The Tendency in Empiricism - Essay Example

Empiricism Introduction The empiricists in general have tendencies which contrast with those of the rationalists. Empiricists hold that all the material for knowledge, our ideas or concepts, and all knowledge of actual matters of fact, as opposed to logical or conceptual truths, must be derived from, or are reducible to, aspects of our experience: features of the information provided by the content of our senses and introspection. Empiricists deny that it is possible to know by reason alone the nature of what exists; rather, the nature of what exists can be known only through experience. We should reject as meaningless ideas or concepts which cannot be specified as corresponding to any possible experiences. We should reject knowledge claims concerning matters of fact about the nature of the world which are not supportable by the evidence of experience. This leads to a tendency among empiricists to emphasize that the limit of human knowledge and imagination is bounded by the limit of our experience. Empiricists reject the rationalist claim that it is possible to come to know by a priori reason alone the nature of an intelligible real world inaccessible to experience that stands beyond appearances. The empiricist may argue that concepts (such as substance), and the terms that express them, are meaningless or else must relate to some possible experience, since concepts and terms get their meaning by reference to some possible experience, but a world beyond experience cannot be a world that might possibly be experienced; in either case it is not possible to use meaningful concepts to talk of a world beyond possible experiences. The tendency in empiricism is also to deny the existence of natural necessity: necessity is a property only of logical relations between concepts, or of logical relations between ideas or thoughts, not between things or events in the world whose existence, nature and connections are all contingent; such natural contingent connections can be discovered not by reason, which can establish only necessary truths and necessary connections, but only by experience. Empiricism is inclined to argue that there are two exclusive and together exhaustive types of proposition. (a) Propositions whose truth, logically speaking, can be known merely by understanding them, or by deductive reasoning alone, independently of the evidence of experience: truths of reason. (b) Propositions whose truth, logically speaking, cannot be known merely by understanding them, or by deductive reasoning alone, but which depend on the evidence of experience: truths of fact. All propositions which tell us anything about the real or actual world are truths of fact. Propositions stating matters of fact cannot be known to be true merely by our understanding them, or by our deducing them from other propositions known to be true by the understanding alone; if we can know them to be true at all, they must be known through consulting experience. It should be noted that the distinction is not the genetic one of how we come to have, acquire, or understand these different sorts of proposition, but a logical question concerning on what, once acquired or understood, the truth or falsity of a proposition depends, and on what knowledge of the truth or falsity of a proposition depends. If the truth or falsity of a proposition depends only on the meaning of the terms in it, then it is an a priori proposition whose truth or falsity can be known a priori by reason alone independently of empirical evidence. If the truth or falsity of a proposition does not depend only on the meaning of the terms in it, then it is an a posteriori proposition whose truth or falsity can only be known a posteriori by empirical evidence, not by reason alone. (Frederick Copleston, 1964, 54) The basic contrast between rationalism and empiricism is an argument about the extent and nature of what truths it is logically possible to know a priori by the understanding independently of experience, by intellectual intuition and pure logical reasoning alone, and what truths it is logically possible to know a posteriori by the senses, by experience and observation alone. The rationalist argues that certain things can be known with certainty to be necessarily true about the nature of reality, what exists, by a priori reason alone, even if such truths refer to a reality that lies behind appearances. This the empiricist denies, arguing that claims to knowledge of truths concerning the nature of reality or the actual world must seek their justification, if such justification is possible at all, in experience; a priori reason alone cannot reveal the real or actual nature or existence of the world. Reason alone can give knowledge only of what is necessary (that which must be because its denial is contradictory), impossible (that which cannot be because its assertion is contradictory), and possible (that which may or may not be because its denial is not contradictory), but not what is actual among what is merely possible or contingent (not impossible and not necessary). If the premises of a valid deductive argument are true, then the conclusion must be true. A deductively valid argument is one in which to assert the premises and deny the conclusion would be a contradiction. Conclusions can be validly deduced from premises independently of the evidence of experience; but if the conclusions are factual, then such deductions must involve factual premises which can be known to be true not by reason alone but only by the evidence of experience; without the evidence of experience any factual conclusion of a deduction is at best hypothetical and not yet known to be true. The spectre raised by empiricism is of two exclusive