What is the significance of Positivism on epistemology and current anti-religious trends?

[sidetrack]

This is one of those times where I made the title what it is b/c (aside from asking about Positivism) I wasn’t sure how what to title the thread.

When it comes to appealling to how everything can be explained by science,comes to materialism and there is no place for metaphysics I have a feeling that one of the pillars of that sort of mentality comes from Positivism.

I’ve heard of phrases like legal positivism,historical positivism,logical positivism and scientific positivism. From what I’ve gather the late 18th century French thinker Auguste Comte who is also in a way considered the “inventor” of sociology made it. It is “positivism” not b/c it’s about Pharrel style happiness but b/c it “posits”/established the premise that human interactions can be observed,evaluated and guaged at in a scientific like manner (hence why he’s said to be like the “inventor” of sociology).^1

This diffused into the physical and natural sciences and^2 was kind a major ideological "hype-man"^3 for what Western intellectual thought used to justify movements and actions being done throughout the Industrial revolution. It’s said to have dissolved after the Vienna Circle’s goal were not panning out in the face of Heisenberg’s uncertainity principle, the particle-wave duality of photons and Kurt Godel’s incompleteness theorem

However imo,it continued as the backdrop ethos for Analytic school philosophy which formed at the turn of the last century,became popular in English speaking countries and monopolizes the philosophy of science which ergo (in a round-about way) I’m conjecturing means it’s been a underlying influence on famous publicized contemporary atheists like Sam Harris,Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins and other commentators who pettily seem to make it a duty to want to dismiss religion^4 and be the “top motto” in epistemic communities like within the intellectual culture of scientists.

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But you know what I think this ultimately boils down to?. Common ppl not knowing about the Non-overlapping magisteria plus what is and what is the meaning of epistemology–the philosophy of knowledge. A pivotal ground that has to be set down in the current “information age”,imo.

^1Someone else who’s important to factor in who lived around the same time?. .G.W.F. Hegel and style of epistemology he made . I mention Hegel b/c from what I understand from this nifty video youtube.com/watch?v=w6V_YKn8i9k

Hegel’s idea of “history ending” after a series of “progress” into having a culture’s consciousness become entirely rational is something which seems to resonate with not uncommmonly with ppl who are atheistic on the grounds on scientific materialism

^2 I would not be surprised

^3 A hip-hop phrase :a back-up singer or rapper who makes interjections meant to excite a response. Think the Kanye West to JayZ or the Lil’Jon to whoever he’s starring with

^4 -~- sigh when will ppl learn?,just b/c you think to cold-shoulder metaphysics doesn’t mean that getting rid of spirituality will be as or anymore easy. **NEVER ** think that b/c the modus operandum is emptiness or non-presence that there is no such thing as metaphysics. Something I’ve noticed in Eastern spirituality.

 

[CrossofChrist]

Basically it makes people think the world is self-sufficient, leaving no room for God. He’s irrelevant in this model.

Yet there’s also no room for love and freedom. It’s permeated our culture’s way of thinking so that we can only hold (so they say) as objectively true what we can observe with our senses. De facto atheism must become the norm under a positivist influenced society.

And that’s why it’s antithetical to Catholicism.

 

[Oreoracle]

I think positivism has influenced Catholics and Christians in general precisely by serving as their rival. I do my fair share of complaining about the unscientific sentiments of the religious, but thanks to positivism and similar philosophies, the religious (at least in the West) are now more concerned with science than they have ever been. How many Catholics have tried to find evidence for God? How many have found scientific theories threatening to their religion?

These aren’t the sorts of behaviors one would expect from a group who professes so-called “non-overlapping magisteria”. To the contrary, the religious seem more concerned with a potential overlap than they have at any point in history. The ones who think they have evidence for God rejoice, while the ones who don’t brood and sneer at our culture.

 

[polytropos]

However imo,it continued as the backdrop ethos for Analytic school philosophy which formed at the turn of the last century,became popular in English speaking countries and monopolizes the philosophy of science which ergo (in a round-about way) I’m conjecturing means it’s been a underlying influence on famous publicized contemporary atheists like Sam Harris,Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins and other commentators who pettily seem to make it a duty to want to dismiss religion^4 and be the “top motto” in epistemic communities like within the intellectual culture of scientists.

Positivism does not currently monopolize the philosophy of science. It was big early among analytic philosophers but was abandoned a while ago.

