POSITIVISM ALI H. RADDAOUI UNIVERSITY OF SFAX

INTRODUCTION  History: Spirit of the Enlightenment; Age of reason – 17 th and 18 th centuries;  Positivism coincided more or less with decline of church authority, industrial revolution, emergence of bourgeoisie as a force to shape the economic, social, epistemological landscape, beginning of mass-education.  Applied to the scientific domain, positivism postulates the objective existence of meaningful reality outside of and in isolation from human consciousness.

INTRODUCTION  Nature of reality: value-neutral, ahistorical and cross-cultural.  Scientific method applicable across the board: no difference between natural sciences or the social sciences;  Social science is about the discovery of cause-effect relationships. Randomness and arbitrariness ruled out.  Conclusion: researcher’s goal in the natural and human sciences: discovery of unambiguous and accurate knowledge

TOOLS AND CONDITIONS FOR KNOWLEDGE  The tools: empiricism: systematic observation; experimentation; reason  Positivist social science relies on four criteria; internal validity, external validity, reliability, and objectivity.  The guarantees: principle of intersubjective verification: different observers exposed the same data should be able to come to the same conclusions  Results 1: measurements, quantities, SIZE, SHAPE, POSITION, NUMBER. (not color, taste, smell, ) The real world is a quantifiable world.  Results 2: possibility to explain, predict, and control events and phenomena  Finality: discovering of patterns, regularities, abstract set of rules, with universal validity. TRUTH  Consequence: Metaphysics, theology, aesthetics, ethics no longer considered part of the domain of warrantable human knowledge.

THE SUBJECT/OBJECT DICHOTOMY  The world exists independently of knowers. There is clear distinction between the 'subjective knower and the 'objective' world.  There is a distinction between facts and values. Facts belong to the objective world, values belong to the subjective knower.

THE SUBJECT/OBJECT DICHOTOMY  Absolutist claims of science as opposed to popular subjective beliefs: people ascribe subjective meanings to objects in their world science ascribes no meanings at all. Science is about the discovers objective meaning inherent in the objects it considers.  Researcher subjectivity is suspended: the concerns, values, opinions, beliefs, personal views of the researcher must not interfere with the discovery of truth

POST-POSITIVISM  A mitigated, attenuated, qualified, watered- down, humbler version of positivism  Adoption of scientific method notwithstanding, research outcomes are given as tentative, couched in probability rather than certainty terms  Ascertain level of objectivity rather than absolute objectivity  An approximation of the truth rather than aspiring to grasp totality or essence of the truth.

POST-POSITIVISM  Enlarging scope of knowledge to include conclusions obtained through sense data and other forms.  Different attitude with regard to the subject/object dichotomy: talk of constructing scientific knowledge rather than passively noting laws that are found in nature. A superior level of involvement on the part of the researcher.  Claim of an epistemologically high ground no longer contemplated.

CRITIQUE OF POSITIVISM: POPPER'S PRINCIPLE OF FALSIFICATION  Examples prove a general principle. Conclusion: principle is correct in an absolute sense Problem: Just find one example at variance with the principle Principle is false Goal of scientific theory: not to prove that a theory right, but to try to prove it wrong. If propositions deduced from scientific theory survive every attempt to refute them, then theory provisionally accepted as true. All scientific statements to remain provisional

CRITIQUE OF POSITIVISM: POPPER'S PRINCIPLE OF FALSIFICATION  Popper’s alternative: Role of scientists: more than observation and experimentation, leading to scientific laws. Scientists should engage in a continual process of conjecture and falsification. Scientists make a guess and find themselves unable to prove the guess wrong, then guess is provisionally right.

CRITIQUES OF POSITIVISM 2  Kuhn: Paradigm shifts represent major articulations in history where what was established as science/knowledge turned out to be incorrect from the viewpoint of the new paradigm. Relativity of knowledge claims: claims to be made here and now.  Rationality is neither universal, culturally neutral, nor invariant in its form.  All rules, regardless of their power, are the product of a certain culture, a given history, and the complexus of values adopted by that culture.  Existence of competing epistemologies today: no consensus on what forms a single set of rules of what counts as knowledge.

CRITIQUES OF POSITIVISM 3  Epistemologies are linked to disciplines, and disciplines have different way of knowing the world.  For the social sciences, it is arrogant to come up with an ‘idealized and universal logic’  In the social sciences, the test of knowledge should not generalization and prediction but interpretive power, meaning, and illumination.  The focus should be on human action and interaction.  Confining research to what ’”empirically 'given‘” does not portray the diversity of the social world.  Conclusion: The social sciences need not be like the natural sciences.

REFERENCES  Crotty, M. The Foundations of Social Research. Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process. London: Sage Publications.  McKenzie, G. J. Powell, & R. Usher Understanding Social Research: Perspectives on Methodology and Practice. London: Falmer Press.  Efinger, J., Maldonado, J., & McArdle, G. (2004). PhD students’ perceptions of the relationship between philosophy and research: A qualitative investigation. The Qualitative Report, 9(4), Retrieved May 23, 2005, from 4/efinger.pdf