and together exhaustive sets of truths: one set is necessary, certain and known a priori, but says nothing about the actual nature of the world; the other set is contingent, not certain and known, if at all, a posteriori, but can say something about the actual nature of the world; this undermines the search for necessary and certain knowledge about the actual nature of the world by leaving all truths about the actual nature of the world both contingent and not certain. Main Body The fundamental tenet of modern empiricism is the view that all non-analytic knowledge is based on experience. Contemporary logical empiricism has added to it the maxim that a sentence makes a cognitively meaningful assertion, and thus can be said to be either true or false, only if it is either (1) analytic or self-contradictory or (2) capable, at least in principle, of experiential test. According to this so-called empiricist criterion of cognitive meaning, or of cognitive significance, many of the formulations of traditional metaphysics and large parts of epistemology are devoid of cognitive significance--however rich some of them may be in non-cognitive import by virtue of their emotive appeal or the moral inspiration they offer. Similarly certain doctrines which have been, at one time or another, formulated within empirical science or its border disciplines are so contrived as to be incapable of test by any conceivable evidence; they are therefore qualified as pseudo-hypotheses, which assert nothing, and which therefore have no explanatory or predictive force whatever. The preceding formulations of the principle of empiricism and of the empiricist meaning criterion provide no more, however, than a general and rather vague characterization of a basic point of view, and they need therefore to be elucidated and amplified. And while in the earlier phases of its development, logical empiricism was to a large extent preoccupied with a critique of philosophic and scientific formulations by means of those fundamental principles, there has been in recent years an increasing concern with the positive tasks of analyzing in detail the logic and methodology of empirical science and of clarifying and restating the basic ideas of empiricism in the light of the insights thus obtained. Empiricism employs the principle of economy to eliminate all metaphysical entities. Thus, the immense growth of empirical science and the great and tangible benefits brought to civilization by applied science have given to science that degree of prestige which it enjoys, a prestige which far outweighs that of philosophy, and still more that of theology; and that this prestige of science, by creating the impression that all that can be known can be known by means of science, has created an atmosphere or mental climate which is reflected in logical positivism. Positivism is the place to start, for it has exercised enormous influence over sociology's understanding of its explanatory task (Halfpenny, 1982). Logical positivism has made large contributions to the position, which is, nevertheless, indecomposable. A fresh perspective in philosophy, though derived, may be something more than the sum of its parts. The prospects of philosophy are richer in possibilities than the history of its actual accomplishments would indicate. This view is reinforced by the dichotomy between those who teach philosophy as the account of a completed subject and those who counsel despair with regard to its achievements. The standpoint taken here represents neither, for by reacting against both ways of terminating inquiry we find ourselves still faced with a range of alternatives. Any philosophy would be as thin if it did not come out of the past as it would be sterile if it did not point toward the future. The finite ontology is entitled ontological positivism. A word of explanation is in order. It is impossible to escape from a philosophy once its dictionary has been deeply accepted, that is, once thinking on a given topic will be instinctively in certain words. To employ Kant's terminology, for example, would mean to swing within the orbit of epistemologically-founded ontologies, however much they might differ from Kant's own. But where Kant wrote a transcendental epistemology, we need a non-transcendental ontology. The use of the term, ontology, has already been explained. Positivism, then, means logic grounded on empiricism. Logical positivism means empiricism grounded on logic. Ontological positivism means an ontological theory grounded on the proper relations between logic and empiricism. Post-modernism, social network analysts adopt a realist ontology, viewing social structures as real entities (Keat and Urry, 1982, pp. 128-29). Benton shows the relationship of philosophy to sociology "to a critical discussion of positivism, both as a philosophical theory and in its effects on sociological theory" (Benton, Ted. 1977). The position advanced here is the same distance from transcendental metaphysics as it is from that radical empiricism which admits of no metaphysics. Yet it is not merely a compromise; indeed, it is not a compromise at all but profoundly opposed to both positions. A limited metaphysics, answerable to empiricism as well as to logic, is something new. A philosophy should be sufficiently broad to provide for any changes in empirical science. But this would not be so if philosophy were to go beyond science to make its own assertions (of necessity nonempirical) about the empirical world. If ontological positivism has been influenced by empiricism, it has come no less under the spell of recent studies in the foundations of mathematics, and thus is answerable to logic. The suggestiveness of mathematics for metaphysics can hardly be