Positivism

The

Demise of

Positivism

An allegory for the fate of positivism

During the Russian Revolution, the received account is that the Czar and all his family died after being taken prisoner.

But rumors persisted that Princess Anastasia survived and lived to a ripe age in hiding.

Presumably she changed her name, but those close to her would have known her true identity.

Once a Romanov, always a Romanov.

The Parallelism.

It has been claimed by many that a philosophical assumption, POSITIVISM,was dominant during the second half of the 19th century.

However, it was believed to have a destructive influence on the conceptions of nature of science. As a result, many researchers in education and social sciences were in turn influenced by this erroneous view of science.

Luckily, however, positivism eventually sickened and died.

But rumors persisted about the positivisms continued healthy existence.

Just like the Romanovs, although, many have died, one might have survived but found it healthier to change identity

Before we proceed just some

clarifications

What is a philosophical assumption?

All theories and researches are based on some underlying assumptions about reality.

Provides the framework for which man can understand the world.

Provides the premises by which man can discover truth.

Philosophical Assumptions

Ontological Assumption What is the nature of reality? Is reality singular or multiple?

Epistemological Assumption What counts as knowledge? Where does knowledge reside?

Axiological Assumption What is the role of values? What is the place of value?

Methodological Assumption How knowledge is arrived atMeans of knowing

What is positivism?

Labels ofof Positivism

1.Comtean-type positivism

Auguste Comte (1798-1857) is the founding father of sociology and has been known for the scientific worldview and philosophy he called positivism

He tried to explain the history of society by using scientific methods and found a common denominator among the sciences, which he called the law of three phases.

- Comte believed that scientific method could be applied to human affairs, including the study of morals

At this phase people use myth and supernatural entities, such as gods, angels and souls to explain and understand natural phenomena.

Theological or Fictitious Stage

Although at this point events are still explained by unseen forces, they are no longer anthropomorphized as gods and take more abstract or philosophical forms, such as Aristotle's concepts of essences or the existence of hidden purposes in all things.

Metaphysical or Abstract Stage

At this point, there is no recourse to invisible entities or hidden structures. They are replaced by acute observation of facts and cause and effects with precise mathematical principles, all of which end up giving humanity control over predicting and eventually manipulating nature and society.

Scientific or Positive Stage

- Comte argued that sciences focus on observable, objectively determinable phenomena

- He regarded all sciences as being related, and as forming a sequence that has developed historically from mathematics, through astronomy, the physical and then the biological sciences to sociology

In the scientific stage, the scientist is in power and creates what Comte called sociology, a study of society that is based on scientific facts and precise descriptions and theories. Both superstition and religion are said to give way to a rational and naturalistic approach to the world, a kind of scientific religion of (and for) humanity.

"Foresight of phenomenon and

power over them depend on

knowledge of their sequences,

and not upon any notion we may

have formed respecting their

origin or inmost nature." John Stuart Mill (Auguste Comte and Positivism)

2. Logical positivism (or consistent empiricism or logical empiricism)

- Developed in Austria and Germany in the 1920s (but base of the movement is in Vienna)

- Members of the Vienna Circle came from different scientific backgrounds

- Was never marked by unanimity of opinion there were many active but friendly disagreements

A. Marked by a great hostility towards metaphysics

Logical positivists wanted to expunge metaphysics from science

B. Adopted the verifiability principle of

meaning.

Something is meaningful if and only if it is verifiable empirically by observation via the senses.

A statement which cannot be verified is held to be automatically invalid and meaningless.

C. What will count as a satisfactory verification?

Verification had to be in terms of simple, rock-bottom, elementary, direct and indubitable descriptions of sense experience.

D. Logical positivists were not realists with respect

to the status of theoretical entities

Subatomic theories (protons, electrons or quarks

Laws of nature

Universal generalization of the form all X are Y (its impossible to check on all members of the class X)

Many of the logical positivists were led to take a non-realist stand

several became instrumentalists (the view that a concept or theory should be evaluated by how effectively it explains and predicts phenomena, as opposed to how accurately it describes objective reality)

-Behaviorists favored operationalism and have been hostile to abstract theorizing in the sciences

3. Behaviorism

Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the

prediction and control of behaviorJohn Watson

-Logical positivism is type of empiricism, but not all types of empiricism are positivistic

4. Empiricism

So is positivism

really dead?

Peter Halfpenny writes:

And even if in its simpler philosophical forms it is dead, the spirit of those earlier formulations continues to haunt sociology, In a full range of guises

Which aspects of positivism died, and how?

Some of the four positions have died, but others are still alive in one form or another.

Bits and pieces of them have managed to escape death

1. Comteanpositivism as a general position it is no longer espoused, but like an old soldier it faded away rather than died

-Application of scientific inquiry into social science

- Scientific inquiry is a normal everyday inquiry, including solving a moral problem

- Some social scientists regard their discipline as being irreducible to some more fundamental science (Comte resists any reduction of the social to some other level)

2. The verifiability principle of the Logical positivism suffered the same fate as the Elephant Man it became contorted monstrosity that choked to death under its own weight

Problem with what was regarded as meaningful

Problem with testability and verifiability

Popper wrote:

A further and less interesting point was the sheer absurdity of the use of verifiability as a meaning criterion: how could one ever say that a theory was gibberish because it could not be verified? Was it necessary to understand a theory in order to judge whether or not it could be verified? And could an understandable theory be sheer gibberish?

3. Descendants of behaviorists still flourish calling themselves neo-behaviorists or cognitive behaviorists

They no longer avoid reference to inner psychological causes and events, but rather they construe these so as to allow empirically detectable consequences (in other words, in much scientific practice a weakened form of the verifiability principle lives on)

Albert Bandura writes:

Because some of the inner causes invoked by theorists over the years have been ill-founded does not justify excluding all internal determinants from scientific inquiry With growing evidence that cognition has causal influence on behavior, the arguments against the influence of internal determinants began to lose their force.

4. What happened to empiricism? Is it no longer held that our concepts or knowledge claims are justified in terms of experience?

The point is that it is difficult to deny some role of empirical data or evidence in the growth of human knowledge

Mistaken claims about the death

of positivism

Some of the most boisterous celebrants at positivisms wake are actually more positivistic that they realize or have more in common with the positivists than they would care to admit.

R.W. Ashby wrote:

The logical positivists contributed a great deal toward the understanding of the nature of philosophical questions, and in their approach to philosophy they set an example from which many have still to learn. They brought to philosophy an interest in cooperation. They adopted high standards of rigor And they tried to formulate methods of inquiry that would lead to commonly accepted results.

Thanks

Joane V. Serrano

http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Epistemology_Philosophy.html

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/positvsm.php

http://greatthinkers.suite101.com/article.cfm/comtes_positivism_and_the_hi

storical_phases#ixzz0OPGjSEVt