[hist-analytic] Positivism in 21th.-Century Analytic Philosophy

[Jlsperanza at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/2/2010 5:01:23 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
rbj at rbjones.com writes:

The  Unified Science project, if you read Carnap, was a rejection of a 
previous  
distinction made between social and physical sciences, the details of  
which I 
am not familiar with.
 
--- Just a brief thankyou then, as I elaborate on these issues.
 
I love the IDEA of a unified science if that's just what it was supposed to 
 mean: One Big Science. It may have to do also with one of the 'betes 
noires'  Grice encounters. In your pdf you mention "Gladiators", but let's not 
forget  "Naturalism". It seems that 
 
   naturalism
 
and perhaps
 
  Materialism
 
-- Betes noires are for Grice, reductive schemes ending in -ism --  
Reductionism being the blackest of them all.
 
_are_ the banners of Scientism (or the Devil of Scientism). But I'll  
elaborate.

I enjoyed your distinctions between 'positivism' and 'positive'. And  your 
idea of 'epistemic retreat'. I love that. It's indeed the 'ataraxia' of the  
sceptics, on the sort of negative side -- in that it may lead to non-action 
--  but it's also the need to take things at ease, without a sense of 
_urgency_. I  feel philosophers _need_ a retreat. The Academy of Plato _was_ a 
retreat --  perhaps more so than Aristotle's Lycaeum. It is noticeable how the 
physical  geography of Athens -- Socrates in the public agora, Plato way 
out in the groves  of Academos, Aristotle back to the hustle and bustle of the 
Lycaeum -- tell of  things.
 
Etc. -- the ps thing was meant as a ps to my two other posts, I think,  
"Whither" and "Retrospects and to focus the thread into the things that matter  
you! :)
 
JL
 


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