"Positivist" is a dirty word I hear around this site a lot, an insult of the highest order. Yet when I read around, it seems to me to be the idea that predictive theories should be supported by observations.
Do Austrians really not care whether their theories make accurate predictions? Or is there a deeper meaning to that word that I'm missing?
What is wrong with positivism is that it is a performative contradiction. It is a predictive statement that statements cannot be predictive.
The deeper meaning is that one does not need to perform experiments for praxeological statements to be true, yet positivism would say that such statements are useless tautologies or tell us nothing about the real world, etc.
Knight_of_BAAWA:The deeper meaning is that one does not need to perform experiments for praxeological statements to be true, yet positivism would say that such statements are useless tautologies or tell us nothing about the real world, etc.
Snowflake:Well they tell us nothing about the empirical world. For praxeology to hold true in real life you need to prove that human beings are praxeologic agents.Not a hard thing to do, but nonetheless this is what positivism requires.
I don't know what you mean. Positivism, in its traditional form, holds on to the principle of verification, namely that you can translate all 'meaningful' statements into statements about sense data, or immediate observable data. Popper says that statements which cannot be proven false are meaningless, rejecting all axioms. I don't see how this is compatible with Austrian economics whatsoever.
I entirely reject positivism, but most Austrians say that positivism works for natural sciences, but not social sciences.
"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."
Positivism is a philosophy that is against reason in every sense of the word. It asserts that you can only learn things through experience... that is faulty for many things. You don't need to experience something to know it... you just need to know about it. You can learn from a priori too.
Esuric: Snowflake:Well they tell us nothing about the empirical world. For praxeology to hold true in real life you need to prove that human beings are praxeologic agents.Not a hard thing to do, but nonetheless this is what positivism requires. I don't know what you mean. Positivism, in its traditional form, holds on to the principle of verification, namely that you can translate all 'meaningful' statements into statements about sense data, or immediate observable data. Popper says that statements which cannot be proven false are meaningless, rejecting all axioms. I don't see how this is compatible with Austrian economics whatsoever. I entirely reject positivism, but most Austrians say that positivism works for natural sciences, but not social sciences.
Popper wasn't a Positivist. Most Austrians I know are Bayesian fallibilists when it comes to empirical science.
More importantly, Popper doesn't say that statements that cannot be proven false are meaningless, but that fallibility is the demarcation between science and non-science. In his mind, economics would fall more readily under the header 'philosophy' than 'science'.
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I go for a weaker statement of the verification principle: That one has to know *how* to verify the statement for it to have any truth content.This can be done either thru evidence (empirical "truths") or analytical (tautological truths)
Screw popper --> AJ Ayer in Language Truth and Logic is where its at. Though I don't know why they like to hang onto "truth" so much, especially when AJA says that all empirical truths are weak truths...
Snowflake:This can be done either thru evidence (empirical "truths") or analytical (tautological truths)
Yes, but, didn't W.V Quine do away with analytical truths? I don't know any positivists who hold onto the synthetic/analytic distinction.
zefreak: Popper wasn't a Positivist. Most Austrians I know are Bayesian fallibilists when it comes to empirical science. More importantly, Popper doesn't say that statements that cannot be proven false are meaningless, but that fallibility is the demarcation between science and non-science. In his mind, economics would fall more readily under the header 'philosophy' than 'science'.
Interesting, I didn't know that.
Azure: "Positivist" is a dirty word I hear around this site a lot, an insult of the highest order. Yet when I read around, it seems to me to be the idea that predictive theories should be supported by observations. Do Austrians really not care whether their theories make accurate predictions? Or is there a deeper meaning to that word that I'm missing?
In this thread about Critical Rationalism, I try to point out a few problems with Logical Positivism as well.
zefreak: Esuric: Snowflake:Well they tell us nothing about the empirical world. For praxeology to hold true in real life you need to prove that human beings are praxeologic agents.Not a hard thing to do, but nonetheless this is what positivism requires. I don't know what you mean. Positivism, in its traditional form, holds on to the principle of verification, namely that you can translate all 'meaningful' statements into statements about sense data, or immediate observable data. Popper says that statements which cannot be proven false are meaningless, rejecting all axioms. I don't see how this is compatible with Austrian economics whatsoever. I entirely reject positivism, but most Austrians say that positivism works for natural sciences, but not social sciences. Popper wasn't a Positivist. Most Austrians I know are Bayesian fallibilists when it comes to empirical science. More importantly, Popper doesn't say that statements that cannot be proven false are meaningless, but that fallibility is the demarcation between science and non-science. In his mind, economics would fall more readily under the header 'philosophy' than 'science'.
More precisely he called parts of evolutionary biology and microeconomics "metaphysical research traditions". To the Logical Positivists, metaphysics was something to avoid at all costs, but Popper had no such problem. He only liked to keep the metaphysics distinct from science.
Esuric: Snowflake:This can be done either thru evidence (empirical "truths") or analytical (tautological truths) Yes, but, didn't W.V Quine do away with analytical truths? I don't know any positivists who hold onto the synthetic/analytic distinction.
Yes, this is the position that many mainstream philosophers take, but if you take a class in logic they will still teach this analytic/synthetic distinction. Also, mathameticians don't seem like they are going to give it up anytime soon. BTW, you know a positivist?
"I cannot prove, but am prepared to affirm, that if you take care of clarity in reasoning, most good causes will take care of themselves, while some bad ones are taken care of as a matter of course." -Anthony de Jasay
Esuric:Yes, but, didn't W.V Quine do away with analytical truths? I don't know any positivists who hold onto the synthetic/analytic distinction.
Snowflake: Esuric:Yes, but, didn't W.V Quine do away with analytical truths? I don't know any positivists who hold onto the synthetic/analytic distinction. Quine is not the emperor of positivism. There are dumb positivists and smarter ones. Of course I disagree with some positivist theories.
How do you answer the charge that Logical Positivism is self-refuting? Are the tenets of Logical Positivism subject to the verification criteria? If they are, how in principle could they be verified? If they can't, doesn't that mean that Logical Positivism is cognitively meaningless or else is metaphysics (equally bad to people like Ayer).
Positivism of the Vienna brand largely suffered a defeat in Physics at least from the Philosophical interpretation/point of view. The Copenhagen interpretation(it is often referred to by physicists as "realist", don't know if they mean the same thing as the Austrians by the use of the term though) of Quantum Mechanics largely concedes as in Niels Bohr's words: "Physics is not about the Universe, but what we can say about it." This is an important revelation about what can be experienced and cognised from a human perspective. I wish to write an article some time relating many of these strange similiarities between Physics and Praxeology...
Interestingly Ernst Mach, who I recognise was a pretty influential positivist philosopher of science as well as a great physicist in his own right, could never accept atomic theory, thinking it too abstract far removed from experience. Einstein could never accept the Copenhagen interpretation, and this partly motivated his search for a "final theory" that was to dominate his later years.
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Solid_Choke:How do you answer the charge that Logical Positivism is self-refuting? Are the tenets of Logical Positivism subject to the verification criteria?
Solid_Choke:doesn't that mean that Logical Positivism is cognitively meaningless or else is metaphysics