Positivism, Empiricism and Metaphysics

Positivism, Empiricism, and Metaphysics
Author(s): J. Laird
Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 39 (1938 - 1939), pp. 207-224
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Aristotelian Society
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Meetingof the AristotelianSocietyat 55, RussellSquare,London,
W.C.1,on May 22nd, 1939, at 8 p.m.
EMPIRICISM, AND
XI.-POSITIVISM,
METAPHYSICS.
By J.
LAIRD.
BY positivism in its most general sense I mean the theory

that if you want to know anything about anything you
must either make an appointment with one of the sciences
or else be content to be cheated. Outside the sciences
there is no information. The poets may beguile you
or exalt you but they cannot tell you anything. Theologians
may bewilder you, philosphersmay rackyou, and rhetoricians
may soothe you. But none of them can tell you anything.
Wayfaring men, though they have no academic degrees,
may sometimes tell you something; but that is because
they are untutored scientists. They are the scientists
in the street, and they can tell you something, not because
they are in the street, but because they possess the smatterings of a middling science.
It may be well to make a brief pause, and consider some
of the things that this theory may convey.
In the first place we may ask " What is a science ? " as
interpreted by positivists. Obviously there is room for
much debate about such a question. Is history a " science"?
Is ethics ? Is aesthetics? In some cases, for example,
regarding history and sociology, positivists may have to
walk warily. In general, however, they have made up
their minds. If your " science," so called, abjures every
mood except the indicative, and makes the renunciation
without reserves and with persistent determination, it is the
sort of " science " that positivists call by that name. Any
other sort of" science " is an impostor.
Again, there may be disputes about the boundaries and
mutual relations or lack of mutual relation between the
2
208
J.
LAIRD.
positive sciences. It would be expecting too much to

suppose that everything
you may reasonably want to consider
must belong to some one appropriate science with the same
obviousness as a nose belongs to someone's face. Such
difficulties, however, need not be serious in principle.
There need not be any great degree of truculence in suggesting that the positive sciences themselves are capable of
instituting an effective boundary commission. Certainly, if
some one particular science, for example physics, is disposed
to lord it over the others there may be tension among the
positivists themselves and they may have some difficulty
in concealing their domestic hostility from the outside
world. The idolatry of physics may in fact be a crude
sort of belligerent metaphysics. But there need be no
sufficient reason, in the nature of the thing, for more than
departmental bickering.
Another debatable problem has to do with the generality
of the sciences. Granting that the indicative mood in the
positive sciences indicates " fact ", there might be general
as well as particular facts, and the logic in the world might
be the most general fact of all. Here again the positivist
may have to be careful, but need not be dismayed. He
need not be opposed, in principle, to the idea that there are
pervasive and indeed universal facts in all actuality and
that such general facts may properly pertain to the positivist's
province. If in the past metaphysicians have been the
supreme or even the only specialists about these generalities,
that in itself is no reason why positivism should not now
annex this healthy region and abandon the rest of the
sick confederation of ancient metaphysics. The positivistic
specialist in these wide generalities, one may say, might be a
very good positivist. He would be a bad positivist only if
he mixed his proper business with the dreams of ghostseeing metaphysics, mistaking necromancy for philosophy.
Mutatonominehe may even have sympathy and a certain
admiration for some few of the philosophers of the past
regarding some few of their too unguarded pursuits. He
will only be more circumspect.
That, in general, is what I take positivism to be and to
POSITIVISM, EMPIRICISM, AND METAPHYSICS.
209
mean. I must now attempt to examine its relations to

empirlcism.
Empiricism, as I understand that theory, says something
or " experience " is the key, and
more than that EL7ELrEyL'a
indeed, the master key, that opens all the doors that any
philosopher can ever open. That in itself would be rather
an ambitious assertion,but most empiricists,as I apprehend,
are more ambitious still.
In their view
,7TrEtpL' actually
contains and indeed actually is all that is known, and