Some pop scientists express positivist statements. (Pop science seems to be a bit out of touch with what is even regarded as the consensus of naturalistic/materialistic philosophy of science. You can see this difference most palpably in the reactions against Thomas Nagel’s recent book Mind and Cosmos. Compare the reviews of pop biologists to those of more reserved naturalists like, for instance, Philip Kitcher.) But most wouldn’t identify it by name (if any would), since the term is no longer respectable. Those expressing positivist statements, when charged of positivism, often try to qualify their remarks or dissociate themselves from positivism itself.

I think Dennett, since he is a professional philosopher, is probably more careful.

Positivism is probably attractive because it’s a manifestation of the old analytic impulse: to say that someone is uttering nonsense, rather than to refute them. But as a theory of meaning it is rather tenuous.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

BDe facto atheism must become the norm under a positivist influenced society.

And that’s ironic, because the same requirement for religion, that it be empirically verifiable, should apply to atheism. That is, atheism, because it cannot be empirically verified, should be as senseless as religion is to the positivist. But as you say, it isn’t. It’s accepted (assumed intolerantly and dogmatically?) as a sensible position to take against religion.

In fact, the Catholic Church has always encouraged scientific thought and has in turn been encouraged by what science teaches when it is rightly taught.

“True science to an ever-increasing degree discovers God as though God were waiting behind each closed door opened by science.” Pope Pius XII

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Positivism does not currently monopolize the philosophy of science. It was big early among analytic philosophers but was abandoned a while ago.

Some pop scientists express positivist statements. (Pop science seems to be a bit out of touch with what is even regarded as the consensus of naturalistic/materialistic philosophy of science. You can see this difference most palpably in the reactions against Thomas Nagel’s recent book Mind and Cosmos. Compare the reviews of pop biologists to those of more reserved naturalists like, for instance, Philip Kitcher.) But most wouldn’t identify it by name (if any would), since the term is no longer respectable. Those expressing positivist statements, when charged of positivism, often try to qualify their remarks or dissociate themselves from positivism itself.

I think Dennett, since he is a professional philosopher, is probably more careful.

Positivism is probably attractive because it’s a manifestation of the old analytic impulse: to say that someone is uttering nonsense, rather than to refute them. But as a theory of meaning it is rather tenuous.

This is all good analysis of the current scene which appears slowly to be evolving away from using evolution as proof that God is an unnecessary hypothesis because empirically unverifiable. In spite of Darwin’s apostles (including Dawkins) who promoted that view (not clear at all that Darwin held it) the ongoing view of physicists from Newton to Einstein was that God is a reasonable source of all the laws that operate the universe.

Even the later Wittgenstein seems to have disagreed with the earlier Wittgenstein.

 

[polytropos]

Even the later Wittgenstein seems to have disagreed with the earlier Wittgenstein.

Well, later Wittgenstein disagreed with early Wittgenstein on a lot of things. Wittgenstein definitely became more resistant to scientism later on, though even early on he wasn’t a positivist really. He denied that he was, anyway, although at other times he seemed to say positivistic things (the last chapter of the Tractatus could be read positivistically: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.”). And the Tractatus spurred the positivist movement.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

spurred the positivist movement.

That’s one of the things about Wittgenstein that still amazes me … that he continues to spur so much interest in his work as a philosopher when he seems to have been bent on the destruction of traditional philosophy. You might call him a victim of the Santayana Syndrome. Santayana and Wittgenstein lived in many respects parallel lives. Each had strong Catholic influences on him that he rejected, yet Santayana welcomed the ministrations of Catholic nuns as Wittgenstein accepted, during the period of his declining health, the prayers of his Catholic friends.

Santayana’s writings float about on a sea of ambiguities, much as Wittgenstein prose leaves one stranded and thirsting for more depth and clarity. Wittgenstein wrote so little that I think Bertrand Russell’s critical assessment (written after Wittgenstein’s death – keeping in mind Russell often disparaged his famous contemporaries after they had died) deserves to be considered insightful if catty.

“The later Wittgenstein seems to have grown tired of serious thinking and to have invented a doctrine which would make such an activity unnecessary. I do not for one moment believe that the doctrine which has these lazy consequences is true.”

 

[polytropos]

That’s one of the things about Wittgenstein that still amazes me … that he continues to spur so much interest in his work as a philosopher when he seems to have been bent on the destruction of traditional philosophy.

