Antiantipositivism: Of Epistemological Hypochondria, Constitutional Otherness, and Other Demons

Abstract

Anthropology was quite loud in proclaiming its own epistemological hypochondria. In this paper, we propose an unconventional methodological bricolage of philosophy of science, contextualistic anthropology and structural-semiological analysisderived from Serbian anthropology in order to address the question of epistemic justification that underlies every attempt to justify knowledge claims. The internalism-externalism conflict in the philosophy of science is seen in this paper as a pseudo-conflict: we suggest that internalistic type of analysis of structure of science must be complemented with structural-semantic analysis and contextualistic anthropological analytic strategies in order to avoid conceptual vagueness and incommensurability. The paper will analyze what we call “epistemic helix”, which leads to “epistemic stumbling” when it comes to firm foundations of knowledge. We will pay special attention to the so-called Münchausen trilemma (circularity, infinite regress, dogmatism), which every attempt at empirical founding must necessarily face. We will address the “epistemic helices of infinite regress” and the “vicious circles of epistemic circularity” that are hard to transect without endorsing some kind of foundationalism, dogmatism, apriorism or conventionalism. The focus of the paper will be placed on the positivism dispute, seen as a never-ending debate over the empirical basis of science. Even though positivism has been considered “dead“ ever since the 1970s due to the predominance of anti-positivistic and post-positivistic tendencies in the social sciences and humanities, it is still used as the negative Other which, as a folk category, serves the purpose of negative self-identification of various groups and the means of drawing (sub)disciplinary boundaries. We argue that the history of anthropology is itself an anthropological problem: writing disciplinary history cannot be an atheoretical activity conducted in a vacuum, the history of a discipline is a history of rival interpretations, exclusions, oppositions and denials. Anthropology was especially loud in proclaiming its negative sentiment towards positivism, i.e. in its antipositivism. Nevertheless, this paper will show that “positivism” is more often than not a “floating signifier” whose meaning, content, and basic tenets are stretched or shrunk in a procrustean manner in order to construct its own theoretical, methodological, and epistemological identity and to mark the point of its own progress. In short, “positivism”, especially when treated as a homogenous and static category, often exists primarily in the imagination of its critics. This should especially be kept in mind if the exponents of the “soft” sciences, in need of a regulative methodological support, appeal to simplified, scientistic and non-existent caricatures which “positivism” usually represents. Moreover, it may be said that the notion of “positivism” is underdetermined by the very anti-positivist theories. In order to shed light on what we call selective or instrumental reading of positivism, we propose a structural-semiological analysis of the history of negative self-identification. By recontextualizing Geertz’s famous notion of “anti-anti-relativism”, we introduce the concept of “anti-anti-positivism”. As a double negation, anti-anti-positivism enables us to analyze an “anti” position, without forcing us to adopt the opposite stance (-(-positivism) ≠ +(positivism)). We conclude that, within the post-truth condition where cognitive foundations are unstable, a non-biased positivism dispute, seen as a debate about the foundations of knowledge, is more necessary than ever.