human
is all that human beings ever will or ever

uLrEtpL'0a
can know. Being more familiar with English than with

Greek I shall, for the future, speak of " experience " and
only very seldom of efiLrEtLa. In the English way of
speaking I take the empiricist's assertion to be that all our
knowledge is some sort of " experience " and that all that
we know is also some sort of " experience ", if the word
" also" has here any meaning. When I speak of " knowledge in this connexion I am using the term in the wide
and, perhaps, in the loose way in which it is often used,
and not in the narrow way in which it is sometimes used.
I do not mean simply " knowing for certain with invincible
clarity "-supposing that there is such knowledge. I
mean to include confident surmises and tenacious opinions
and uncertified if stubborn beliefs. I am referring
generally to cognition. In this wide sense of " knowledge "
I understand empiricists to be asserting that no nonexperience is strictly so much as imaginable and that there
is no knowledgeable process that is not " experience ".
If any philosophers and, indeed, if any other people maintain the contrary of either of these propositions, the reason,
according to all good empiricists, is that certain features of
the situation may sometimes be rather obscure, and that
the obscurities have seduced some negligent if intelligent
people into making assertions that may seem to be but are
not intelligible.
Accordingly, the fundamental question would seem to be
"What is experience ? ". If that is left vague, empiricism
is vague. If that be taken for granted, empiricism is
something unanalysed, something that might be true but is
2 B2
210
J.
LAIRD.
put forward in a happy-go-lucky spirit. I do not think we

need be interested in the swashbuckling type of empiricism.
Therefore we have to address ourselves seriously the
problem of what " experience " means.
In the ordinary usage of the English language the voice
of experience is the voice of memory although, since we
talk about " the experience of the race " we may add
record to memory and also, perhaps, the sort of ancestral
quasi-memory that may be thought to be involved in the
lessons of pre-history. In the main, however, the experienced man is the man, who, to use the vernacular, has
been through the mill and can use his experience because
he has relevant memories to draw upon. He is thus
contrasted with the novice, and is credited with memory
either in the sense of possessing a clear recollection or of
having acquired a serviceable habit for dealing with
certain types of circumstance.
Memory, however, in any of the stricter senses in which
the word may be used, is always a personal affair. It is
not simply retro-cognition. It is each man's retro-cognition of his own past. Hence, very naturally we have a
strong and, I think, a justifiable inclination to say two things
about " experience " strictly understood. The first is that
it must be first-hand personal experience, and the second
is that, in so far as it is remembered
first-hand experience,
the gravamen of the enquiry shifts towards the original
fact, towards that which is remembered, towards that in
our past that we can recall but, on its original occurrence,
was not a past but a present experience.
I shall say something about each of these points.
The first although a seductive is a very complex charmer.
Personal experience should be contrasted with impersonal,
but it is not plain what impersonal experience could be.
Even if an experience, or some part or element of an experience were shared with other experients, that which is
common to all would be part of the experience of each.
If " impersonal " at all, it would therefore be " impersonal "
in certain rather arbitrary senses and in these only.
In short, the contrast between personal and impersonal
211
experience seems to be sterile and so I shall pass to the other

