Our examination of Logical Positivism is by no means thorough or complete, but it reveals some useful insights. Recall the tentative "query list" formed at the beginning of this thread. It contained some of the questions one might meaningfully and appropriately ask about a given theory of knowledge, questions which would or should suggest how useful, reliable and productive such a theory of knowledge would be for the task at hand. In the present case, we are looking for a theory of knowledge that is suitable for answering questions about ethics. This does not assume that ethics is in fact what we think it is -- it does not assume that ethics is cognitive (can be known about by us), it does not assume that ethics exists at all. Ethics may turn out to be entirely different from what we intuitively suppose it to be. Ethics may even turn out to be a chimera -- an utterly fictitious entity. We would not expect any adequate theory of knowledge to tell us that unicorns exist, or that horses do not. Knowledge entails truth, in whatever way it may do so; if ethics is no more than a hypothetical concept, a good theory of knowledge ought to reveal that fact.

In evaluating the family of Positivist theories of knowledge, let us begin by applying our original list of questions to what has been said so far in our discussion of Positivism (including Logical Positivism, Logical Behaviorism and similar methods of inquiry). Our interview may have answered some questions well, and some poorly, and some not at all. It may (probably) turn out that we are asking the wrong questions, or not asking all of the right questions, and will have to revise our criteria.

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(1) ACCORDING TO YOUR EPISTEMIC THEORY (THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE), WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? WHAT COUNTS AS KNOWLEDGE (ACCORDING TO YOUR THEORY) AND WHAT DOES NOT? ARE THERE SHADES AND DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE (LIKE HIGH CONFIDENCE, STRONG BELIEF, EDUCATIONAL GUESSWORK, MERE HUNCH AND THE LIKE) OR IS IT ALL OR NONE (COMPLETE CERTAINTY, OR ABSOLUTE IGNORANCE), OR WHAT?

Logical Positivism and its descendents takes a very precise, hard-line approach to knowledge claims -- perhaps too hard for our purposes. This position follows naturally from the major concerns of late 19th and early 20th century knowledge. During this time, there was a major and organized effort to expunge "pseudo-science" and other spurious claims from the general body of knowledge. The body of knowledge accumulated by society (in this case, the sphere of "Western Civilization", going all the way back to the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians) had many sources and contributors, many of them merely a matter of tradition and lore, or second or third or fourth hand testimony, others mere rumor or persistence of belief, others a matter of religious or political doctrine or other "authority". Still other beliefs were adopted as "knowledge" without sufficient justification for "true belief", and remained "knowledge" through inertia rather than for any stronger reason.

The Logical Positivist "inventory of human knowledge" project included a massive (re)organization of the various branches of more than two millennia of compiled knowledge. By the turn of the 20th century, this knowledge resembled a disorganized heap more than anything else, in desperate need of consolidation and reorganization. Now "soundness" (or correctness and consistency) and "completeness" made sense. While any body of knowledge that is fed by ongoing contributions to it is bound to contain errors, questions and gaps in virtue of being a work in progress, as a *theory* (a body of knowledge) it ought to be correct insofar as it has been completed so far, and, the truth claims of this body of knowledge ought to be mutually consistent at the very least. To be bona fide knowledge, all claims about an external, public objective world ought to be correct (or at least reasonable, and consistent with our observations), public (accessible to everyone), and objective (the same for everyone -- as some have put it "the view from nowhere", or, from everywhere).

These considerations have shaped Logical Positivism, determining its general structure and purpose. Positivist knowledge then, is not merely belief, or what is perceived from the viewpoint of an individual observer, nor is it ultimately, a matter of degree, or kind. It is -- to put it bluntly -- absolute. It claims to have (or to be able to get) all the knowledge that can be attained. Any "knowledge" that cannot pass the LP gauntlet is simply not knowledge. Any criteria for knowledge other than the verificationist test (later softened to the "disconfirmation" or "falsifiability" test is not knowledge. Any knowledge that contradictions other knowledge is not knowledge. Any theory that conflicts with another theory is not knowledge. Any knowledge not backed by empirical observation is not knowledge. Any knowledge relying merely upon sincere belief, conjecture or faith is not knowledge. . . .