It is pretty interesting. Part of the reason is that many philosophers of a more systematic impulse view him as their competition. John Searle said that he mostly reads Wittgenstein these days because it’s like a dialogue, and he generally wants to disagree with Wittgenstein. The systematic philosopher does not want to be told that philosophy cannot rise above ordinary language. (One could argue that Wittgenstein’s thesis ultimately is meta-philosophical or anti-philosophical. But that’s still philosophy. So he’s stuck.)

Then there is the issue that philosophy is not the same after Wittgenstein. There are things to which one must attend. For instance, one can’t always depend straightforwardly on ordinary language to provide an ontology. One also has to be careful about the difference between thinking about the mind consciously; when I try observe what it is like to “intend” something, for example, I will actively and consciously “intend” as though I’m making a mental statement. But that doesn’t mean that all intending is conscious. That is a pretty important point for Catholic moral philosophy, since one of the four conditions for the principle of double effect is that one’s intention must be good. To say to myself that my intention is good is not sufficient for my intention to be good, for some intentions are not detachable from the act. (This is the point of the classic case of a potholer who is blocking one’s way out of a cave. To crush his head is objectively evil, so it cannot be done. But what of moving a rock that will crush his head? The object, moving the rock, is not evil, but here one is unable to move the rock without intending the death of the potholer, so the intention is evil–and this will be true even if one says to oneself while moving the rock, “I don’t want him to die.”)

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Then there is the issue that philosophy is not the same after Wittgenstein. There are things to which one must attend. For instance, one can’t always depend straightforwardly on ordinary language to provide an ontology. One also has to be careful about the difference between thinking about the mind consciously; when I try observe what it is like to “intend” something, for example, I will actively and consciously “intend” as though I’m making a mental statement. **But that doesn’t mean that all intending is conscious. **

Yes, and that gets us to the point of how Freudian psychology might illuminate something about our moral choices.

The norm for committing moral or immoral acts is that we are conscious of doing them. A lunatic who kills someone is in a conscious state, but it’s his unconscious mind that governs the conscious act. Murder has been done, but the murderer is (by lack of rational intention) innocent of murder. Aside from being a lunatic, can a normal person unconsciously intend an immoral act and unwittingly act upon it?

This is not a trick question. I have no pat answer. Maybe no answer at all.

If the question does not make your day, we’ll just forget it.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . can a normal person unconsciously intend an immoral act and unwittingly act upon it? . . .

This is a complicated question.

The first issue has to do with the nature of an unconscious intent:
I am responding on the forums as the result of a number of desires and feelings.

• I have nothing to do at the moment and want to fill the time.
• This is an interesting question and I want to know what I think.
• I want to dialogue with others.
• I want to be noticed, to impress.
  I do not have to think about my motivations, but I am doing so for the purpose of answering the question.

As to the morality or immorality of the intent:
An immoral intent would be related to a need to impress stemming not so much from insecurity and feelings of aloneness, but perhaps pride.

In terms of unwittingly carrying out an unconscious immoral intent:
If I were to post to gloat over the ignorance of those on the forums, I would think that my conscience would kick in.
Writing, the resultant feeling of pride would emerge, and along with this, I believe I would get a sense of shame.
The self reflection would lead me to consider the morality of my purposes, to which I would decide one way or the other to continue.

I could not unwittingly act on an unconscious intent, because the intended result or aim of the act would make itself apparent to me as I formulate the action.

You did stipulate “normal”. Once neurosis (if it still exists these days as a mental entity) is a factor, this would probably change. The person may be somewhat less culpable.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

This is a complicated question.As to the morality or immorality of the intent:

An immoral intent would be related to a need to impress stemming not so much from insecurity and feelings of aloneness, but perhaps pride.

I could not unwittingly act on an unconscious intent, because the intended result or aim of the act would make itself apparent to me as I formulate the action.

You did stipulate “normal”. Once neurosis (if it still exists these days as a mental entity) is a factor, this would probably change. The person may be somewhat less culpable.

Interesting answer! I like the way you think!

Yes, I think pride is so fundamental to the nature of an apologist that he might well not realize he is guilty of preening himself on his intellectual gifts. The sin might be unwittingly committed because it is so habitual and seems a part of his nature. That doesn’t stop making it a sin. What has to be recognized by the sinner is that habitual sin is no excuse for the sinning. That is why the Church speaks of “Examination of conscience” as a process that is to begin before we confess out sins, so that we get in the “habit” of confessing those “habitual” sins, and thereby overcome them.

I hope this doesn’t not seem overly scrupulous, but it does seem to me that some people (and even some societies) can be so steeped in evil that they cannot even smell their corruption.