N. Guterman, Doubleday, New York, 1968) and his four criteria of positivist philosophy:
(i) the rule of phenomenalism
(ii) the rule of nominalism
(iii) the rule that denies cognitive value to value judgements and normative statements;
(iv) the rule (or belief) that there is an essential unity of scientific method.
"The positivist, then, emphasises the importance of empirical evidence as the source of knowledge, and would wish to eliminate from science or philosophical discourse any kind of entities that lie beyond the reach of empirical investigation - such as gods, souls, entelechies, essences, or whatever. And in its most thoroughgoing and pure form, positivism subscribes to a phenomenalist epistemology. So according to the positivist view, hypothetical entities such as atoms or genes, that might lie beyond the reach of observational evidence, should be eliminated from the theoretical armoury of science."(169)
[A working definition of phenomenalism: only phenomena (or relations between phenomena) are the objects of the mind's knowledge (see Oldroyd, p. 108)]
Oldroyd has "rule" iii in mind when he writes:
"...they believe it possible to distinguish between facts and values, and maintain that values should be kept out of science. They usually repudiate the claims of traditional theology, and hold that there is no transcendent world of value. Or if there is, it is a matter quite beyond the concern of science. They think it futile to seek to determine the ultimate causes and origins of things. By restricting inquiries to empirical 'matters of fact' - to the determination of the 'laws of nature' or the regularities in the relationships between observable phenomena - they believe that one can have a certain and secure basis for knowledge, and hence for action."(169)
COMTE (1788-1857)
Influenced by utopian doctrines of Saint-Simon, a precursor of the socialist movement.
Comte sees the sciences as logically related and dependent on one another - but while "There was undoubtedly a reductionist tendency in Comte's system...he did not suppose that there would only be need for a single kind of knowledge - that of mathematics - to have a complete understanding of phenomena. Indeed, he specifically denied any suggestion that all might ultimately be explained by one universal law."(170f.)
Oldroyd points out the primary impetus for reductionism - which we can see has something to do with Ockham's razor. If it were possible to "reduce" one branch of science to another - i.e., to explain the laws and theories of one branch of science fully in terms of the laws and theories of another (e.g., biology reducable to physics?) -, a resulting "economy of thought" would result. That is, more of the world would be explained using fewer explanatory entities.
Law of the three stages - -- theological -- metaphysical (philosophical) -- positive
In the positive stage, "...no further inquiry below or beyond the level of phenomena would be necessary or appropriate. The objective of science in its 'positive' stage - the level to which all sciences should aspire - would simply be the exact determination of the laws of nature. 'Theological' and 'metaphysical' modes of explanation should definitely be eschewed, being marks of scientific immaturity."(172)
Notice
1) such a claim seems to involve a value judgment, in contradiction to the claim of positivism to not take up such judgments. In particular, as later material suggests, what is to be valued here is an alleged progress of society towards the industrial/positivist phase which includes an increased social cohesion and rise in altruistic behavior (175).
2) Further - as Oldroyd points out, this prevents us making use of any nonobservable entities, e.g., atoms.
3) Finally - also notice that phenomenalism is the result of an empiricist theory of knowledge. That is, as Hume pointed out, if we attend only to the details of what our senses tell us - then "causality" and other concepts become illegitimate as they point to something above and beyond the sense data. Such a position, moreover, is both
(i) inconsistent, and
(ii) oblivious to Kant. Comte nonetheless maintained that "science was concerned with the discovery of the laws connecting facts, not merely the facts themselves."(173) But the "epistemological problems" Oldroyd alludes to here are just the ones raised by Hume - how do we come to know anything about a "law" as a general, inductive statement, if we are to remain entirely with "the facts?"
"Science, for Comte, could never know ultimate and absolute causes of the innermost essential natures of things. He seems to have supposed that science could only attain an approximate understanding of reality, but he did not work out in any detail an account of the nature of the relationship that obtains between scientific 'knowledge' and the real world that science purports to describe. However, in recognising that knowledge is dependent on the stage of cultural development that has been reached, Comte was, in effect, recognising a social component to knowledge."(174)
In all of this, I suspect we recognize much of our assumptions about the nature of science. At least, I agree with Oldroyd when he says "The various humanist movements of today, though small in active membership, very likely represent perhaps the unspoken metaphysical position of the majority of people amongst Western industrial societies; and they have their roots in nineteenth-century positivist thought."(175)
In particular, the American philosopher of positivism/pragmatism - John Dewey (1859-1952) - is worth notice here. Not only was he an instrumentalist:
"Thought was analogous to an instrument (or tool), which might be well or ill fitted to the function that it was to serve: it depended upon the purposes in view." (taxonomic systems as an example) And this is further tied to nominalism: "'Real essences' could not be revealed by linguistic definitions."(189)
But of primary interest here is his ethics - a utilitarianism which assumes that good = economic growth and well-being as ends-in-themselves. For one thing, what other ethical position would be possible for a positivist? More generally, as Oldroyd suggests, - how descriptive are these assumptions of American culture? (He and I agree: quite.)
II. Russell
Intends to follow out Frege's program of grounding arithmetic and mathematics in logic. Depends on the development of a conception of classes - see p. 216, including a description of Russell's paradox, and the eventual resolution of this paradox with the theory of types (219)
More generally, Russell articulates the assumptions of what eventually became known as logical empiricism:
(i) Analytical philosophy - beginning wtih G.E. Moore, the presumption that "philosophical problems could be clarified (and hopefully dissipated) by breaking propositions down (analysing them) into their 'components,' in order to provide a clarification of meaning."(217) This approach is apparent in his development of a theory of 'denoting.'
(ii) Logical "atomism" - as a corollary to his analytic approach. He presumes that "the structure of the physical world is essentially the same as that of logic or of a logically perfect language. Thus the structure of the world was envisaged as being analogous to the logical structure of Principia Mathematica!"(220) This is the founding assumption of logical empiricism proper.
(Cf. the foundational assumption of the natural sciences - which are the "epistemological paradigm" for the positivists and analytic philosophers: the underlying nature of things is ultimately mathematical/logical/formal/abstract.)
Oldroyd's criticisms of these assumptions generally make the point: they - including the appealing but doomed distinction between "facts" and "propositions" - end up failing. See pp. 221f.