Philosophy of positivism: concept, forms, features

Positivism in philosophy is one of the directions of thought. He was born in the 30-40's. Before last century, and its founder is Auguste Comte. This direction is widely popular and widespread in the modern era. Below, we consider its main forms.

The philosophy of positivism

The main representatives: Comte, Spencer, Mill, and others.

As Comte believed, the dispute between idealists and materialists itself is meaningless, since it has no serious grounds. And philosophy is necessary, having left both, and from another, to be based only on scientific (positive) knowledge.

This statement means that:

1. Knowledge must be absolutely reliable and accurate.

2. To achieve knowledge in philosophy, a scientific method of cognition must be used, the main way to obtain which is an empirical observation.

3. Philosophy should investigate only facts, not their causes, and not strive to become super-scientific, "the queen of sciences," a general theoretical worldview.

In addition, Comte put forward a law on the duality of evolution. He singled out 3 stages of technical development (traditional, pre-industrial and industrial society), which corresponded to 3 stages of intellectual development (theological or religious, metaphysical and scientific outlook). However, only the foundations of positivism were laid by Comte, which were further improved, supplemented, and to this day continue to develop thanks to other philosophers.

Philosophy of positivism: empirio-criticism

Key representatives: Mach, Avenarius.

Here the main task of philosophy was not the construction of an all-embracing system of empirical cognition, but the creation of scientific knowledge in theory. Unlike Comte, representatives of this stage believed that it was necessary to deal not with the creation of a single picture of our world, but with the establishment of principles and the ordering of phenomena in the minds of researchers.

The very name "empiriocriticism" implies criticism of experience as a givenness of the world to the cognizing subject in the form of statements and statements. This line of positivism is closely connected with conservatism, according to which general scientific provisions are a conditional product of the agreement.

The philosophy of positivism: neopositivism

The main representatives: Carnap, Bertrand, Schlick, Russell.

Another name for this stage is logical positivism. Its founders proclaimed their goal to struggle with a metaphysical worldview. The initial prerequisites of true knowledge, they saw in the facts and events, that is, "sensory data." The concept of "objectivity" was replaced by the concept of "scientific" as identical. It was this stage in the development of positivism that laid the foundation for the logic that studies complex statements that can be either false, or true, or meaningless.

The subject of analysis of neopositivists became the meanings of signs and words in general, that is, linguistic, logical, psychological problems that had important practical and scientific value in the process of creating computing devices.

The philosophy of positivism: postpositivism

The main representatives: Lakatosh, Kuhn, Popper, Feuerbend.

By postpositivism is understood the set of concepts that appeared after the teachings of Comte, empirio-criticism and neopositivism. Special attention was paid to the rational method of cognition by the representatives of this stage.

So, according to Popper, the increase in knowledge can be achieved only in the process of rational discussion as an unchanging criticism of the existing worldview. He also argued that scientists make discoveries, not from a fact to a theory, but from a hypothesis to a single utterance.

Positivism as a philosophical trend has had a significant impact on the methodology of both social and natural sciences (especially in the second half of the century before last).