overestimated. Moreover, we do not escape metaphysics by calling it meta-mathematics, as it is now becoming fashionable to do. The mathematicians condemn the philosophers on grounds of vagueness. The philosophers criticize the mathematicians for the status of their free-floating postulates. The main tenets of logical positivism, which was a strong-willed and confident synthesis of empirical and analytic philosophies that promised nothing less than to rid philosophy and the positive sciences of all traces of speculative idealism and metaphysics. By the mid-1930s it was evident that such claims were unrealistic, and over the next twenty years a more cautious and moderate positivism, logical empiricism, emerged, one which nonetheless was able to offer a fairly complete and formally pleasing account of the nature of scientific enterprise. If such an animal existed, a 'representative logical empiricist' of the mid-1950s might offer the following characterization of the structure, nature, and function of science and scientific theories. The logical positivists must be kept separate from their more circumspect followers has not always been noticed by critics of 'positivism'. The worst of such critics select various extreme statements made by logical positivists, easily refute them, and then claim to have shown that modern positivism cannot be maintained. Such exercises are of little value and, worse, add confusion to topics already sufficiently complex to warrant clarity from discussants. "Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to humankind is that of science grounded in observation." (P Halfpenny, Positivism and Sociology, 1982) It is also believed that logical positivist position are materialists, in the sense that they all lack belief in any spiritual reality. For there are logical positivists who are believing Christians. These would, however, lay emphasis on belief: they would say, I think, that they "believe" though they do not "know" that there is, for example, a God. I am rather doubtful myself if a logical positivist can consistently be a theist at the same time; but it appears to be an empirical fact that there are people who are both, whether consistently or inconsistently. One is not entitled to say, then, that " logical positivist " and "materialist " are identical. Nevertheless, even those logical positivists who are believing theists or Christians are influenced by the common persuasion that it is science alone which can provide us with factual knowledge. In any case the existence of logical positivists who are prepared to make an act of faith in realities, the existence of which they do not think can be verified, does not alter the fact, or what appears to me to be a fact, that the soil out of which has grown the mentality favorable to logical positivism was prepared by that development of the empirical sciences which is characteristic of the modern era. Positivism is, in large part, a reflection of that mentality. On the other hand it helps to intensify and strengthen that mentality. In regard to logical positivists who are theists or Christian's one may remark that it is always possible to rise above one's philosophy, just as it is possible to sink below one's philosophy or one's religious creed. I do not, however, wish to give the impression that, in my opinion, logical positivism can be dismissed as being simply the ideological reflection of a certain type of mentality fostered by what some people like to call " bourgeois civilization." There is more in logical positivism than that. If one tries to discern the connections between philosophies and factors which are not purely philosophical, and if one tries to indicate the influence of the latter on the former, that does not mean that one is unable to raise the question of the truth or falsity of the philosophies concerned. And it is quite obvious that men of acute intellect, possessed of a real power of philosophic thought, would not adhere to a philosophic movement or method unless they considered that there were good philosophic reasons for doing so. It would be quite illegitimate to suggest that all logical positivists were frivolous individuals playing a mere game or delighting in scandalizing the theologians, metaphysicians and moralists. It is important, then, to ask now it is that gifted philosophers can subscribe to a philosophy which might well appear to render practically all philosophy, at least in the traditional sense, superfluous. After all, even if the spirit of " bourgeois civilization " is favorable to the growth of positivism, it is possible for philosophers to free themselves from the influence of that spirit; and it must be supposed that if a considerable number of philosophers associate to a greater or less degree with logical positivism the reason why they do so is not simply that they succumb, in a quasi-mechanical fashion, to the spirit of their milieu. They must at any rate rationalize in some way their surrender to that spirit; and if we find among those who belong more or less to the ranks of the logical positivists some who are by no means hostile, or even indifferent, to spiritual realities, it is only common sense to conclude that they do not accept logical positivism without what seem to them to be good reasons for doing so. I want, then, to indicate how, in my opinion, it comes about that serious philosophers can subscribe to a philosophy which rules out a great part of what has been traditionally included in philosophy. The usual way of presenting logical positivism is first of all to make a distinction between analytic propositions and empirical or synthetic propositions. The former are said to be certain, but not informative, in the sense that they do not give information about the