[An historical observation concerning "verification" is in order. Originally the criteria for "knowledge" included "verification", that is, a "proof" of some sort that the claim was indeed true. This of course is not always feasible; the cost, or length of time for such a proof might exceed human capability. An interesting example is Aristotle's -- or was it Archimedes? -- "Sand Reckoner". The idea is this. No one has the time to count all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. And yet, the number of grains of sand on Earth must be finite, and a specific number. The argument goes like this. There are a finite number of grains of sand -- a thousand, say, in a tablespoon. One does have the time to count this many grains of sand. And furthermore, there are a finite number of teaspoons of sand (again, some specific number) in a bucket of sand. Thus, there must be a finite number of grains of sand in a bucket of sand, even if there are millions and millions of grains -- too many to count. And by similar reasoning, there must be a finite number of grains of sand (again, a specific number) in larger finite units of sand, say, a crate or other large container containing a thousand buckets of sand. A beach, however big, is finite in size -- it contains a finite (if enormous) volume of sand -- containing some finite number of crates of sand. And the number of beaches on earth is finite, as the size of the Earth itself is finite (the Greeks knew approximately -- to a 1% error! -- how voluminous the Earth was). Therefore, the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the world is finite (if huge), even though we do not know the exact number of grains of sand there are (and there must be some specific number of grains of sand, as all finite numbers are specific -- there is no such number as "about fifty").

Now even the Positivists had to agree that in *practice* a lot of our knowledge is not exact, but an estimate -- the population of Europe, for example, or the number of atoms in a quart of water, or the height of Mount Everest or the time (year, day, minute and second) the last dinosaur died. Being true, and knowing the truth, they realized, meant two different things. One could know *that* there were a finite, specific number of grains of sand in the world (and not infinitely many -- as our intuitions tell us as we gaze out at the vast stretches of beachfront property extending from horizon to horizon), and not know what that actual number was.

Thus Positivists had to hedge a bit on their claims. No, you could not (in practice) *verify* (by calculation) the exact number of grains of sand on Earth, but *in principle* you could, because it was true that that the exact number of grains of sand -- however many there were -- *had* to be finite, and anyone can count up to a finite number, given enough time. So "proof" -- a critical element of Positivist knowledge -- had been modified to "possibility of proof". "Possibility", too, had been modified as "possible in principle" had replaced "possible in practice". One could actually count a million grains of sand (it would take months), or even a billion grains (years), but a googol of grains (ten to the one-hundredth power), although a finite, would take longer than the life-span of the universe and more people than there was material in the universe to make up people. "Proof" of a googol of grains of sand was *only* a proof in principle; it could not be carried out. more compromises were made, ending with "falsifiability" (rather than proof of truth). A claim (true or false) had to be *falsifiable* "in principle" in order to be even eligible for counting as knowledge. That is, the claim that there are no unicorns (or that there are unicorns) must pass the test that there is, or could, be some means of proving there are no unicorns. Presumably, one could determine whether such and such creature is (or is not) a unicorn (it must have a horse's head, a lion's tail, and deer's hooves -- and a single twisted horn in its forehead -- for starters). But "being immortal", on the other hand, is more difficult and problematic. Someone who lives to be a billion years old might not be immortal, merely very long-lived. In principle, no matter how long an "immortal" person lived, that person could still be mortal (if it were to die at some time in the future, a trillion or quintillion or a googol years from now). There is *no* point in time at which one can say, "well, he's made it this far; he must be immortal". And, there seems to be no other means (an "immortality meter"?) by which one could prove that such a person is immortal. So the claim of "immortality" cannot be proven by any means (known means at least), nor can it be disproved. This does not bode well for Positivist knowledge, as, despite its great inclusiveness, it leaves a great many questions unanswered, and unanswerable.

(2) ACCORDING TO YOUR THEORY, WHAT CAN WE HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF? WHAT KINDS OF "THINGS" ARE THERE? IN WHAT WAYS, AND TO WHAT DEGREE AND TO WHAT EXTENT CAN WE "KNOW" ABOUT THESE THINGS? ARE THERE (POSSIBLY -- WE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO KNOW) THINGS THAT ARE NOT COVERED BY YOUR THEORY? WHY NOT? MORE GENERALLY, ARE ALL TRUTHS KNOWABLE, ONLY SOME OF THEM, OR NONE OF THEM?

