POSITIVISM AND INTERPRETIVISM

Positivism and Interpretivism

Positivism And Interpretivism

The debate between positivism and interpretivism has been taking place since the mid-nineteenth century. Similarly, critical theory comes out of Marxism, as Smith recognises. Moreover, many of the criticisms of empiricism, that Smith discusses, have quite a long history, going back for example at least to Peirce and Duhem. And the arguments that he uses in support of interpretivism come from the Greek sceptics. It is not that Smith is unaware of all this, but the rhetorical scheme he uses to relate the three paradigms could mislead readers who are less well informed about the history of philosophy and social science.

There is a more fundamental problem with the radicalism scale as well. It implies that postempiricism shares much with empiricism, whereas interpretivism has nothing in common with it. Smith presents postempiricism and critical theory as trying to find a via media between empiricism and relativism, but as necessarily failing. Rhetorically, this failure seems to follow automatically from the radicalism scale, and to imply the necessary adoption of interpretivism. But this is only the case if one retains the empiricist definition of knowledge, and interpretivism itself relies on this in order to deny the possibility of universal knowledge. By contrast, what is distinctive about postempiricism is its rejection of this foundationalist conception of knowledge, in favour of a fallibilist one, in terms of which universally valid knowledge is still possible. Postempiricism does not claim the availability of absolutely certain knowledge, nor does it insist that there are algorithmic criteria by which the validity of claims to knowledge can be judged. Smith recognises this in his chapter on postempiricism, but by the time he has reached his final chapter, this has been forgotten and he treats interpretivism as distinctive in denying the possibility of algorithmic criteria. In this way the cogency of postempiricism is obscured . (Hodkinson, P. 2003 " pp9-100

Having used the empiricist concept of knowledge as a basis for showing that universal knowledge is impossible, Smith's interpretivism then redefines 'knowledge' in non-empiricist and non-universal terms. Here, what is knowledge is determined by what is taken to be knowledge within a particular epistemic community. In this way there can be multiple, incompatible truths across communities. There are several problems with this. It is presented as not needing any epistemological warrant, and yet it is difficult to see how Smith can avoid assuming one. Also, the assumption that there are clearly distinguishable and internally homogeneous epistemic communities is questionable. It is important to note, too, that when ordinary people use the word 'truth' they do not usually mean 'what we all agree on', so that interpretivism here involves an implicit critique of the assumptions that currently shape our everyday thinking and action. Finally, there is the problem of relativism. Smith recognises this, but argues that it is only a problem from the point of view of empiricism and of those paradigms that have not completely shaken off its ...