Positivism

         Positivism originated in the British Empiricist philosophers including notably David Hume, although these Empiricist philosophies are of largely antiquarian interest to philosophers of science today.  The French philosopher Auguste Comte founded Positivism in the late nineteenth century. Apart from Behaviorist psychology there is only a residual representation of Positivism today in either science or philosophy of science.  Positivists believe that all sciences share the same methodological concepts and philosophy of science, and their ideas are based on examination of the natural sciences.  This view evolved into the Logical Positivist Unity of Science agenda.  The Positivists are therefore very critical of the Romantics’ introspective mentalistic view of theory and explanation in social science. 
         Positivism enjoyed its widest acceptance in physics during the apogee of Newtonian physics.  Yet the Positivists were critical of Newton’s theory, and their aim was to develop permanent foundations for Newtonian physics in observation by eliminating all of its theoretical components.  Positivism later saw a revival after the First World War as Logical Positivism, which was advocated by a group of physicists and philosophers known as the “Vienna Circle.”  The Logical Positivists wished to imitate the physicists’ use of mathematics in philosophy, and attempted to apply the Russellian symbolic logic to this end.  They were also influenced by the success of Einstein’s relativity theory in physics, which convinced them that physics is becoming more theoretical instead of less theoretical.  Therefore they revised the original Positivist agenda from eliminating all theory to justifying theory accepted by contemporary physics.  The justification was to be accomplished by using the Russellian symbolic logic to relate theoretical terms to observation language, an agenda known as logical reductionism.

 Contemporary Pragmatism

         In the middle of the twentieth century there emerged a new philosophy in the United States that was a reaction against Positivism.  Called contemporary Pragmatism, it is currently the ascendant philosophy of science in academic philosophy in the United States as well as in many other countries.  Pragmatism had an earlier representation in the classical Pragmatists - Pierce, James and Dewey - in the United States, but while some aspects of the classical Pragmatism have been carried forward into the new, the new contemporary Pragmatism is largely the product of philosophical examination of the quantum theory in microphysics developed in Europe the 1920’s rather than a gloss on the classical Pragmatists.  Physicists have offered several ontological interpretations of the modern quantum theory.  Many have accepted one called the “Copenhagen interpretation.”  There are two versions of the Copenhagen interpretation, both of which assert the thesis of “duality”, which says that the wave and particle properties of the electron are two aspects of the same entity, rather then separate entities that are always found together.  One version called “complementarity” advanced by Bohr, says that the mathematical expressions of the theory must be viewed instrumentally instead of realistically, that only the ordinary language used for macrophysics can be used to express duality, and that the terms “wave” and “particle” are complementary because the semantics of the two terms make them mutually exclusive.  The other version advanced by Heisenberg also contains the idea of duality, but says that the mathematical expression is realistic and descriptive, and does not need Bohr’s complementarity.  Basically the two versions differ in their philosophy of language.  Heisenberg’s philosophy of language was due to the influence of Einstein, and it has been incorporated into the contemporary Pragmatist philosophy of language pioneered independently by Quine.
         The Romantic and Positivist philosophies of science have been historically opposed to one another, but in comparison to the contemporary Pragmatist philosophy they are much more similar to one another than to the contemporary Pragmatism.  The contemporary Pragmatist philosophy of science is distinguished by a new philosophy of language, which replaced the traditional naturalistic view of the semantics of descriptive terms with an artifactual view.  The outcome of this new linguistic philosophy is that ontology, semantics, and truth are mutually determining unlike the simpler unidirectional relation found in earlier philosophies including classical Pragmatism.  It thus revolutionized philosophy of science by relativizing the semantics and ontology of language and their relation truth.
         While the contemporary Pragmatism emerged as a critique of Positivism, the Logical Positivists’ emphasis on analysis of language and their nominalist referential theory of meaning have been carried forward into the contemporary Pragmatism, which continues in the Analytic tradition.  The Analytic philosophers took the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, in search of the objectivity they believed lacking in both earlier Positivism and especially Romanticism.  In their linguistic philosophy they adopted nominalism and rejected concepts, ideas, and all other mentalistic views of knowledge.  Their adoption of nominalism was also motivated by their acceptance of the Russellian symbolic logic, in which ontological claims are indicated by the logical quantifier in the predicate calculus.  The ontology expressed by the Russellian predicate calculus does not admit attributes or properties except by placing predicates in the range of logical quantifiers, thereby making them reference subsisting entities.  Thus all predicates are either uninterpreted symbols or logically quantified terms referencing either mental or Platonic abstract “entities.”  Hence the Logical Positivists regard all philosophers as either Nominalists or Platonists.  Some Pragmatist philosophers of science today continue to accept the Positivists’ referential theory of the semantics of language, but this nominalism it is not essential to the contemporary Pragmatism.