part of the phrase " first-hand personal experience " and
consider what should be meant by " first-hand ".
Presumably, first-hand experience should be contrasted
with second- or third-hand experience. What, then, is this
contrast ?
I am not prepared to attempt a satisfactory answer but I
can enumerate some prevalent suggestions. One would
be that second-hand experience is hearsay. Another
would be that second-hand experience is indirect. Yet
another would be that second-hand experience is representative. A fourth would be that second-hand experience is
inferential.
As to the first, I agree that we may distinguish between
knowledge by acquaintance, on the one hand, and knowledge by report, on the other hand. The only question
would be whether " knowledge by report " is, strictly
speaking, anything other than knowledge of a report.
As to the second, I would not deny that a distinction
between " direct " and " indirect " knowledge may be a
useful finger-post towards the whereabouts of a difference
that may be vital. Such a difference, however, requires a
much more precise description. If there could be " knowledge " by simple inspection, or, as pure phenomenalists
aver, by literal coincidence of appearance with reality, I
should agree that such " knowledge " would be " direct ".
But I doubt whether there are any other legitimate uses of
the term.
As to the third, if the contention be that we may have
experience, not of X, but only of X's deputy, the problem
would be whether, strictly, we have anything more than
experience of the deputy. There is therefore a reasonable
doubt whether any experience is other than first-hand in
this sense.
As to the fourth, there is certainly a difference between the
premisses of an inference and the conclusion, but it is not
equally plain that when a conclusion is reached our knowledge or experience of it is second-hand. Obviously such
inferred " experience " is quite different from what I have
212
J. LAIRD.
called " knowledge by report ". The latter would correspond to accepting a statement on authority instead of
arguing it out for ourselves and drawing the correct
conclusion.
It is sometimes said that first-hand experience must
really mean " immediate experience ". If so the contrast
is between immediate and mediate experience, and I think
it should be allowed that mediate experience requires and
is based upon immediate experience. I do not know,
however, what could be meant by " mediate " except
either " representative " or " inferential ". Consequently
the last two paragraphs, taken together, ought to exhaust
this one.
Abandoning, for the time being, the interpretation of
the phrase " first-hand personal experience ", let us turn
to the other point formerly mentioned, i.e. to the sense of
" experience " whose primary implication is that such
experience is memory-laden.
Here I think it is plain that analysis shows that the socalled "primary" implication cannot really be primary
but must be secondary. Memory must be based upon an
experience that was first of all present and is later recalled,
in whatever sense " recall " may be legitimately asserted.
True, there would be a difference, and a difference that
might be important, between being aware of something
for the first time and being aware of it later along with its
roots in the past. I do not think, however, that such a
distinction, however important it might be, could be all
or most that is meant by the distinction between experience
and inexperience.
We must therefore try to find some
distinguishing mark of " experience " that would apply
to the present as well as to the past. If we cannot discover
such a distinguishing mark we should, I think, be simply
postponing the problem by attempting to make it turn
upon the presence or absence of memory.
The most usual and the most robust form of empiricism
asserts that the c'Eirutpta on which the theory is based must
be sense-experience.
Indeed a robust empiricism of this
type is what is often meantby the term. It is plain, however,
213
that there are difficultieshere since we do have imaginative,

noetic, and other forms of experience that appear not to
be sense-experience and yet to be thoroughly authentic
types of " experience."
The answer usually given is that all these other types of
experience, whether they are near-sensoryor, in appearance,
downright non-sensory, turn out, on a sufficiently careful
analysis, to be species of debilitated sensations. Even if
that were true, however, it might be doubted whether the
theory itself could be very robust when it is forced to support
so many decrepit dependents. For die they will not.
There really are such experiences.
Let us suppose, however, that the strong do all the work,
supporting all the children, and hospital patients and oldage pensioners, just as will have to be done in civilized
countries if the birth-rate continues to decline. In that
case it is surely of the utmost moment to be able to tell
by some plain independent mark who the workers are and
how they are distinct from the drones. It is here that I
find robust empiricism most unsatisfying. I am told that
whatever else may be doubtful, sense-data at least are
indubitable and so that a philosophy built upon them is
built upon a rock. I am assured that verification in terms
of them is honest-to-goodness verification. That is good
news; but can it be confirmed ?
I allow that if I sense a pain I really do sense it, but I do
not see that any important consequence follows. For if I
imagine a pain I really do imagine it. The interminable
popular disputes on the question whether " imaginary"
pains are or are not " real " pains do not help me to make
up my mind on this question and if I begin to consider the
state of dreaming I am not less perplexed. A bull in a nightmare may be not less affrighting than a bull in a china
shop. The fright exists in both cases. What about the bull ?
Robust empiricists tell me that a real bull is a sensed bull,
and that a sensed bull is a name for certain sense-data
striking upon me with force and vivacity and surrounded
by a specific kind of associative penumbra of causal and
other indications of real presence. I still want to know
214
J. LAIRD.
how I am to distinguish the " real " bull from the dreambull 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 satisfactory, at any rate as nearly satisfactory as a man can
legitimately hope for. Let it be so. What robust empiricists 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
215
empiricism we have just been discussing, might be hard