In light of (1), we can see that there are knowledge claims that Positivism cannot resolve. And, in light of the previous dialog, we can see that the "reductionist" strategy of the Positivists (explaining "everything" in terms of things we can know a great deal (but not everything) about -- physical matter and energy states, for example -- tends to fail when one comes across things that do not "reduce" well -- non-physical entities, like mind and beauty and infinitely large sets of numbers (or other objects). And even if -- as in the case of mental processes -- a reduction of sorts *is* made, and even if it were the case that the reduction was successful (how we would know this is beyond me, or anyone else at present) -- that *everything* essential to mind *were* accountable in terms of physical objects and phenomena, it does not mean that this information would in and of itself yield "knowledge". One may successfully reduce a color photo to a string of ones and zeros, but this string of bits does not reveal color, form, objects depicted in the original photo or the relationships between them.

This point is not moot. We may gather and store color images in computers as collections of bits, but we do not understand what is stored in these collections of bits simply by looking at them. We need to read (interpret) this information, and it is possible that this *interpretation* may lie *outside* our theory of knowledge, even if both the string of bits and the objects of the photo fall neatly within our theory.

(3) WHAT METHODS, PROCEDURES, DEVICES, TOOLS, PROCESSES, SENSES AND/OR ANYTHING ELSE YOU CAN COME UP WITH IS REQUIRED TO OBTAIN THE KNOWLEDGE YOUR THEORY OFFERS? (TELESCOPES? NAKED-EYE WITNESSS? NAKED EARS? COMPUTERS? HISTORIES? VIDEO/AUDIO TAPE? ESP? PURELY RATIONAL THOUGHT. GOOD HUNCHES? SACRED TEXTS? BROWN BAGS AND TWEEZERS? ? ? INTERVIEWERS? RUMORS AND MYTHS? BONES (EITHER AS FOSSILS, OR AS MYSTICAL PREDICTORS.)

Positivism has amassed a gigantic arsenal of tools, methods, procedures, instruments, senses, and the like, from microscopes to telescopes, from rules of thumb to laws of nature, from mathematics to statistics, from the naked eye to radio detectors. These tools fall into two main sorts. One sort are physical tools which aid us in ascertaining what is going on in the physical world, from inside the nucleus of an atom to the ring of quasars that mark the edge of the detectable universe. These tools extend our sense, making visible to our perception much more of the universe that our bare senses could. The other sort are conceptual tools, which can be thought of as mental aids that augment our ability to analyze, interpret, organize and apply the data we accumulate via our physical tools. These methods and procedures aid us in the mental "processing" the data we acquire.

Positivism -- as a glance back at 20th century science will show -- has accumulated and made vast use of both kinds of tools. The briefest survey of the physical instruments used in collecting information about stars, chemicals, biological and geological specimens, weather, energies (natural and artificial) and many, many other phenomena would take far too long to give even the most general "representative" sampling. Conceptual tools: formulas, theories, methods -- from the "scientific method" to "the periodical table of the elements" to "Occam's Razor" to the "Pythagorean Theorem", to the laws -- "Ohm's Law", "Boyle's Law", "Newton's Law", "Grimm's Law" -- to the various standards of weights and measures, to -- the list is simply too long to survey.

One sweeping (but fairly illustrative) generalization can be made, given Positivism's theory of knowledge: Some of these tools (either physical or conceptual) serve to establish the truth of individual claims and empirical observations, while other tools (or perhaps the same tools, applied in different ways) serve in conceptual analysis, especially in sorting by "kinds" to form generalities, or in make distinctions, or in some way "ideating" -- making inferences about the specific data collected in order to draw conclusions via logical argument.

This process has proven so fruitful, so vastly comprehensive and encompassing, that it has affected nearly every field we deem to be "knowledge". In fact, we of recent generations tend to equate knowledge *with* the Positivist paradigm. A tortilla baker on Olvera Street (in Los Angeles) may pat out several hundred tortillas a day, but it is the scientist: the nutritionist expert in vegetable diets, the maize botanist, the chemist studied in lime compounds, the thermodynamicist with his or her formulas on heat radiating from flat surfaces, and plastic components theoreticians (topologists) who can describe the evolution of the three-dimensional manifold that best describes the tortilla -- that are said to have "knowledge" about tortillas. Merely knowing how to *make* a tortilla -- which none of these experts know how to do, much less can do -- is not knowledge.

One needs to ask, in the face of the mass of information on so many subjects of study that we have amassed in the last few hundred years alone -- and this is a *very* hard thing to do (to even *imagine* doing) -- whether we are getting "all" of the information there is. By that I do not mean filling the tables of existing data out to the last decimal place. As a very familiar example, Pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, approximately 3.14159 . . .) is an infinitely long transcendental decimal number that has, of late, been calculated exactly to over one billion decimal places. In point of fact it is difficult if not impossible to come up with a practical application (outside the realm of pure number theory) that requires more than the first twenty decimal places. The approximation: Pi = 22/7, is good enough for any carpenter making a round table. The approximation of Pi carried out to about twenty or thirty decimal places falls within the range of error of the physical universe, made "fuzzy" beyond that level of accuracy by the Heisenberg Principle.

More generally, filling out the details of Positivist knowledge -- apart from specific practical applications, and the placation of obsessive-compulsive-disorder types -- does not yield "more" knowledge, only more detail, and sometimes *more* confirmation of what is already known. There is a principle in court proceedings -- the "Cumulation of Evidence" -- which states more or less that if one witness, or piece of evidence, or expert, proves the factual claim, then a dozen witnesses (or pieces of evidence, or experts) making the same point (with nothing new to add) are redundant. Of course sometimes a dozen witnesses, or a hundred pieces of evidence or a brace of experts are need to testify to different and not entirely overlapping matters, and so the overlap is tolerated (to a point). Often more scrutiny simply will not yield more insight.

But this saturation of knowledge may be accomplished on one level, or in one area of study, and yet other areas -- even related areas -- of knowledge poorly explored or even completely unexplored. For example, by 1700, European geography was completely mapped out, but almost the entire Pacific Ocean region (to say nothing of the interior of, say, Africa) was a blank on European globes. (Pacific Islanders, on the other hand, knew where *they* -- and their neighbors -- were (at this time), but knew next to nothing about Europe. Before the mid-1960's, the side of the moon facing us had been mapped in excruciating detail, but it was only after the first moon probes circled the moon that *anything* about the far side was known -- to anyone.

The deceptive nature of wealth -- including wealth of knowledge -- is that plenitude conceals poverty. There is the classic college anecdote about a botany professor who gave one of his students an apple and asked the student to write a *thorough* report on this fruit sample. The student returned after a grueling two-week break, during which time (s)he had examined the apple intensely, and had made copious notes on the item, and submitted a one-hundred and fifty page report along with the apple. "Finished!" the student said, exhausted. The professor took the apple, withdrew a penknife, and cut the apple in half, exposing the flesh inside, along with the core and seed structure. "No you're not", he replied, returning the dissected apple (and the report) to the aggrieved student. This incident illustrates that one kind of scrutiny -- one point of view of a subject -- may be drastically over-emphasized, to the exclusion not only of *more* information abut a subject, but of significant information not previously revealed by intensive, but narrow, study. Cutting the apple reveals something essential about the apple that surface scrutiny -- however dedicated -- never would: the apple is a botanical "ovary" -- it contains the seeds and other reproductive organs of the apple tree.