 Computational Philosophy of Science

         Philosophers and scientists have long desired to have a “method” of routinizing scientific research, so that progress no longer depends on mysterious intuition or inexplicable genius. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) thought he had such a method, an inductive method, which he set forth in his Novum Organon.  John Stuart Mill (1801-1873) thought he also had such a method that he had set forth as his canons of induction in his A System of Logic.  Neither was successful, but techniques have evolved considerably since their times.  Recently and largely independently of academic philosophy of science, there has emerged a new approach in philosophy of science, which consists of developing computer systems for the creation of new scientific theories.  These computer systems also apply criteria for selecting a subset of their developed theories for output as acceptable theories.  This is a new technical approach that has replaced both the symbolic logic and the Logical Positivists’ agenda.  However, this technical approach has become a specialty in a new area of psychology known as “cognitive psychology”, also known as “artificial intelligence.”  The originator of this approach is Herbert Simon, a Nobel laureate economist and a founder of artificial intelligence.  A more recent name of the specialty is “computational philosophy of science” originated by Paul Thagard in his Computational Philosophy of Science (1988), which he defines as normative cognitive psychology.
          This new technical agenda has ended up as a specialty in psychology, because the computational philosophers of science reject the residual Positivist nominalism in contemporary Pragmatism.  The cognitive psychologists regard the subject of their investigations to be mental representations. Nominalism is not essential to the contemporary Pragmatism.  But in other respects this cognitive-psychology approach may be viewed more as a technique than a philosophy. Before discussing the four topics in philosophy of science mentioned above, consider firstly the elements of philosophy language.

Synchronic Metalinguistic Analysis

         Firstly some preliminaries: Philosophers of science divide language into two types: object language and metalanguage.  Metalanguage is the discourse used to describe an object language, which in turn is the language used to describe some domain of the real world.  The language of science is typically expressed in an object language, while the discourse of philosophy of science is typically in an appropriate metalanguage. Furthermore language may be viewed either synchronically or diachronically.  The synchronic view is static, i.e. limited to a point in time like a photograph.  The diachronic view exhibits change in a discourse or language over time.   If the transitional process of change through time is described, then the diachronic view is also dynamic.  Otherwise it is a comparative static view containing only “before” and “after” snapshots.  Linguistic analysis offers four successive perspectives on language, which are increasingly inclusive: (1) syntax, (2) semantics, (3) ontology, and (4) pragmatics. 

Syntax

        Syntax is the minimally inclusive perspective, and its object is the most obvious part of language.  Syntax is the system of symbols in linguistic expressions considered in abstraction from the meanings associated with the symbols.  It is what remains after the removal of pragmatics, ontology, and semantics, and it consists of the forms of expression, so its perspective is said to be “formal.”  Since meanings are excluded from the syntactical perspective, the expressions are also said to be semantically uninterpreted.  Syntax includes the physical sound symbols, but in science most of the language used is written, and written syntax consists of the visible ink marks on paper.  Examples are the sentences of colloquial discourse, the formulas of pure or formal mathematics, the expressions of symbolic logic, and the instruction code in computer languages such as FORTRAN, BASIC, C, or LISP.

Syntactical Rules

         Syntax is not quite as stark as some ancient inscriptions that are completely undecipherable to a field archeologist, because in addition to the uninterpreted inscriptions, there are rules that pertain to them.  These are syntactical rules, and they are of two types: formation rules and transformation rules.  Typically in the written languages of science the elementary symbols in the syntactical structure of an expression are organized serially and horizontally, and are often called “concatenated strings.”  However vertical or multidimensional positioning may also be significant in syntactical constructions, as in schematic diagrams or numbers arranged in matrices.  Syntactical construction is governed by “formation rules”, which are expressed in a metalanguage, since they are rules about language. 
         Formation rules enable construction of grammatical sentences or well-formed formulas from more elementary syntactical symbols. The native speaker of a colloquial language can routinely produce grammatical sentences, but the linguist’s task of formulating explicit formation rules for a natural language is more difficult.  Linguists apply syntactical formation rules to small elements of language such as sound phonemes and the written alphabet.  But for the analysis of scientific texts philosophers are content with such elements as words and terms.  Artificial languages such as those of mathematics and computer systems are typically more regular, and their rules are less complex than those of colloquial discourse.  Grammatically correct expressions in these artificial languages are conventionally called “well formed formulas.”  When there exists a comprehensive set of formation rules for a language, it becomes possible to develop a type of computer program called a “generative grammar”, which can generate grammatically correct expressions or well formed formulas for a language.  These computer programs input, process, and output object language, while the coded instructions constituting the computer program are statements in a metalanguage.  When a computerized generative grammar is used to produce new scientific theories in an object language for an empirical science, the computer system is called a “discovery system.” 
         Transformation rules change well-formed formulas or grammatical sentences into other such formulas or sentences. For example there are transformation rules for colloquial language that change a declarative sentence into an interrogative sentence.  But the discourse of science is expository, and philosophy of science therefore principally considers the declarative sentence in descriptive discourse.  Furthermore transformation rules are of greater interest to logicians than to philosophers of science, who are more interested in formation rules for generative grammar discovery systems.  Logical inferences are said to be made by transformation rules, but logic rules are intended not only to produce new grammatical sentences but also to guarantee truth transferability from one sentence to another.

Semantics

         Semantics is consideration of the meanings associated with syntactical structures, and therefore includes the syntactical perspective.  Language viewed in the semantical perspective is said to be a “semantically interpreted.”  In comparison to syntax the topic of semantics has been more philosophically controversial, and it is in the area of semantics that philosophy of language and philosophy of science have exhibited the greatest amount of change in recent decades.  There is now a post-Positivist view, which has been developed most extensively to date in the contemporary Pragmatist philosophy.  And it is also a post-Romanticist view.  But for purposes of contrast consider firstly a stereotypically generic version of the traditional Positivist view of semantics.

Traditional Positivist Semantics

         On the traditional Positivist view descriptive terms receive their semantics ostensively unless they are given their meanings contextually by explicit definitions.  In the simple case of primitive terms such as “black” the child’s ostensive acquisition of meaning was thought to consist of his pointing his finger at an instance of perceived blackness in some black thing such as a raven bird, and then hearing the word “black.”  A French or German word would presumably have served equally well.  There have been various theories about what cognitive processes are involved in this supposedly primitive perception, but the outcome of the process was thought to be the acquisition of primitive sensations or sense data.  Most notably the sensation thus acquired is thought to be identical for all persons.  And the concept serves as an elementary and atomistic building block for the construction of larger units of language such as sentences.  Then from the early experiences that “this raven is black” or “some ravens are black”, the learner may acquire more extensive experience with ravens that may occasion the generalized belief that “all ravens are black.” 
         What is fundamental to this traditional view is the naturalistic philosophy of the semantics of language, the thesis that the semantics of descriptive terms is determined by the nature of human perception or other cognitive processes and/or by the nature of the real world itself.  Different languages are conventional in their vocabulary symbols and in their syntactical structures and rules, but on the naturalistic thesis nature determines that the semantics is the same for all persons who have had the same kinds of experiences that occasioned their having acquired their semantics by simple ostension.  Furthermore the naturalistic semantics of a descriptive term is invariable through time and in different contexts.  This meaning invariance is a property of terms thought to have only an ostensively acquired semantics.

