Positivism dispute

The so-called positivism dispute was one in the 1960s, especially in the German -speaking countries (West Germany, Austria ) discharged debate about methods and value judgments in the social sciences.

Prehistory

The history goes back to the late 1930s when Max Horkheimer in his essay The latest attack on the Metaphysics (1937 ) formulated a critique of the concept of experience and concept of the logic of the Vienna Circle. The positivist dispute follows on from previous controversies of various schools in sociology, such as the value judgment dispute and the dispute over methods (it is also sometimes called the Second Methodenstreit ).

The counterparty

On the one side were the representatives of critical rationalism as Karl Popper and Hans Albert, on the other side representative of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, such as Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas, in the tradition of dialectical social philosophy (Hegel, Marx) were.

The term positivism dispute coined Theodor W. Adorno, where he unilaterally put his understanding of positivism to identify the opponent's side based. Popper, however, rejected the term positivism to his position from (he himself spoke of criticism ) because he did not want to be related to the neo-positivism of the Vienna Circle, of which he tried to always settle in his career as a philosopher, in close connection to. In contrast to positivism, Popper's fallibilism is assumed that complex statements can not prove empirically, but can only be rebutted.

Course

The prelude to the controversy formed a paper by Popper and a Korreferat of Adorno on the opening day of a working meeting of the German Sociological Association, which until October 21, 1961 took place from 19 to Tubingen. The theme of the presentations was: The logic of the social sciences.

The positivist dispute is documented in the book of the same in its main contributions. Essentially, it contains three strands:

  • The debate between Theodor W. Adorno and Karl Popper on the basic approach to social science theory, in Adorno, the concept of totality represents, and Popper 's approach of critical rationalism. Consensus between the two about that for a scientific theory value judgments always play a role. ( The definition of the postulate of " value-free ", which Max Weber had set up in the course of the so-called value-judgment dispute, however, is based on a shortened reception of Weber's statements. ) Nevertheless, there are differences in the assessment of this question.
  • The specific debate between Hans Albert and Jürgen Habermas as to whether at least on the level of elementary observation data (" log records " ) is a value-free representation is possible.
  • The resümierenden and mediating Posts by Ralf Dahrendorf and Harald pilot.

In the main thesis of his paper (sixth thesis ) postulated Popper the unity of the method of the natural and social sciences: both consist of " attempts at a solution to their problems - the problems of which they outgoing [en ] - try " but not (seventh thesis ), as alleged in the methodological naturalism or scientism, by collecting value and first-principles observational facts, upon which inductive theory building. Attempts at a solution for the not yet is currently known about how they can be objectively criticized, should be provisionally excluded from the discussion until a method was found to their criticism. The criticism consists in an attempt to refute the proposed solution.

Fundamental to the social analysis of the members of the Frankfurt School is a theory of essence of society that comes from the basic concept of totality. The totality is seen as a fundamental structural relationship that determines the character of the social system; the " psycho-social agencies " (family, authorities, peers, mass media, etc. ) of the Company forms and determine thinking and identity of the individual and thus the (social) scientists from the outset to a far greater extent than the individual the other way around on the social agencies can act. Sociology is to discover and analyze in order to create the conditions for their potential to overcome this totality. For Popper, however, all problem-solving attempts are necessarily based on individual aspects. A change in the society " as a whole" he considers impossible, and the attempt to do it anyway, dangerous.

During the Critical Rationalism thus propose that the goal of social science is the attempt to solve social problems and to eliminate social evils, is the Frankfurter School believes that the goal is to identify underlying totality of society, these problems and grievances caused. This totality consists of contradictions ( class antagonisms ), the company erroneously the concept of critical theory ( totality) instead of the company itself anlaste the Critical rationalism ( as an object of that term ) because he used classical logic instead of the Hegelian dialectic. Only by eliminating the contradictions ( class antagonisms ), the true causes of the ills could be eliminated, and not merely as trying the Critical Rationalism, the superficial symptoms of these causes.

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