pressed to escape very similar criticisms. The Kantian
theory (which seems in its own way to be a sort of positivism)
is that the only knowledgeworthy of the name is scientific
knowledge, and that scientific knowledge is the intellectualizing of sensation. Sensations are given, but sciencehas
not begun unless the given is rendered noetic.
If this statement means that all sensations are adamantine
(or irrefragably given) data, mixed sensory empiricism
would encounter precisely the same difficulties as pedigree
sensory empiricism. If, on the other hand, the contention
were that only somesensations, a chosen few, are irrefragable
material for conceptualization, we should have to ask how
we know the irrefragable ones. Both pedigree sensory
empiricism and mixed sensory empericism appear to agree
about one grand metaphysical assertion, viz. that senseexperience and matter-of-factnesscoincide. The former is
the sole evidence of the latter because it is somehow the
same thing. It is therefore ineluctably sufficient evidence.
Without this grand assumption it would not be plausible to
say, as mixed sensory empiricists habitually do say, that all
our conceptions would bombinate in the void unless they
were ballasted with sense-experience. It is possible (although I doubt it) that " mixed sensory empiricists" might
be able, in principle, to discriminate effectively between
good sensory ballast and bad, while "pedigree sensory
empiricists" ought to be quite indiscriminating in this
matter, but, in the main, both of them make the same
assumption about the relations between fact and sense.
If there are general as well as particular facts, concepts
in se and per se need not be empty. They would only be
general,and they might always, if true, refer to the general
aspects of existence. Conceptions and sensations might
each of them be poor in one way (a different way in each
case) and rich in another way (also different for each of
them). Further, it need not be supposed that sense and
intellect exhaust between them all the possible income of
knowledge. Imaginations and dreams may also be sources
of revenue.
216
J.
LAIRD.
In this preamble to the discussion of the relations between

empiricism and positivism I have been concerned, almost
exclusively, with the robust theory of sensory empiricism.
That was because sensory empiricism, in some form, is the
most usual form of the theory; but of course any other
interpretation of 1E7TELpta would yield a characteristically
different type of empiricism. I have no space here to
pursue these other forms but would say in general that if
action be regarded as philosophically preferable to sensation,
it may be doubted whether the advantages are very considerable. It is plausible enough to say, as I think Ward
said, that experience is the process of becoming expert by
experiment. We tend to think of the experienced man as
the man who has handled the stuff. On these lines,
however, we should probably have to conclude that the
sensory experiences of manipulation were what was central,
and although there might be some reason for according a
privileged position to this spccial class of sensations, the
costs of the enterprise might well be prohibitive.
Let us now abandon our preamble, and simply make use
of it for the purpose of examining the relations between
empiricism and positivism.
We have here, I think, two questions. The first is whether
a consistent philosopher, being an empiricist, would have
to say " I am therefore a positivist ". The second is
whether a consistent philosopher, being a positivist, would
have to say " I am, by inference, an empiricist ".
I find immense difficulty in so much as conjecturing what
the answer to the first of these questions would be, but
that, no doubt, is because I personally find it impossible
to believe that all our knowledge does consist exclusively
of first-hand sensa. Suppose, however, that this was the
simple truth. In that case, I think it might be reasonable
to say that all sense experience is simply descriptive of
sense data and abjures every mood except the indicative.

