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The Power of Negative Thinking
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 1971
Extract
Before undertaking an examination of the issues current in social criticism, it is necessary to settle upon the method which ought to be common to the several social sciences. For if the adoption of a particular method results in unconscious acceptance of features of the society under critical examination, then clearly any such putative critique is in fact futile. In this paper I examine some of Marcuse's largely negative comments regarding the method currently employed in the social sciences. I am not concerned to arrive at a complete view as to the appropriate method, but rather to expose some questions that need to be answered if any such view is to be formulated.
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- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , June 1971 , pp. 317 - 331
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- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1971
References
1 Marcuse, Herbert, One Dimensional Man, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 7Google Scholar. Compare this with the view expressed by Schneider, Kenneth, Destiny of Change, (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1968), p. 2Google Scholaret passim.
2 Marcuse denies any real distinction between pure science and applied science or technology that would turn on a denial of practical goals in the case of the former. See One Dimensional Man, p. 156, ff.
3 Marcuse, p. 11.
4 Marcuse, p. 12. Marcuse's italics.
5 For Marcuse, scientific method essentially involves operationalism, the view that the concepts of science are defined by the measuring operations performed on the objects of science, c.f. Bridgman, P. W., The Logic of Modern Physics, (New York: Macmillan, 1927), pp. 66–91Google Scholar.
6 Marcuse, p. 97.
7 Marcuse, pp. 194–5.
8 There is much evidence in the literature to support Marcuse's indictment of linguistic analysis, at least given his view of the role of philosophy. See for example L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, (Oxford, Blackwell, “The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known”, (p. 47); “Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language, it can in the end only describe it”, (p. 49). J. Austin, “A Plea for Excuses”, in D. Gustafson, ed., Philosophical Psychology, (New York: Anchor, 1964): “… our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, …”. (p. 7)
9 Marcuse, p. 174.
10 Marcuse, p. 178.
11 Marcuse, p. 146.
12 Marcuse, p. 154.
13 Nagel, E., The Structure of Science, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1961), p. 492fGoogle Scholar.
14 Marcuse, p. 219.
15 Nagel, p. 499.
16 For a discussion of this point, see Kaplan, A., The Conduct of Inquiry, (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co., 1964)Google Scholar, Chapter X.
17 For an explanation of this term, see C. Hempel, “Scientific Explanation, Space and Time”, in H. Feigl and G. Maxwell, eds., Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science, (Minneapolis, 1962), III, 153.
18 I am here of course assuming the possibility of grounding a cognitivist moral position; not an unfair assumption, surely.
19 See Nagel, p. 500, on this point.
20 Kaplan, p. 396.
21 Winch, P., The Idea of a Social Science, (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, 1958), p. 102fGoogle Scholar. Italics mine. cf. Marcuse, p. 118.
22 Winch's notion of rule-foHowing is attributed by him to Wittgenstein. To follow a rule is to act so that one's actions are a sign of commitment to some future act. Failure to perform this future act constitutes a violation of the rule.
23 Rudner, R., Philosophy of Social Science, (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 81–83Google Scholar.
24 A failure to take this into account may, for example, result in a social scientist transposing his idea of nationalism involving a foreign policy such as ‘Manifest Destiny’ to a different culture in which the term connotes nothing more than a desire to maintain an independent point of view by which international social welfare might be promoted.
25 See Brodbeck, May, “Meaning and Action”, in Brodbeck, May, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, (New York: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 58–78Google Scholar.
26 Marcuse, p. 173.
27 Wittgenstein, sect. 109. Paradoxically, what Marcuse sees as bias in the analytic approach is the very descriptive neutrality that typifies it. This paradox arises from Marcuse's failure to separate the roles of epistemologist and moral philosopher, to separate fact from value.
28 Campbell, C. A., “Is ‘Free Will’ a Pseudo-Problem?”, Mind, LX (1951), 441–65, p. 458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar