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LAIRD, J. - Positivism, Empiricism, and Metaphysics
LAIRD, J. - Positivism, Empiricism, and Metaphysics
Author(s): J. Laird
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 39 (1938 - 1939), pp. 207-224
Published by: Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of The Aristotelian Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4544327 .
Accessed: 07/11/2012 17:41
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Meetingof the AristotelianSocietyat 55, RussellSquare,London,
W.C.1,on May 22nd, 1939, at 8 p.m.
By J. LAIRD.
how I am to distinguish the " real " bull from the dream-
bull that looks so very like his " real " brother, and why I
should attend so very carefully to the first and iorget the
second as promptly as I can.
To be brief, I believe that the robust empiricist is asking
me to make a huge assumption, and, at the same time, very
unkindly, is forbidding me to investigate the assumption.
He believes, like the rest of the learned world, that the only
way to acquire much sound natural knowledge is to observe
first and theorize later. This means, not that every sensum
is to be accepted tel quel, but that certain selected observed
events are the best foundation for natural theory. Negligent
perceptions, fuddled perceptions, hallucinatory perceptions
are either partially or wholly discredited. A long critical
process is presupposed in discriminating between such
perceptions. The result is held to be, if not wholly satis-
factory, at any rate as nearly satisfactory as a man can
legitimately hope for. Let it be so. What robust empiri-
cists appear to me to do is to forget all these preparations,
to forget the fineness of the boundaries between the best
and the inferior in this kind, and (thinking only of the best)
to applaud all sense data as if they belonged to the highly
superior class of scientifically reputable observations. That
is what I think is so very questionable. There are too many
sense data on our hands for the catholic approval that the
theory so lavishly bestows. In the alternative, it is far too
difficult to be sure what is a sense-datum and what only
looks very like one. The case of dreams is here peculiarly
interesting. Ask a robust empiricist whether he does not
mean that the workers, according to his theory, must be
wakingsense-data and indeed must be very wide awake ?
Ask him further why it should be so, and how he distinguishes
the workers from the blacklegs. I do not believe that he
has an answer, and therefore I am sceptical about the
principal premiss of his theory, not to mention any minor
perplexities.
While I am dealing with this topic I should further like
to observe that the Kantian theory of a mixed sensational
empiricism, a hybrid empiricism as opposed to the pedigree
POSITIVISM, EMPIRICISM, AND METAPHYSICS. 215