I don't think a robust sensory empiricism could be scientific
and I don't believe it could make sense. But if it did I
daresay that it would be positivistic.
We may check this result by applying it to the modern
217
(so-called) logistical positivism. This theory, accepting

certain reputable sciences, finds that there are two classes
of them. These are, respectively, the formal class (i.e.
logic and formal mathematics) and the mixed formalmaterial class. Except by a piece of downright effrontery,
the formal class could not be said to consist of sense-experiences. But we are told that it consists of tautologies and
tells us nothing about the world. A difficulty is whether,
if tautological, it could tell us anything about anything.
The conclusion would seem to be that in so far as any science
tells us anything about the world it is empirical, and that
this assertion is the positivistic part of so-called logistical
positivism.
The answer to the second question might seem to be

easier. Positivists accept the sciences in the belief that they
and they alone describefacts and tell us " about the world ".
Empiricists believe that " fact " or " the world " (at any
rate quoadnos) consists of sense-experiences. If a science in
pursuit of " facts " or of the " world " could dispense with
everything except sense-experience it would be a purely
empirical positivism. So positivism and empiricism would
coincide.
The pathetic feature of this situation is that positivists

are torn between faith and sight. By faith they discern
that sense-observation is the only begetter of positive
science. By sight they learn that no actual science is
anywhere near being an instance of pure empiricism.
Hence they have either to blink or to hope. I shall say
nothing more about their modes of hoping. Quench not
hope, for if hope dies, all is dead. Their ways of blinking,
however, seem to me to be rather more objectionable. A
favourite method is the method of initial stipulation, of
making a bargain in advance and sticking to it advienneque
pourra. Thus it may be "stipulated" that no senseobservations are to receive attention except those that a
physicist of repute would accept at the present day, that
so-and-so's observations of this kind are to be amplified
beyond the actual fact of someone's sense-experience in
the way that physicists usually find convenient, and that
218
J.
LAIRD.
this highly sophisticated translation of " experience" and

of " fact" is just what up-to-date philosophers call "experience
It is not surprising that such an attitude should proclaim
itself anti-metaphysical. It is utterly impatient of all that
it calls " philosophy ". It stipulates such philosophy away.
This brings me to the third part of my subject, the nature
of metaphysics and its relations to positivism and to empiricism.
The proper definition of metaphysics is a topic that may

reasonably be debated at a length unsuited to the present
occasion. I shall therefore be briefer about it than I
should like to be and shall say, in a gulp, that an enquiry
is metaphysical in proportion as it sets itself with determination to pursue ultimates. It follows that the science of
metaphysics, if there were one, would be just the science of
ultimates. I believe that the above statement is more
adequate than most, and shall account it a short but telling
description of metaphysics. If that be true the relations,
firstly, between metaphysics and empiricism, and secondly
between metaphysics and positivism could not be peculiarly
mystifying.
As regards the first of these relations I would suggest
that empiricism, in its philosopical significance, is a species
of metaphysics and is nothing else. It is a doctrine about
ultimates, namely that, for any human thinker, the only
ultimates are contained in human 4,uL7rEpia. Beyond these
(it declares) humanity can never go.
Consequently, if any philosopher in the name of his
empiricism beats the big anti-metaphysical drum, he must
be using the term " metaphysics " in a different sense from
mine; and although nobody wants to make more of a
fuss about words than he can help, I should not be afraid of a
challenge about the verbal propriety of the terms I am
using. The sort of " metaphysics " about which the
modern anti-metaphysical party is wont to complain so
loudly seems to me to be a spectre that the party itself has
conjured up, the sort of ghost that an inferiority complex,
strictly interpreted and of a philosophical order, might
219
easily engender, emancipation from which might be salutary

