Re: positivism (was Re: "rise of china" and wst)

Boris--

        Since I do not believe that "truth" is accessible, I don't accept
the Kantian phenomenal-noumenal distinction, and I cannot see the denial
of truth claims as a truth claim.  I identify not with Popper but with the
late A.J. Ayer.  So I base no value claims on sensory data or on some
alleged noumenal realm.  What is "good" is whatever people happen to
believe is good.  My hope for humankind is that in due course a consensus
will evolve on the matter of goodness, a consensus based on nothing more
than a will to agree, and a consensus, moreover, that will probably keep
changing as human evolution continues.  

        On a related matter:  when I used the word "prophecy" in my
previous e-mail, I did mean "prediction," not a proclamation of the good
or a condemnation of the bad.  So I see my book not as prediction, but
as, without any claim to truth or divine inspiration, the imaging of what
I believe to be good and bad futures for humankind, given what we know of
human capacity and the environment of the solar system.  Earth, Inc. is a
dystopia;  Red Earth is a utopia;  and the House of Earth is a better
utopia.  Since I would define a "utopia" as a radically better
organization of society than what now exists, not a "perfect" society,
there can indeed be utopias and better utopias.

        I wonder if we're all that far apart?  I have never believed that
postmodernist theory is anything more than a ratification in the most
arcane possible language of three great early-to-mid-20th-century
movements of thought:  atheistic existentialism, logical positivism, and
historico-cultural relativism (= Historismus).

        Warren

On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, Boris Stremlin wrote:

> Warren,
> 
> No offense taken - I was, after all, criticizing your book.  However, I
> continue to disagree profoundly with your characterization of positivism.  
> You are correct in stating that sensory data cannot give us absolute
> truth.  Yet, the very abstraction from truth and its separation into the
> phenomenal and noumenal spheres (what you refer to as "knowledge" and
> "truth") is in fact a truth claim.  As Wallerstein notes in his
> forthcoming edited volume on the structures of knowledge (now under
> construction), the modern world-system is unique in that it has two
> entirely different methods for determining truth - one based on facts, one
> on values.  The difference is based on the imposition of an a priori
> metaphysical distinction onto reality - you yourself have just noted that
> it is virtually impossible to draw a line between aspects of reality where
> laws apply, and those where they don't (and you further note, correctly, 
> that in physics itself the issue is not so clear-cut, either).  Similarly,
> it is impossible to exhaustively define what constitutes observation and
> being observed - these differ from case to case, and, as Knorr-Cetina
> points out, from discipline to discipline.  Hence, the assumption that a
> purely phenomenal knowledge distinct from noumenal truth is possible is
> very much a truth claim. For this, assertion, no better support exists
> than Marx's statement that "one basis for life and another for science is
> a priori a lie" (though in case it is assumed that I am trumpeting a
> particular ideological cause I hasten to add that conservative opponents
> of positivism have said basically the same thing).  Historically, of
> course, positivist claims have hardly remained confined within anything we
> might define as the sphere of phenomena or science (it is enough just to
> look at the Brazilian flag).  And I'm sure I don't need to tell you that
> the Popperian incarnation of positivism (which you seem to favor) was very
> much in the business of making value claims as well. 
> 
> With relation to your claim that your book was intended to be a utopia
> rather than a prophecy, I'd like you to clarify, since prophecy has two
> meanings (only one of them entailing prediction), while utopianism and
> positivism have of course been very intimately linked (the very idea of
> separating the phenomenal and the noumenal involves placing yourself
> outside time and space - that is, in no place - utopia, and in no time,
> where the difference between past and future is irrelevant).
> 
> 
> On Sun, 4 Mar 2001 wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Boris--
> > 
> >     I wasn't laughing at you, believe it or not.  I was entertained,
> > but also enlightened.  In many ways you hit the proverbial nail on its
> > proverbial head.  The whole problem with the futurist endeavor from the
> > get-go has been an incorrigible tendency to project the past into the
> > future.  No matter how many whizzes, bangs, and sharp left (or right) 
> > turns we introduce into our anticipations, the echo of the past is loud
> > and clear.  The last hundred years have included the global triumph of
> > capital (Book the First), a vast experiment (USSR) in a would-be socialist
> > commonwealth (Book the Second), which came unraveled more or less
> > peacefully, and many of the same kinds of technological and cultural
> > exploits imagined for the House of Earth (Book the Third).  So, to that
> > extent, A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FUTURE is the last hundred years transposed
> > into the next two hundred.  If you see it as a work of prophecy.  I don't
> > however.  For me it is an exhibition of utopias, both "bad" and "good."
> > 
> >     But I am not a disciple of Auguste Comte.  I am more of a logical
> > positivist.  The rejection of truth claims is not a truth claim by any
> > stretch of the imagination.  It doesn't say that sensory data can give us
> > truth.  It says that sensory data can give us knowledge, which is an
> > entirely different animal.  And that knowledge is subject to infinite
> > revision as more data come into view and more logics and theories are
> > contrived that enable us to arrange and rearrange the data in more ways.
> > Nor would I have any use for the notion of "laws" once we pass from the
> > observation of inanimate nature into the worlds of life, mind, and
> > society.  Even inanimate nature is so massively complex that I might be
> > reluctant to speak of "laws" if I were a physicist.
> > 
> >     Cheers,
> > 
> >     Warren
> 
>