world or existent things. For example, if I say, " If p entails q and q entails r, p entails r," I am simply illustrating, by the help of symbols or variables, the meaning of logical implication. Similarly, if I say, " Given a Euclidean triangle, the sum of its three angles is equal to 180 degrees," I am not stating that any thing which could properly be called a Euclidean triangle actually exists; nor is it necessary, in order that my statement should be true, that any Euclidean triangle should exist. I am simply stating what is necessarily implied in the notion or definition of a Euclidean triangle. Indeed, all systems of formal logic and all systems of pure mathematics consist, so to speak, in the unfolding of the implications of certain definitions and premises. The pure mathematician does not state anything about the existent world: if we want to know what system of geometry, for example, " fits reality " or is useful for a specified purpose in science, we have to turn to the mathematical physicist or astronomer, i.e. to the applied mathematician. All the propositions of formal logic and pure mathematics are thus said to be "analytic" and purely " formal." They are sometimes said to be " tautologies," in the sense that they simply state the formal implications of certain definitions and premises. To say that formal logic is " formal " is a tautology; and to say that all pure mathematics is formal and give no information about existent things is to say something which seems to me perfectly reasonable. This view would certainly be confirmed if Bertrand Russell's view of the relation of mathematics to logic were correct. Secondly, the fact that the logical positivists accept the view that the propositions of formal logic and pure mathematics arc analytic and certain means that one has to make a reservation if one wishes to speak of logical positivism as " sheer empiricism." J. S. Mill tried to show that mathematical propositions are inductive generalizations from experience and that they are not certain; but the logical positivists very properly reject Mill's view in favor of Hume's, though they do not express their view in precisely those terms which were used by Hume. (D.J.O'Connor, 1964) However, if one leaves on one side their view of formal logic and pure mathematics, one can say that the logical positivists maintain a "radical empiricism." In my opinion, this empiricism is at once the strength and the weakness of logical positivism. Empiricism is always in a strong position, since it is only reasonable to accept the position of Locke, that all our normally acquired knowledge of existent reality is based in some way on sense-perception and introspection. Locke did not, of course, rule out metaphysics: indeed, in his own mild way he was a metaphysician. But he insisted, in a certain famous passage of the Essay, that "all those sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing here," in, that is to say, the impressions of sense and reflection on our mental operations. The empiricism of Locke is an adequate account of human knowledge; but I certainly think that it is a prima facie reasonable view. What Locke did not realize, however, and what later empiricists did realize, was that the principles of empiricism could be turned against the metaphysics which Locke accepted. "The strength and appeal of logical positivism are due, in large part, to the fact that it seems to take empiricism seriously; and empiricism, though by no means comprising the whole of the British philosophical tradition, is certainly congenial to the British mentality". (D.J.O'Connor, 1964, 54) If one accepts empiricism, it would seem that one is compelled to ask, in regard to any existential statement, what it means in terms of the data of experience. For example, if the idea of " cause " is formed in dependence on experience, or, to put it another way, if the term " causality " denotes a relation which is given in experience, the question arises what it is that we experience which gives rise to the notion of causality or what " causality " means in terms of the data of experience. Does reflective analysis show that we speak of a causal relation between two phenomena when we have observed one phenomenon regularly following another phenomenon in such a way that the appearance of' the latter enables us to predict, with a greater or less degree of probability, the appearance of the latter If so, then "causality " is a term which denotes a relation between phenomena, a relation of regular sequence enabling us to predict. But, if this is what causality means, if, that is, it means a relation between phenomena; it does not mean a relation between all phenomena and something which is not a phenomenon. It may be that we naturally tend to extend the use of the principle of causality and apply it outside the sphere of the relation of one phenomenon to another; but this use cannot be theoretically justified, if the causal relation means precisely a relation between phenomena. This phenomenalistic analysis of causality makes hay, of course, of a considerable part of classical metaphysics. If we try to use the principle of causality to transcend phenomena, we are, if the foregoing analysis were correct, simply misusing language. I do not myself think that the metaphysician, when he speaks of " cause," means the same thing as the positivist: in fact, when they discuss the notion of causality, I think that they are often arguing at cross purposes; but, if one minimizes the activity of the mind and the reflective work of the intellect, and if, pressing the principles of empiricism, one tends to interpret the meaning of our ideas in terms of " sense-data," the phenomenalistic analysis of causality will appear