to a few minds. I shall have something to say about this
spectre later. For the present, however, I propose to assume
that empiricism is a species of metaphysics, whether it
asserts roundly that all is " experience ", or with greater
apparent modesty that all that can be detected or verified,
directly or indirectly, strongly or weakly, is " experience
Is positivism also a metaphysics?
I think it might be. If anyone says " I am a positivist
because I believe, after what seems to me to be an adequate
investigation of all serious opposing views, that descriptive
statements in the indicative mood are all the genuine truth
that there is, and because I believe that the positive
sciences are the repositoriesof all such statementswhere they
are at all precise " his positivism, I submit is a kind of
metaphysics. Its rests on a basis of professed ultimacy,
and does so self-consciously and even truculently. Such a
theory, it is true, might be removed from metaphysics by
a single short and mincing step. That would happen if the
positivist adopted an attitude we have already examined
viz. if he asserted that he was a positivist because he was an
empiricist. His positivism in that case would be a deduced
thing and therefore not ultimate. On the other hand it
would be quite possible to limit one's empiricism to one's
positivism, that is to say to assert the sufficiency and the
ultimacy of the latter.
Again, however, it would be possible to be an agnostic,
that is, an un-metaphysical positivist, or at least to seem to
be so if the difficulties inherent in such a view received
insufficient attention.
An agnostic positivist would say something like this
"I don't know whether the positive sciences yield The
Truth, and I know nothing about some particular variety
of ' truth ' that is ultimate and irrefragable. Consequently
I am a modest and not an unguarded positivist. In other
words I am not a metaphysician- De ultimis non curo".
Such a position would be speciously tenable-until it
was challenged on the ground of being unintelligiblyovercautious, making provisional statements in which the very
220
J.
LAIRD.
provisos themselves uwere provisional, and so ad infinitum.

There lies the agnostic positivist'sprincipal peril ; but in so
far as he can keep his balance upon his tight-rope he would
appear to be avoiding metaphysics.
I therefore infer that positivism may attempt to be
un-metaphysical although its success in such an enterprise
must be accounted doubtful. In general, however, a
positivist, is either a metaphysician of a kind, or bases his
positivism on metaphysical grounds. If it were not so, a
positivist would either give no reason for his attitude or
would give a reason that, on his own showing, would be
merely provisional and therefore not ultimate. If he knew
that he was doing that very thing he would ostensibly be
refraining from metaphysics out of policy, but would
covertly be admitting that there were ultimate (that is to
say metaphysical) reasons for his attitude.
Let us now consider what sort of " metaphysics " is
repudiated by philosophers in the name of their antimetaphysics.
Returning to a point formerly mentioned, we may say
this: If empiricists affirm that nothing can be known
except in so far as it is sensed, they may reasonably be
asked whether this cardinal affirmation " Everything
anyone knows must be sensed " is itself sensed. Some
empiricists, I suppose, would reply in the affirmative.
To them I have nothing to say. I can neither understand
nor misunderstand them well enough to be able to communicate with them in any useful way. On the other hand
those who reply in the negative, even if their empiricism
is not quite robust (just because they do reply in the negative)
are at any rate conversable animals. I would point out
to them that they do not repudiate quite everythingthat
isn't sensed and so that they do not amalgamate the " metaphysics " that they repudiate
with the " non-sensory
that they do not wholly repudiate.

Indeed it seems clear that the majority of empiricistseven pretty robust ones like Hume-do not repudiate all
that is non-sensory but only a certain kind of reputedly
non-sensory entity. (Hume, for instance did not say that
POSITIVISM,
EMPIRICISM,
AND
METAPHYSICS.
221
there could be no meaning in the formal " relations of

ideas ". He denied that there was any matter-of-factness
in such formal relations.) In other words, what vitiates
metaphysics, according to most empiricists, is its belief that
there are supersensible things-a deus absconditus,mere
noiimena and the like. They deny supersensible (and
sub-sensible?) matter of fact. If by matter-of-fact we
mean things, they deny that there are any things, which
either cannot be sensed or, more moderately, cannot be
verified, strongly or weakly, by sense-observation. If by
" matter-of-fact" we mean that which has the status and
functions of what is sensible, they deny that anything supersensible (or sub-sensible?) has this status and these functions.
Such views belong to the order of ideas according to
which metaphysicians are expected to hang their heads
in deserved confusion when they are told that they are
blind men in dark rooms looking for black cats that aren't
there. It is possible that some philosophers have been
properly rebuked by the babes who babble in this way.
For the most part, however, the accusation is plainly
puerile. To hold that there is something super-sensible
in much or in all of our knowing need not imply that there
are super-sensibleentities closely resembling sensible entities
in all (or in many) relevant ways. The doctrine, indeed,
is quite consistent with the view that we have (often or
always) to employ super-sensoryinstruments in our dealings
with the sensory itself. I have tried to suggest, however,
that the alternatives " either sensory or sensory-noetic"
need not be exhaustive. If by " matter-of-fact" you mean
" sensed or inferable from what is sensed " it follows by a
simple analysis that non-sensory processes may be directed
upon the sensible. If, on the other hand, you mean
" actuality " or " reality " by
"
matter of fact ", it is a
problem for metaphysical investigation whether the possibility of sensory discernment is an ineluctable requirement
of actuality.
I can see nothing absurd-for instance-in the suggestion

that our sensory acquaintance with actuality is flashy
rather than opulent, more obtrusive than solid. That
222
J.
LAIRD.
would be consistent with the belief that everything had

obtrusive sensible features although it had also unobtrusive
non-sensory reserves,whence the rather precariousinference
might perhaps be drawn that in default of the obtrusive
sort of evidence no other evidence would be so much
as visible. It would also, however, be consistentwith quite a
different interpretation viz. that while every sort of cognition
selects from reality, unless it goes astray, nevertheless the
different types of selection need not select the same sort of
thing. Thought, for instance may select generals, real
generals, while sense may select particulars,real particulars.
If so there could be no noetically selected particulars. No
black feline apparitionswould be " there ". But it would not
follow that nothing would be selected by a true noetic
process. It would only be the case that noparticularcould
be selected in the no&tic way.
In the above short discussion I have spoken of the supersensible rather than of the sub-sensible, but a robust empiricist, as it seems to me, could have no greater sympathy
with micro-physics than with theology. He might try, it is
true, to resolve his sense data into minima visibilia, minima
tangibilia and the like; but he would still be a long way
from micro-physics and would have no more promising
means of transport than the average man who contemplates
a journey to the moon. There is, of course, nothing new
in this observation, and nothing unfamiliar in its principle
to robust empiricists. The point, however, has some
general interest.
The sort of " metaphysics " that positivists repudiate
would seem again to be an idol specially devised to be
smashed, a sort of clay pigeon.
There is no need, it is true, to withhold assent, and even
admiring assent, from a large part of Comte's best-known
contention. In so far as sweeping generalitiescan be trusted,
it is accurate as well as stimulating to observe that most
human science did pass through a theological and a metaphysical stage before it became more scrupulously positivistic. In that sense positivism marked an advance. Consider the theological stage. In its interpretation of the
223
Book of Nature, theology, allowing that it contained much

primitive science, was definitely naive in its general outlook.
Mythopoeic cosmogonies exaggerated their explanatory
potency in natural knowledge. Indeed, there was an advance when theology became so very like a species of
astronomy, provided that the divine astronomy was not
itself mythopoeic. Even then, however, it was not enough
to insist (with Epicurus and Lucretius) upon the primacy of
sensation in man's knowledge of the rain of the atoms.
It was necessary to pursue positivistic methods much more
resolutely with a more faithful technique of observation.
That was how the lynx of modern science, at a later date,
grappled so successfully with Cerberus.
The same would hold of Comte's objection to the " metaphysical " stage of " science ". In admitting the criticism
there is no need to disparage the lamps of arm-chair reason.
What has to be held is only that the " light of reason ", in
this sense, cannot suffice for the regions where new and
vastly improved methods of illumination are required and
may become available with sufficient patience. From that
point of view it is largely irrelevant whether the " metaphysical " stage of metaphysical science was or was not
vitiated by a naive idolatry of class-names, in short was a
sort of " faculty metaphysics" in the sense in which opium
was supposed to send men to sleep in virtue of its dormitive
powers. The point is that the " particular go " of natural
events is not to be ascertained by the mere intellectual
juxtaposition of supreme clarities, sense-experience being
used primarily for purposes of illustration. In many of
the sciences sense-experience does not merely limit the
abstract a prioripossibilities. It establishes a large part of
the sciences, so far as they are established.
When all these things have been said, however, it remains
clear that a positivist's reasonable complaint is against a
meddling and unguarded metaphysics, and not against
metaphysics as such. Before men had learned how much
of our natural knowledge cometh by observation, metaphysical science may have believed itself to be, and may
actually have been, in the van of human progress. When
2c
224
J.
LAIRD.
that lesson had been learned in certain quarters, metaphysical sciencewas in the cart, rubbing shoulders with other
dangerous antiquities. Unless it can be shown, however,
both that all significant questions are of the type that the
natural sciences find it convenient or fashionable to investigate and that all the natural sciences are faithful to unmetaphysical positivism in all their incomings and in all
their outgoings, there is no adequate reason for wiping
metaphysical scribbles off the slate. There may not be
" transcendentals " or other " metaphysical things " in the
same sense as there are turnips, and acids, and living tissues.
In short there may be no metaphysical things. If so
metaphysics would not be comparable to botany or to
chemistry or to histology. But unless all that is knowable
is so comparable it does not follow in any way that a metaphysical pursuit is always a wild goose chase.
It is transparently evident that modern logistical positivism has advanced a long way beyond Comte's base, so far
indeed that it may no longer look to Comte for supplies.
I don't know much about the historical question implied,
and, except for Neurath, I have not noticed much appreciative reference to Comte among the logistical positivists I
have studied. In substance, however, it appears to me,
I hope not without some justification, that the logistical
positivists of the present day do accept mathematical logic
as scientia vera, and further believe that all that can be known
about matter of fact must somehow be verifiable in personal
sense-experience.
I have difficulty in believing that the
logistical part of their theory squares with the empiricism
of their account of verification (in short with what is often
thought to be their " positivism ") and am confident that
the pragmatism, the behaviourism and the " stipulations "
of the " material language " of many of their theories put a
severe strain upon a sensitive philosophical conscience.
But however that may be I submit that they are impatient
metaphysicians and are not, as they prefer to think, compelled to be anti-metaphysicians in any reasonable sense.

Positivism, Empiricism and Metaphysics

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Positivism, Empiricism and Metaphysics

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Positivism, Empiricism, and Metaphysics

Meetingof the AristotelianSocietyat 55, RussellSquare,London,

W.C.1,on May 22nd, 1939, at 8 p.m.

BY positivism in its most general sense I mean the theory

positive sciences. It would be expecting too much to

POSITIVISM, EMPIRICISM, AND METAPHYSICS.

mean. I must now attempt to examine its relations to

contains and indeed actually is all that is known, and

is all that human beings ever will or ever

can know. Being more familiar with English than with

put forward in a happy-go-lucky spirit. I do not think we

POSITIVISM, EMPIRICISM, AND METAPHYSICS.

experience seems to be sterile and so I shall pass to the other

POSITIVISM, EMPIRICISM, AND METAPHYSICS.

that there are difficultieshere since we do have imaginative,

POSITIVISM, EMPIRICISM, AND METAPHYSICS.

empiricism we have just been discussing, might be hard

In this preamble to the discussion of the relations between

sense data and abjures every mood except the indicative.

POSITIVISM, EMPIRICISM, AND METAPHYSICS.

(so-called) logistical positivism. This theory, accepting

The answer to the second question might seem to be

The pathetic feature of this situation is that positivists

this highly sophisticated translation of " experience" and

The proper definition of metaphysics is a topic that may

POSITIVISM, EMPIRICISM, AND METAPHYSICS.

easily engender, emancipation from which might be salutary

provisos themselves uwere provisional, and so ad infinitum.

with the " non-sensory

that they do not wholly repudiate.

there could be no meaning in the formal " relations of

matter of fact ", it is a

I can see nothing absurd-for instance-in the suggestion

would be consistent with the belief that everything had

POSITIVISM, EMPIRICISM, AND METAPHYSICS.

Book of Nature, theology, allowing that it contained much

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