Postpositivism
Postpositivism is a philosophical perspective that builds upon the foundation of positivism, emphasizing that while human knowledge cannot be proven with absolute certainty, many scientific conclusions can still be treated as though they are true. This viewpoint acknowledges that individual biases, personal experiences, and inherent limitations affect the process of scientific inquiry, resulting in claims that are ultimately unverifiable and potentially untrustworthy. Despite these challenges, postpositivists advocate for the scientific method as a valuable tool for exploring and understanding the universe.
Rooted in the philosophies of French thinker Auguste Comte, postpositivism recognizes the necessary role of empirical evidence and the scientific method in discovering knowledge. However, it diverges from traditional positivism by asserting that human errors, such as biases and incomplete information, can influence the outcomes of scientific research. This leads to the concept of fallibilism, where empirical statements cannot be considered absolutely true but can still be accepted as true with the understanding that they may be subject to revision with new evidence. Thus, postpositivism invites a respectful consideration of scientific findings while acknowledging the complexities introduced by human factors in the pursuit of knowledge.
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Postpositivism
Postpositivism is the philosophical view arguing that no human knowledge can be proven with absolute certainty, although people can accept many scientific conclusions as though they are undeniably true. Postpositivism claims that people's natural biases, personal experiences, and inefficiencies always influence the scientific exploration of fact. This renders any alleged "truths" that are discovered virtually unverifiable and, thus, inherently untrustworthy. Still, postpositivists support finding enough evidence for claims to act as though they are absolutely true.
Postpositivism is a continuation of the philosophical concept of positivism. This idea holds that the scientific method is the only means of deriving knowledge from sensory experiences. Positivism asserts that as long as the method is employed truly objectively, its conclusions can be considered facts.
Like positivism, postpositivism encourages people to employ the scientific method to discover new information about the universe. Using this ordered system of observation and experimentation, actors can learn which of their hypotheses are true and which are false. In the end, however, postpositivism diverges from positivism in that it assumes that the scientific method will always be tainted by some type of human shortcoming.
Background
French philosopher Auguste Comte founded the philosophy of positivism in the mid-nineteenth century. In his 1830 work Course on Positive Philosophy, Comte argued that positivist philosophy is simply a natural result of humanity's social progress over thousands of years of existence. Specifically, according to Comte, positivism is the last of three philosophical stages through which humanity has passed. Comte referred to this concept as the law of three stages.
The first stage is the theological stage. Comte believed this was the most obvious philosophical place for people to have started trying to understand the universe. In the theological stage, people believed supernatural beings intervened in the realm of humans to cause the phenomena that seemingly could not be explained in any other way. It was during the theological stage that people widely believed in all manner of gods.
Comte's second stage is the metaphysical stage. This was a natural continuation of the first stage in that people still wondered about the phenomena in the universe, but now they ascribed different causes to them. Working with the traditional mechanisms of metaphysics, people assigned concepts such as substances, forms, and beings as the causes of events in the universe.
Comte believed the metaphysical stage was a natural link between the theological stage and the positive stage, the final phase of humanity's social and philosophical development. People in the positive stage do not concern themselves with the causes of universal phenomena or any other kind of exclusively theoretical philosophy. Instead, people in the positive stage study the natural laws that control these phenomena. Natural laws can be observed scientifically, and they, along with every other directly observable aspect of the universe, should be humanity's only sources of knowledge. Comte argued that humanity's progression through these three stages allowed civilizations to advance socially and politically.
However, Comte added a caveat to his conception of positivism. He believed no facts could be said to be absolutely true, nor was positivism even concerned with absolute truths. Rather, the philosophy strictly emphasized the scientific method as the only means of learning what can be called facts and that it is reasonable to believe these facts since they were discovered through science.
Positivism became a popular concept in the Western world in the mid to late nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the idea was replaced by neopositivism, which blended positivist philosophy with several other sciences. In modern times, positivism remains the viewpoint that people can learn about reality as long as they apply the scientific method objectively. The scientific method uses only empirical evidence—or information obtained through direct sensory experience—to test hypotheses about the universe. The results of scientific experimentation can be taken as fact.
Overview
Postpositivism arose sometime in the modern era as a modification of positivism. Postpositivism is similar to conventional positivism in most regards. Like positivism, postpositivism admits that people can objectively study reality by hypothesizing about the laws governing universal phenomena and then testing their hypotheses through scientific inquiry to determine the relationships between events.
Postpositivism differs from positivism in that it assumes that human error can always enter into the scientific method, thereby destroying the credibility of a fact previously believed to be undeniably true. Human error can take the form of personal biases and motivations, emotions, and judgments based on incomplete information.
All these errors can occur in the scientific method at any stage without researchers even being aware of them. For instance, people can use the method to test any claim proposed to them. They judge whether the claim is believable, examine existing facts in the case, study counterclaims, and then test the claim themselves. Based on the body of information they have collected, people make final judgments about the claims.
Later, however, new evidence might arise that forces the people who made the judgments to form new opinions. This has happened after criminal trials, when, for instance, new DNA studies reveal that the person initially convicted of a crime is actually innocent. Postpositivists might assert that such is an unfortunate but ever-present reality: the original conviction was not considered wrong when it was made. It was viewed as the best decision based on the evidence available at that time. The incorrect judgment was not an intentional error, but the human failure to procure all the relevant evidence obscured the absolute truth of the matter nonetheless.
At the same time, postpositivism does not propose any alternative to the investigation of facts using the scientific method; human flaws will simply always be part of the process. For this reason, postpositivism is known as a form of fallibilism. This is the philosophical principle asserting that statements about empirical facts cannot be verified as absolutely true or certain, but people can accept them as true anyway. This means that a pronouncement of fact may not necessarily be altogether incorrect, but further evidence (sometimes produced centuries or millennia later) may show these pronouncements to have been simply unfinished, or only partially true. Postpositivists accept this, but they still insist that nothing can be absolutely proven as incontrovertible fact.
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