The question then is not how do we support scientific claims in astronomy, or evolutionary development theory (as if we were merely piling evidence onto a balance scale), but -- as I said -- what* kind* of evidence is needed to support (or merely to raise) an important point. Only *one* Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton or Trilobite fossil -- or the conspicuous absence of any mermaid or unicorn skeletons -- is sufficient for raising very serious questions about life during the early history of the Earth. And, the discovery of a thousand -- rather than two, or two thousand, or ten billion -- T-Rex skeletons -- is a matter of "accumulation" rather than existence. Have we found no unicorn skeletons because there are none to be found, or because we haven't been looking in the right places? This is not an idle point. Up until the early 20th century, it was presumed there was one "galaxy" containing all of the known stars, planets, comets and other space debris known to the ancient Greeks. But in the early 20th century, another "galaxy" -- outside our own "Milky Way" -- discovered to be just that, and not a star, planet, nebulae or other familiar item. This galaxy was not hidden -- a Greek with good eyesight could -- and did -- see it. It merely was not *looked at*.

The point then is to review Positivism not as "Wrong" or "inaccurate", but as "complete" (or not). The commitment to the principle of reduction has its immensely practical uses -- biographers should not list Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens as "two American writers", nor should "the Morning Star" and "the Evening Star" be listed as two separate stars, but as only one planet (Venus). Still, there is the serious question, raised almost at the very inception of Positivism as to whether this theory of knowledge was focusing on *some* aspects of Reality (those that lent themselves to the sort of scrutiny and analytical tools (physical and conceptual) that Positivism has to offer), or, whether Positivism -- as some eventually (and to this day) consider to it -- to be the science of "all that there is", or even "all that we can know".

This is a very strong claim, and the basis of support for this claim is not nearly as strong -- seen from the perspective of a century later -- as it must have seemed to be at the time. ("Nothing exceeds like success!").

For our own purposes, in our present investigation of Ethics, it would seem that either there is no ethical knowledge to be *had* (simply because there is nothing *to* know). Or -- given the incredible thoroughness in areas where we would expect Positivism to be most successful (if at all) -- it may possibly -- *possibly* -- be that Positivism is not as comprehensive as one might have thought. It may be that the very advantages of Positivism (its particular array of tools and approaches) and the *sort* of knowledge it was established to investigate and acquire and process, is *not* in fact ALL the knowledge that there is to be had. Furthermore, its specialization in detecting and analyzing a *certain* kind (albeit a very broad and extremely important kind) of data about the world may in fact result in its *not* shedding light on other aspects of reality which may or may not be important, but which will *not* be discovered or revealed by Positivist methods, just as an electron microscope -- as marvelous a tool as it is -- will not reveal the galaxies to us.

One can investigate the probative philosophical question, as to *why* -- given the principles and practices of the Positivist program and its particular conception of knowledge -- ethical (and other) matters disappear from view and hence are not pursued. It is enough at this point for the reader to see (in light of the discussion presented in this last set of mini-essays and ruminations on Logical Positivism) that the LPs are*not* going to fid what they are *not* looking for (and to a degree, intentionally avoiding). It is not the fault of LP that such issues as ethics, phenomenology, aesthetics and other "subjective" area of human experience, particularly "mental" (or at least non-physical) experiences and objects. To have done so would have undoubtedly clouded the issue, just as in the case of ethics -- I will later argue -- issues of religion, spiritualism, mysticism and other "isms" need to be kept apart from "basic" ethical considerations, if only to be accounted for later, after a solid knowledge of ethical theory is established. Without analysis -- the breaking up of complex entities into their component parts in an effort to understand their functions and their relations to one another -- there is no understanding, no knowledge, only bare experience, which people can have from year to year, and generation to generation, with *no* enlightenment whatsoever.

(4) HOW DOES ONE EVALUATE / VERIFY (CONFIRM, JUSTIFY, REVIEW, CORRECT, REVISE) / ORGANIZE (STORE, COLLATE, ORGANIZE, GENERALIZE, COMPARE AND CONTRAST, OTHERWISE RELATE) / ACCESS (DISTRIBUTE, TEACH, EXPAND / APPLY THIS KNOWLEDGE? IS GETTING SUCH KNOWLEDGE PRACTICAL, OR ONLY THEORETICAL?