The Positivist Analytic–Synthetic Semantical Dichotomy

         In addition to the descriptive terms that have primitive and simple semantics, the traditional view also recognized the existence of terms that have complex semantics. A type of sentence called a “definition” reveals the composition in a complex meaning.  The defined term or definiendum has a compositional semantics that is exhibited by the defining terms or definiens.  Terms having complex semantics also occur in sentences called “analytical” or just “analytic”, while the terms having simple and primitive semantics occur in sentences called “synthetic”, thus giving rise to the analytic-synthetic distinction.  But this difference is not merely a distinction; it also alleges a dichotomous separation between the simple and complex types of descriptive terms.  An example of an analytical sentence is “all bachelors are unmarried.”  The semantics of the term “bachelor” is compositional, because the idea of being unmarried is included as a part of the complex meaning of the idea of bachelorhood due to the definition of “bachelor”, thus making the phrase “unmarried bachelor” redundant.  A closely related claim traditionally made of the analytic sentence is that it is an a priori or self-evident truth, a truth known by reflection on the inclusive relation of the meanings of its constituent terms.  Contemporary Pragmatists reject the thesis of a priori truth.

The Positivist Theory-Observation Semantical Dichotomy

         Another example of compositional semantics is the Positivists’ thesis of “theoretical terms.” Stock examples of theoretical terms found in the natural sciences are terms such as “neutrino” and “prion.”  The Positivists considered theoretical entities such as neutrinos and prions to be postulated entities as opposed to observed entities.  They called terms that reference observed entities and that receive their semantics ostensively “observation terms”, and they called the sentences containing only such terms “observation sentences.”  They called terms that reference postulated entities and that therefore cannot receive their semantics ostensively “theoretical terms.” And they called sentences containing any such terms “theory sentences” or just “theories.”  They also believe that theoretical terms are meaningless unless these terms receive their semantics from observation terms, because on the nominalists’ referential philosophy of meaning, terms purporting nonexistent entities are meaningless.  Therefore the Logical Positivists proposed a type of sentence which they called the “reduction sentence”, also called “correspondence rule” or “bridge principle”, which purportedly enables theoretical terms to derive their semantics deductively from observation terms by the symbolic logic.  Both the reduction sentence and the definition exhibit composition in the semantics of their descriptive terms.  But while the definition determines the whole meaning of the defined term, the reduction sentence determines only part of the meaning of the theoretical term, because the theoretical term will receive additional meaning as the scientific theory containing it is further developed.  The problem of reduction, however, is a problem that the Logical Positivists themselves finally agreed they could never solve, because they could not exclude meaningless theories from those accepted by scientists.

Contemporary Pragmatist Semantics

         The development of the contemporary Pragmatist philosophy was occasioned by the development of the modern quantum theory in physics, and it contains a new philosophy of language with a new metatheory for semantics. The fundamental postulate in the contemporary Pragmatist philosophy of language is the rejection of the naturalistic thesis of the semantics of language and the development of an artifactual thesis that relativizes semantics. The rejection of the naturalistic thesis in philosophy of language is not new to linguistics, but it is as fundamentally opposed to the Positivist philosophy as the rejection of the parallel postulate is to Euclidian geometry. The artifactual thesis of the semantics of language is that semantics of any term is determined in its context of statements believed to be true for any reason.  Three notable consequences of the artifactual thesis are (1) the rejection of the Positivist observation-theory dichotomy, (2) the rejection of the Positivist thesis of meaning invariance for descriptive terms, and (3) the rejection of the Positivist analytic-synthetic dichotomy.

Rejection of the Positivist Observation-Theory Dichotomy

         More than thirty years after Heisenberg, one of the developers of the modern quantum theory, had said that he could “see” the electron in the Wilson cloud chamber, philosophers began to reconsider the concept of observation, an idea that had previously seemed obvious.  Today on the Pragmatist view there are no observation terms that receive their meanings by simple ostension.  Rather every descriptive term is embedded in a connecting “web of beliefs”, to use a phrase of Quine, which constitutes the context determining the term’s meaning.  A unilingual dictionary is a listing of a subset of these beliefs for each univocal lexical entry.  It is necessary to know much about what the speaker believes about ravens even just to recognize it as a raven, much less perhaps also to view it as some kind of omen. Contrary to the Positivists, observation terms are not uncontaminated by theory context. Furthermore ostension cannot fully determine the semantics of the word “raven” even in its belief context.  All descriptive terms have a residual vagueness that can never be completely eliminated, but can be reduced by the addition of clarifying context.  The vagueness is a manifestation of the empirical underdetermination of language.  All descriptive language is empirically underdetermined by reality.

Rejection of Positivist Meaning Invariance Thesis

         One of the motivations for the Positivists’ maintaining the observation-theory dichotomy is the belief that science offers a kind of knowledge that is permanently valid and true.  In the Positivist philosophy it is observation that was presumed to deliver this certitude, while theory is subject to revision sometimes revolutionary in scope.  When the observation-theory dichotomy is rejected, the foundation for this permanence crumbles, and the Positivists’ observation language becomes subject to semantical change or meaning variance.  A revolutionary change in theory, such as the replacement of Newton’s theory of gravitation with Einstein’s, has the effect of changing the semantics of all the language common to both the old and new theories including what the Positivists called observation language. 

Rejection of the Positivist Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy

         On the traditional view analytic sentences are those the truth of which could be known a priori, i.e. by reflection on the meanings of the constituent descriptive terms, while synthetic sentences require empirical determination of their truth status, and can only be known a posteriori.  Thus to know the truth status of the analytic sentence “All unmarried men are bachelors” it is unnecessary to take a survey of unmarried men to determine how many men are bachelors, because the meaning of bachelor is determined by the context constituting the definition of bachelor as an unmarried man.  But on the artifactual thesis of the semantics of language all descriptive terms are contextually determined, such that all declarative and universally quantified sentences may be called analytic.  Yet their truth status is not thereby known a priori, because they are also synthetic.  Therefore when any universally quantified declarative sentence is accepted as true, it can be used analytically for a partial analysis of its constituent descriptive subject term.  Thus “All ravens are black” is as analytic as “All bachelors are unmarried men”, so long as one believes that all ravens are black, because the meaning of “raven” include the idea of blackness, just as the meaning of “bachelor” includes the unmarried state. Normally in science the reason for belief is the empirical adequacy demonstrated by an empirical test such as an experiment.  All universally quantified statements believe to be true are both analytic and synthetic, and can be called “analytical hypotheses.”

Traditional Romanticist Semantics

         On the Romanticist view the Positivist semantics is acceptable for the natural sciences, but it is deemed inadequate for research in the cultural sciences of human action.  Human action has meaning for the human actors; it is purposeful and motivated for them.  Therefore the semantics for the cultural sciences explaining human action is the subjective meaning that the action has for the actor.  The researcher’s access to and sharing of this meaning requires the aid of introspection, even if its acquisition also involves the actor’s overt linguistically expressed reporting.  The resulting meaning is called interpretative understanding.  In the cultural sciences both the actor’s utterances and all his other voluntary actions require interpretative understanding.  When applied to linguistic tests, the acquisition of such human understanding is called hermaneutics.  The validity of the sharing is based in their shared humanity, and where the researcher lives in the same society or group, it is also based in their shared culture.
         Some Romantics deny that interpretative understanding can change.  Von Mises, the Austrian economist, maintains that economics is a permanent, a priori, and purely deductive science, which he calls praexology, and which he says is developed entirely from introspectively and intuitively self-evident propositions.  But this is a minority view.  Many more cultural science researchers admit to cultural change and its constituent meaning change on the part of the actors.  And since this meaning change can happen in the actors, it can happen in the researchers also, since their practice of cultural science research is also human action.  However, the cultural science researchers’ examination of cultural change is simply comparative in the sense that it is not a componential semantical analysis.

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