Antipositivism in Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science and Humanities

The dominant tendency in contemporary philosophy of natural and social science is antipositivist. That much is easy to ascertain even by a cursory survey of books and articles. But what are antipositivists against? Whether dead or alive, their enemy is difficult to identify on the basis of antipositivist accounts which vary considerably one from another. A brief glance at those accounts will suffice to show that antipositivists do not have an identity either, they are a motley group with different interests, motives and backgrounds. In the present article I shall restrict my attention to those antipositivists who are, broadly speaking, in the empiricist tradition and whose main complaint against positivism is that as a descriptive account of empirical science it is too narrow and as a methodological programme it is a too restrictive brand of empiricism. I shall argue that the basic antipositivist criticisms are relevant and effective against what I shall call positivism in the strict sense but not against a variety of scientists and philosophers also labelled positivists in some vague sense of the word. It is, therefore, in the antipositivists' own interest-unless their aim is confusion rather than rational discussion-to identify their opponents more precisely. I shall also argue that whereas positivism in the strict sense is in fact for many purposes an unnecessarily restrictive brand of empiricism, this does not apply to a variety of doctrines or programmes often subsumed under 'positivism' in the broad and vague sense and that many views and principles the antipositivists regard as their own (and so non-positivist) have been part of their opponents' doctrines for some time now.