(5) HOW STABLE IS THE SET OF KNOWLEDGE CLAIMS YOUR THEORY OFFERS? ARE YOUR SYSTEM'S KNOWLEDGE CLAIMS TESTABLE. ARE THEY COMPATABLE WITH ONE ANOTHER (INTERNAL CONSISTENCY), AND WITH OTHER SYSTEMS? HOIW OFTEN ARE SUCH CLAIMS FOUND TO BE INCOMPLETE, AND WHY? HOW DIFFICULT ARE THEY TO "COMPLETE", OR EXPAND? HOW OFTEN ARE THEY FOUND TO CONTAIN MISTAKES, AND WHY? HOW OFTEN DOES ONE NEED TO REVISE ONE'S BODY OF KNOWLEDGE, AND UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES? WHAT IS THE SCOPE OF THIS KNOWLEDGE (HOW GENERALIZABLE IS IT?)

Questions (4) and (5) I have addressed above and suggested answers to, if only vaguely, or in part. I believe the reader can look through these considerations and (a) see their importance in evaluating *any* theory of knowledge, and (b) get at least a sense of how a Positivist would answer these questions, and how Positivism would measure up against these criteria.

Regarding the issue of "vetting" and "processing" positivist knowledge (4), we can see that the standards are very harsh -- at least in principle. (How well they are applied in practice, even in the "sciences", is a separate, but very valid question. Any reader with experience in the practice of religion knows that those who eschew sin in principle are not therefore immune to it in practice.) At the same time, there is a noticeable gap between the principles of Positivism and the actual practice (which we have witnessed in this century, after getting a foretaste of it in the 19th century under the Industrial Revolution)). I am still waiting for completely safe nuclear power "too cheap to meter" (and only paid for by a flat hook-up fee").

The issue of "stability" of knowledge (that is of knowledge claims) is equally important, and I leave that issue to the reader (and to future discussion as it arises). Most of us are not only familiar with, but heartily sick of, reading the statements of "experts in the media" who say that scientific claim A is true (not *merely* true, but *freshly proven* true, as if proof were a pudding to be eaten while still piping hot). This image is not far off. Such reports of knowledge do grow "stale", that is, they have a sort shelf-life, thanks in part to scientists eager for attention, but more often to "media pundits" -- quasi-experts who function as oracles who (mis)read preliminary reports and trends rather than tea leaves or chicken entrails (with as little accuracy or reliability). The medical field is rife with such reports of "knowledge", to the chagrin and frustration of serious doctors who have to face their media-informed patients, filled with promises, distortions and lies, inferences and innuendos, and labor to correct faulty claims, or completely disabuse them of their baseless beliefs. The dissemination and vetting of such "objective and absolute knowledge" -- including claims that are not merely true, but *proven* true -- that have to be later retracted with a regularity matched only by the seasons and the orbits of the major planets, are legion. Thus Positivist knowledge -- obtained by Positivist methods -- end up being distributed and utilized by methods more closely approximated by superstition, rumor, myth and religious dogma. This easy and ready contamination of "sure-fire" knowledge does not reflect well on Positivism. That there is (I and others would claim), an "ethic" of knowledge acquisition, on the part of our Institutions of knowledge, the purveyors of knowledge, and the receivers -- us -- of knowledge does not make things easier. However, as we will see with the next theory of knowledge, not "fixing" the problems -- nor accepting them either -- naturally leads to rebellion (the crazy, ill-thought out sort depicted in Woody Allen's parody of political revolutions: "Bananas"). The meta-theory is that if it is broken, curse it, throw it out and do the opposite -- or appeal to superstition. This is understandable as a gut reaction to failure and inadequacy in our institutions (of knowledge, of politics, or any other social "utility"). As a principle of theory adaptation, or correction, or simply "improvement", as we will see it is the worst thing one can do.


In the next part of this series, I will present the nominally "unpresentable", even incomprehensible "theory of knowledge" -- if it can be called that -- of post-Modernism. As with my presentation on Positivism, it will be a cobbled-together "police-sketch" ID of the subject, and not a faithful photo rich with detail. I am looking at Positivism and post-Modernism as the two present leading "candidates" for a theory of knowledge that will aid us in tackling the project of asking whether ethics exists, what it is (if it does exist), and how it works and how to use it, as well as actually finding useful *answers* to these questions. As it turns out, there are elements of both Positivism and post-Modernism that have value for our project, but that as they presently exist, are wholly inadequate for our purposes.