Only external behavior is held as the subject of psychology...

Only external behavior is held as the subject of psychology fit for scientific discussion. Consequently, they void psychology of its content. According to this philosophy, which can be called “empiricism” or “extreme empiricism”, there is no place for scientific discussion and research which could result in certainty about metaphysical topics. They consider all philosophical topics to be nonsense and worthless. Perhaps philosophy has never faced such a hard headed enemy.

Therefore, we had better discuss it more fully. A Critique of Positivism Positivism, which is truly one of the most base tendencies of human thought in all history, has numerous failures, the most important of which will be indicated below: With this tendency, the most firm foundations of knowledge, that is, knowledge by presence and propositions evident by reason ( ‘aql ), are lost.

With this loss no intellectual explanation can be presented for the correctness of knowledge, and its correspondence to reality. Positivists have tried to define true knowledge in another way. Truth is held to be knowledge which is accepted by others, which can be proved by sensory experience. Obviously, the change in terminology does not solve the problem of the value of knowledge. The agreement and acceptance of those who do not attend to this difficulty cannot create any value and worth.

Positivists rely on sense perception, which is the most unstable and dubious basis for knowledge. Sensory knowledge, more than any other type of knowledge, is exposed to error. Noting the point that sensory knowledge, in reality, occurs inside of man, they have closed off the way to logical proof of the external world. There is no way for them to answer the doubts of the Idealists. The difficulties which we mentioned with regard to the nominalists also apply to the positivists.

To claim that metaphysical concepts are meaningless is absurd and obviously invalid, for if words which refer to these concepts were generally devoid of meaning there would be no difference between them and nonsense, and the denial and affirmation of them would be equivalent. For example, that fire is the cause of heat could never be equivalent to its opposite. Even if one denies causality, he denies a proposition whose concepts he understands.

According to the positivists, there is no way for scientific laws to be regarded as universal, definite and necessary, for these characteristics do not admit of confirmation by the senses.