eminently reasonable. What is more, this analysis gains support from the fact that scientists, for many purposes at least, can get along quite well on the basis of such a view of causality. If a physicist speaks of infra-atomic indeterminacy, what he means is that we are unable to predict the behavior of electrons in certain connections. If, then, all he means by causality is regular sequence, enabling us to predict, he is entitled to say that the principle of causality does not " apply " in this connection, provided that he has good reason for thinking that the unpredictability in question is one " of principle," whatever that may mean. This would not, in my opinion, in any way affect the metaphysical principle of causality, which, as such, has to do with existence rather than behavior; but my point is that the claim of the phenomenalistic analysis of causality to be a fully adequate analysis may easily appear to gain support from empirical science. And, in this sense, it may appear that empirical science lends support to the ruling out of metaphysics of the classical type. A further point is that the relation of finite to infinite being cannot be of exactly the same type as the relation of dependence of one phenomenon on another: the former is, ex hypothesis, unique. To raise the question of the use of terms, or the problem of language, in this connection, as the logical positivists do, is thus a legitimate procedure. However, with the more rigorous type of logical positivist one is unlikely to enjoy any such plain sailing. Some would say, I think, that if I make the statement, "If God exists, there is order in the world," then all I mean by saying that God exists is that there is order in the world. That is to say, the meaning of the original metaphysical statement is identical with the meaning of the observation-statement or observation-statements derived from it. Frankly, this seems to be simply false. To state that a being exists which is responsible for order is not the same as stating that the order exists. Another way of tackling the metaphysician is to ask him what "difference "his metaphysical statements make. For example, if the metaphysician states that absolute being exists, he may be challenged to say what difference it makes to the world whether an absolute exist or not. The world remains the same in either case. Now, I think that one can detect in this attitude the influence of empirical science of which I have already spoken. It is assumed that the function of a scientific hypothesis, for example, is to predict future possible experience. The conclusion is then drawn that metaphysical statements, to be significant, must fulfill a like function. Here we are faced again with the influence of the Zeitgeist, of which logical positivism is, in part, a reflection. In. the face of this attitude the metaphysician could, I suppose, attempt to meet the demands of the positivist. More probably he would protest that his statement that absolute being exists was not meant to predict anything but to explain something, namely the existence of finite beings. His opponent will, of course, ask him what he means by explanation, and will challenge the validity of the metaphysician's "principles " or intuition, as the case may be. But at this point we move into a sphere of discussion which does not involve logical positivism as such. The challenge to the validity of metaphysical "inference" is not pecular to logical positivism; and a discussion of this challenge would carry one much too far a field. Progressivist because the crisis of civilisation could be solved by re-establishing a scientifically based supra-individual moral order to relace the deposed authority of the Catholic Church." (P Halfpenny, Positivism and Sociology, 1982) Conclusion In conclusion, I must say that the strength of logical positivism lies in its empiricism. Owing to psychological and epistemological facts, the problem, for example, of the meaning of metaphysical language is a real problem; and it is just as well that it should be brought to the forefront. On the other hand, it is, I think, a great weakness in logical positivism of the more rigorous type that it is so closely associated with the influence of a certain mental attitude characteristic of our industrialized and technocratic civilization. In our own country it is extremely difficult to escape the influence of this mental climate; and I cannot help thinking that this is, in part, the reason why many of us who would not subscribe to logical positivism feel none the less a certain sympathy for it. But, if human culture is not to descend into an and wilderness of materialism, it is important to remember that there are other levels of experience and knowledge than that represented by empirical science. Moreover, the problems which are of the greatest ultimate importance for man are among those which are stigmatized by the logical positivists as pseudo-problems; and this is a fact which does not encourage one to suppose that logical positivism is an adequate philosophy. Happily, there have always been, and doubtless there always will be, people who concern themselves with these problems. A culture from which such problems had been banished would scarcely be a human culture. Work Cited R. Keat and J. Urry, Social Theory as Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 128-29. Benton, Ted. 1977 . Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Halfpenny, P Positivism & sociology: explaining social life Allen & Unwin 1982 Frederick Copleston, A history of western philosophy, 9 vols. (New York: Image Books, 1964) D.J.O'Connor (ed.), A critical history of Western philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1985, first pub. 1964) Read More